![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Skulls Offer First Glimpse of Early Human Faces
In the 160,000-year-old fossilized skulls of three Ethiopians two adults and a child scientists think they see for the first time the faces of the immediate ancestors of modern humans.
Except for a few archaic characteristics, they are as recognizable as Hamlet's poor Yorick. They are longer than those of earlier ancestors or any contemporary Neanderthals in Eurasia. Their midfaces are broad, but the nasal bones are tall and narrow. The brow ridges are less prominent than the glowering visages looking down from earlier branches of the family tree. And the cranial vaults are higher and within modern dimensions.
The discovery of the oldest near-modern human remains, announced today, is considered a major step in establishing the time and place for the emergence of anatomically modern Homo sapiens probably about 150,000 years ago, as genetic studies have suggested, in Africa.
"We can now see what our direct ancestors looked like," said Dr. Tim D. White, a paleoanthropologist from the University of California at Berkeley, who is a leader of the international team that excavated and analyzed the skulls.
That had been impossible until now because of the frustrating gap in fossil evidence between 100,000 and 300,000 years ago, the presumed interval of transition from prehumans to modern humans.
Dr. Christopher Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London, who did not participate in the research, hailed the findings as "some of the most significant discoveries in early Homo sapiens so far."
( Read more... )
In the 160,000-year-old fossilized skulls of three Ethiopians two adults and a child scientists think they see for the first time the faces of the immediate ancestors of modern humans.
Except for a few archaic characteristics, they are as recognizable as Hamlet's poor Yorick. They are longer than those of earlier ancestors or any contemporary Neanderthals in Eurasia. Their midfaces are broad, but the nasal bones are tall and narrow. The brow ridges are less prominent than the glowering visages looking down from earlier branches of the family tree. And the cranial vaults are higher and within modern dimensions.
The discovery of the oldest near-modern human remains, announced today, is considered a major step in establishing the time and place for the emergence of anatomically modern Homo sapiens probably about 150,000 years ago, as genetic studies have suggested, in Africa.
"We can now see what our direct ancestors looked like," said Dr. Tim D. White, a paleoanthropologist from the University of California at Berkeley, who is a leader of the international team that excavated and analyzed the skulls.
That had been impossible until now because of the frustrating gap in fossil evidence between 100,000 and 300,000 years ago, the presumed interval of transition from prehumans to modern humans.
Dr. Christopher Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London, who did not participate in the research, hailed the findings as "some of the most significant discoveries in early Homo sapiens so far."
( Read more... )