Word: commonality
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...that scientists could really tell about our earliest ancestors was when they first appeared. Molecular biologists had measured the differences between human and chimpanzee DNA, then averaged the rate of genetic change over time. By calculating backward, they determined that great apes and hominids branched from a common ancestor between 6 million and 4 million years ago. But no fossils were on hand to support this scenario. The oldest hominid species known, Australopithecus afarensis (southern ape of the Afar), could be dated back only 3.6 million years. Its most famous member, Lucy, unearthed in Ethiopia's bleak Afar Triangle...
...turns out to be, it's clear that paleontologists are closing in on the split between apes and humans. "We're in the ballpark. Five or 10 years ago, we couldn't even have conceived of this," asserts White. "Ardipithecus is the closest thing we currently have to the common ancestor of African apes and humans, but its derived characteristics, particularly its teeth, suggest that it postdates that ancestor...
...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...
...yourself investors and full-time day traders couldn't have less in common. One group researches stocks, tries to get comfortable with the products and the financials, and then buys and holds. The other does little research, never wants to be comfortable with the stocks, and buys and sells the stocks over and over again. Yet the media can't tell them apart. As the New York Times stated so ineloquently in its umpteenth article lumping together these diametrically opposed camps, they are both part of the "do-it-yourself craze" that is causing people to lose millions and millions...
...effort to alert people to the risk of ignoring unexplained fatigue, the American College of Physicians-American Society of Internal Medicine is launching an educational campaign this week that will highlight three of the more common medical causes: thyroid disorders, depression and sleep apnea (a condition often characterized by snoring). "Baby boomers especially want to blame everything on their environment--their jobs, their kids, the stress of living in the '90s," says Dr. Sandra Adamson Fryhofer, who has just been elected president of the organization. But, she adds, you have to be alert to other possibilities as well, particularly after...