The 1.85 million-year-old little finger bone that could rewrite human evolution: Giant human (homo)?

Just wooooow, this is an amazing find. It was discovered a piece of hand bone from an unkown relative of Homo Habilis, which if calculations are correct, would be part of a huge human relative. Here's the thing:

Summary:
-85 million-year-old bone was found in Tanzania's Olduvai Gorge.
-May have belonged to an unknown, extremely large, human relative.
-Relative would have been 5ft 9 inches, compared to H. habilis, at 3ft tall.
-Discovery pushes earliest 'modern' hand back by around 400,000 years

A 1.85 million-year-old bone from the little finger of a human ancestor has revealed the oldest 'modern' hand ever found.

The discovery in Olduvai Gorge pushes back in time a key step in our evolution from tree-climbing foragers to tool-wielding hunters, scientists say.

It also hints at the existence of a larger, more human-like creature than others known to have lived at that time in the same region - one of the hotspots of human origin - in modern-day Tanzania.

They didn't gave the exact size of that homo genus. But it seems to be much larger than the avarage human and was capable of taking bear-sized animals

'I always had trouble understanding how Homo habilis - barely taller than one metre (3ft) - could efficiently hunt animals that big,' Dominguez-Rodrigo said. Fossils reveal that early human ancestors hauled the carcasses of big animals, sometimes weighing hundreds of kilos.

Pretty scare, i really wonder how these guys became extinct. It's a fact that big animals have better chances of becoming extinct due to pray and climate changes, but these guys seem to have been very sucesfull.

The hand is one of the critical features distinguishing humans, and even a 3.6 cm(1.5-inch), two-million-year-old fragment can reveal a lot about body type and behaviour.

The shape of our forebears' hands was both a reflection of their stage of evolution, explained lead author Manuel Dominguez-Rodrigo, a researcher at the Institute of Evolution in Africa in Madrid.

And this is a pretty old one, the creation of tolls could be much older than we belived:

If the bone is proportional to a modern-human-like body, the unknown ancestors it would have belonged to would have been 5 feet 9 inches, compared to H. habilis, who was just over 3 feet tall.

The discovery pushes the earliest 'modern' hand back by around 400,000 years.

What scientists call 'modern human-like' hand anatomy has several defining characteristics.

Basically, hand gaves us the up-hand on evolution

'Hands were freed from locomotion in trees so that they could become strictly specialised in manipulation,' said Dominguez-Rodrigo. 'This is where our discovery fills a gap.'

The earliest confirmed stone tools date from about 2.6 million years ago.

Location of the find:

Source


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I realize they are comparing these to a 3ft "ancestor" but... Giant? 5'9"?! I am 6ft. I fancy myself scrappy, was trained to kill, but take down a bear with with my bare hands?!(see what I did there? I think not, I'd get in my licks and he would leave sore but, yeah....

Evolution a fairy tale for adults.

Nothing can be proven only guessed upon and estimate according to scholarly knowledge and yet that is still a theory.

If you don't have an understanding of the measurement of eternity your dating system will always reflect time periods that are much longer than they really are.

a reply to: Frocharocha

-May have belonged to an unknown, extremely large, human relative.
-Relative would have been 5ft 9 inches, compared to H. habilis, at 3ft tall.

Which would have made the pinky owner a giant in comparison. S&F about the only thing I have to add is a story I read many years ago where at one time in certain locations the breeding population had dropped to as few as 35 breeding pairs.. It was almost lights out for for humans in those areas and it was totally dark for others..

originally posted by: 727Sky
a reply to: Frocharocha

-May have belonged to an unknown, extremely large, human relative.
-Relative would have been 5ft 9 inches, compared to H. habilis, at 3ft tall.

Which would have made the pinky owner a giant in comparison. S&F about the only thing I have to add is a story I read many years ago where at one time in certain locations the breeding population had dropped to as few as 35 breeding pairs.. It was almost lights out for for humans in those areas and it was totally dark for others..

How could any one prove that breeding pairs dropped to 35?

No records, no evidence only hypothesis and conjecture.

Just more fairy tales from science.

