Word: pilbeam
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...years ago. But they have never known exactly where to place him on the evolutionary ladder. Did he belong to the family of apes? Or was he already a member of the family of man? The questions puzzled Yale Paleontologist Elwyn L. Simons, and his former student, David R. Pilbeam, both of whom had strongly suspected for some time that Rama was really more man than...
Almost immediately, Simons and Pilbeam noted that the jawbones lacked the large overlapping canine teeth that are characteristic of all apes. Thus, Rama could grind his food with manlike side-to-side movements. Apes, on the other hand, mostly chomp up and down on their food, since their canines prevent lateral motion of the jaws. The Yale investigators also decided that Rama's molars had emerged one after another, as in man, rather than almost simultaneously, as in apes. From this evidence they drew two important conclusions: 1) Rama probably ventured into open country to forage for tougher foods...
...making their persuasive case for Ramapithecus as the first hominid, Simons and Pilbeam dispute a competing claim by the Kenyan anthropologist, Louis Leakey. Two years ago Leakey announced that 20 million-year-old fossils that he had discovered near Africa's Lake Victoria and dubbed Kenyapithecus africanus belonged to the earliest known manlike creature (TIME, Feb. 3, 1967). After applying their dental tests' to casts of Leakey's prehistoric fragments, the Yalemen decided that Kenyapithecus lacked the characteristics of early man. Though Leakey still insists that Kenyapithecus is a hominid, most other scientists now believe that...