Word: australopithecus
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...identification of Ramapithecus has even more profound implications to paleontologists. If he is indeed a hominid, Rama would be the direct predecessor of a creature called Australopithecus (southern ape), who, in turn, has long been accepted by scientists as being man's most immediate ancestor among the primates. Unlike the ape: who lived with him in East Africa, the short (just over 4 ft.), heavy-jawed man ape, Australopithecus, stood erect, eating meat as well as fruits and vegetables and was probably the first creature to make and use tools of stone.* Until recently, most paleontologists were certain that...
...happens, new fossil finds made by other investigators, operating quite independently, are closing the gap by showing that Australopithecus is really much older than had been thought-in fact, as much as 6,000,000 years...
...Kenya and the Sudan meet. There, a University of Chicago expedition has found 40 prehistoric teeth and two jawbones buried in volcanic ash that is perhaps 4,000,000 years old. The expedition's leader, Anthropologist F. Clark Howell, is convinced that the creatures are members of the Australopithecus family, even though they must have belonged to a branch that probably did not eat meat or make tools. Despite their proximity to various ferocious neighbors in the fossil bed, says Howell, these man-apes were apparently able to survive with no other weaponry than their wits...
...this up-and-coming pygmy Homo habilis, or skillful man, and recognize him as a direct ancestor of modern man. He thinks that a prehuman creature called Kenyapithecus lived in East Africa 12 million years ago and evolved into Homo habilis and at least two other different types, notably Australopithecus and erectus, a near man that includes both Java and Peking man. From Homo habilis, Leakey believes, are descended both Neanderthal man (Homo sapiens neanderthalensis) and modern man (Homo sapiens sapiens). His theory, if correct, would trace man's ancestry back to the Pliocene Age, roughly...
There is some evidence that Australopithecus used a bone club, fashioned from the lower part of an antelope but the proof is not conclusive. It satisfies Ardrey, and he jumps to a definition of man as a weapon-maker. The weapon, he claims, is "the hallmark of our culture...