Word: hominids
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...flower). The area's volcanic ash yielded fossils of many extinct creatures, but none that were even vaguely human. So the Leakeys continued their work at a more promising site, some 25 miles to the north in neighboring Kenya, called Olduvai Gorge. There they found the remains of hominid creatures that pushed man's lineage back to some 2 million years ago-at least a million years farther into the dark shadows of prehistory than had previously been suspected...
Johanson's fossil, which he thinks may be 4 million years old. could push the history of man even further back. His evidence that the jawbone belonged to Homo rather than a hominid is probably based on subtle differences: slight nuances of size and shape in the fossil teeth. But Johanson is convinced that these teeth belonged to a full-fledged Homo, who probably used them to eat meat, which he obtained by "using tools, possibly bones, to kill animals." Furthermore, since there is recent geological evidence that Ethiopia's Awash Valley may once have been part...
...check his theory, Bada dated a number of objects, including an ancient hominid bone dug up from East Africa's Olduvai Gorge by Anthropologist Louis S.B. Leakey. Its age, based on amino-acid dating, turned out to be 135,000 years-almost exactly the same as that deduced by Leakey from indirect geological evidence. Bada is still incredulous over the seemingly accurate results obtained by using his new clock. "It was so obvious and simple," he says, "I was just amazed that it hadn't been discovered before...
...hunting society, a social structure so stable that it persisted-by Ardrey's reckoning, at least-for 15 million years. The hunting group needed not only leaders but also followers-and more followers than leaders. "I find no other persuasive explanation," writes Ardrey, "for the failure of the hominid line, through such an expanse of evolutionary time, to do anything much but survive...
...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...