Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Get Ready for More Proto-Humans

Today at Discovery News you can read about the earliest recognized species of Homo, the first known member of our genus. This latest addition to the human family, Homo gautengensis, was from South Africa and measured just 3 feet tall. It spent a lot of time in trees and had big teeth suitable for chewing plant material. H. gautengensis emerged over 2 million years ago, but died out at around 600,000 years ago.

The past few years have seen an explosion in the discovery of early human ancestors. Over just the past couple of months alone, we were presented with X-Woman and Australopithecus sediba. One reason for the explosion is improved analysis methods, often based on prior finds, DNA work, and a better understanding of where such remains might exist.

Read the rest of this article...

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