Word: ancestors
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...ancestor, White hints that his team has already discovered hominid fossils that are more than 5 million years old, though he refuses to elaborate before detailed studies are completed. But Leakey and Walker readily acknowledge that they are studying two 5.5 million-year-old hominid teeth and a similarly ancient jaw fragment with an embedded tooth from a site in northern Kenya. "They look like australopithecines with lots of primitive features," Walker says, but there isn't enough evidence from these fossils alone to claim a new species...
...manufactured stone tools in the area at about that time. Now Asfaw and White's team could make a circumstantial case that their species, A. garhi, was the gifted toolmaker. If so, this was a crucial bit of scientific sleuthing. In the 2 million years since the first human ancestor began to walk upright, nothing much had changed. Now something had. Rather than just using sticks and stones to leverage innate abilities--something done by plenty of animals, from chimps to otters to finches--someone had deliberately selected and modified specific raw materials in a sophisticated and consistent...
...Homo habilis (handy man) and other members of its genus--H. rudolfensis, H. ergaster and H. erectus--were related, to what extent they overlapped or even whether they all represent distinct species. Many scientists believe, though, that it was H. erectus that was the ultimate victor, the direct ancestor of our own species...
...unusually rich trove of fossils has been found at two sites in northern Spain's Atapuerca mountains. One, known as Gran Dolina, has yielded 800,000-year-old hominids that Spanish researchers believe are a new species, perhaps the most recent common ancestor of modern humans and Neanderthals. Named Homo antecessor (Latin for explorer or pioneer), they had a primitive jaw and prominent brow ridges but a projecting face, sunken cheekbones and tooth development similar to that of modern humans...
...COMMENT] First ancient human ancestor discovered in Africa, it was once thought to be the missing link between apes and humans...