Word: antecessor
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Dates: during 1997-1997
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...they're sure. In the current issue of Science, Jose Maria Bermudez de Castro, of Madrid's Center for Scientific Investigation, and his colleagues maintain that their fossils belong to a new, possibly cannibalistic species of early man that roamed Europe nearly 800,000 years ago. Called Homo antecessor (from a Latin word meaning "explorer"), this creature may be the last common ancestor shared by modern humans and Neanderthals...
...Spanish fossils, though nearly twice as old, show a mix of modern and Neanderthal facial traits. According to the new genealogy, H. antecessor evolved in Africa and gave rise to H. heidelbergensis and another, still undiscovered species. The former begat Neanderthals; the latter led to modern H. sapiens. Not all paleoanthropologists are convinced. But if this theory holds up, the human family tree has just grown another branch...
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