Word: aping
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...hominid had some human characteristics -- most notably, she walked on two legs rather than four -- but skull and tooth fragments indicated she was somewhat apelike as well. She fit nicely into the shared-ancestor theory first put forward by Charles Darwin and supported by modern comparisons between human and ape proteins and DNA. The divergence between the ape and human lines, argued the biochemists, came somewhere between 4 million and 6 million years ago. And some paleontologists predicted that as hominid species were discovered from periods closer and closer to the time of the actual split, they should be even...
...representatives kicked their electoral juggernaut into high gear. Anyone who passed through Tercentenary Theater Thursday morning was treated to the rather persuasive endorsement of a sign emblazoned with the message "Vote Yes on U.C. Referendum." Its bearer embodied all the credibility of our august representatives--a fellow in an ape suit...
Experts are now scrambling to decide how this discovery changes the already complicated saga of humanity's origins. The longer scientists study the fossil record, the more convinced they become that evolution did not make a simple transition from ape to human. There were probably many false starts and dead ends. At certain times in some parts of the world, two different hominid species may have competed for survival. And the struggle could have taken a different turn at almost any point along the way. Modern Homo sapiens was clearly not the inevitable design for an intelligent being. The species...
...fossil fragments, like a prehistoric jigsaw puzzle, into a fairly complete A. afarensis skull. It turned out to be much more apelike than human, with a forward-thrust jaw and chimp-size braincase. These short creatures (males were under five feet tall) were probably no smarter than the average ape. Their upright stance and bipedal locomotion, however, may have given them an advantage by freeing their hands, making them more efficient food gatherers...
While Dubois didn't find anything like Lucy, he discovered some intriguingly primitive fossils, a skullcap and a leg bone, in eroded sediments along the Solo River in Java. They looked partly human, partly simian, and Dubois decided that they belonged to an ancient race of ape-men. He called his creature Anthropopithecus erectus; its popular name was Java man. Over the next several decades, comparable bones were found in China (Peking man) and finally, starting in the 1950s, in Africa...