Truly wonderful find! S&F

Since this was 1.85 million years ago (aprox), we could deduce that since the quantities of oxygen where higher, certain hominids could grow larger and pass those genes along creating an all sub-species of themselves i think.

Pretty scare, i really wonder how these guys became extinct. It's a fact that big animals have better chances of becoming extinct due to pray and climate changes, but these guys seem to have been very sucesfull.

If i had to guess, i'd say the genes probably got mixed through reproduction with smaller humanoids.

Bigger doesn't mean better, a big body needs more energy and simple lack of food could bring a big and powerful species to extinction.

There's also a subspecies found in Indonesia that seems to be taken out of a Tolkien book and they only got extinct 10.000 years ago! They even dubbed them "Hobbits". Real Hobbits
If i get it right, they got small because they had to evolve and live in a environment with little to no resources.


I guess we got stuck in the middle hun? The best of lots and lots of ancestors i hope.

a reply to: Syllar

"probably" ""could bring" and other type words are just fancy terms for saying ,"we have no Idea"

originally posted by: ChesterJohn
a reply to: Syllar

"probably" ""could bring" and other type words are just fancy terms for saying ,"we have no Idea"

Sorry kind sir, i'm no scientist, just one person interested in this kind of stuff... So yes, i guess and think and try to arrive to conclusions that in most times are probably wrong, but at least i try to use my brain.

No fancy terms in my post, i leave that to people that really get what they talk about.

Who are "we"? I don't like clubs, thank you...

Oh and...

originally posted by: ChesterJohn
Evolution a fairy tale for adults.

originally posted by: ChesterJohn
Just more fairy tales from science.

One wold think you where trolling... You cant bash science and call it fairy tales while probably believing we all grew up from the ground 5000 years ago.

And mind you, i'm no stranger to creationism, i just don't like when someone doesn't accept other people's view point, either be scientist, creationist, or in between.... Respect other people, it's not that hard. We are different.

There has been scholarly debate regarding its placement in the genus Homo rather than the genus Australopithecus.[2][3] The small size and rather primitive attributes have led some experts (Richard Leakey among them) to propose excluding H. habilis from the genus Homo and placing them instead in Australopithecus as Australopithecus habilis.[4]

New findings in 2007 seemed to confirm the view that H. habilis and H. erectus coexisted, representing separate lineages from a common ancestor instead of H. erectus being descended from H. habilis.[6]

So there's that.

a reply to: wastedown

And if someone that was 12 ft was standing next to you, I bet you would be calling him/her a giant.

The term is relative here to the time period.

Awesome find though, thanks OP!

a reply to: ChesterJohn

Call me a hater but I find it disturbing your post are getting the most stars right now.

You are not offering anything to show what you are saying just calling stuff fairly tales because you don't want to accept it.

Sorry you don't understand the science got to where it is.

So we go from, humans might be older than previously known history to a 5,9 feet giant.

a reply to: yulka
Proto-human.
Not human.

a reply to: Sremmos80

People want to believe in Gods, and we wonder why religion exists.

a reply to: Phage

Where is vlar!!!!!

a reply to: yulka

People want to believe in Gods,

Some do.

and we wonder why religion exists.

I don't.

Volcanic action took place at Mt St Helen's years back we had instant sedimentary and conglomerate rock were made in 15 minutes . When they dated the samples by radio carbon dating it measured over 1.3 million years old.

Rock less than a week old dated into millions of years as I remember because the material used to make the rock was that old.

So we have no idea what rock and fossils are of what age because the material is that old.

We know when the rock types were made at the Mt St Helen's eruption but they were not as old as the dating was saying they were.

Likewise a finger bone cannot be dated properly because the minerals around it and that facilitated its fossilization are older than the bone, thereby making the bone look older than it really is.

And scientist know this but ignore it.

a reply to: ChesterJohn

When they dated the samples by radio carbon dating it measured over 3 million years old.

False.
Carbon dating has never shown an age of over 3 million years. It can't.

a reply to: Phage

Not according to omni magazine at that time that is where I read the info

And then how are they saying the bone is 85 million

a reply to: ChesterJohn
No. You did not read that in Omni magazine.
Omni got its science right. Also had bitchin art. I have a file folder full of it.