Lucy's relative found...6 years ago. A real link between modern humans and apes.

This is the first I've heard of this, just thought I would share it with you guys.

www.cnn.com... ml

NEW YORK (AP) -- Scientists have discovered a remarkably complete skeleton of a 3-year-old female from the ape-man species represented by "Lucy."

The discovery should fuel a contentious debate about whether this species, which walked upright, also climbed and moved through trees easily like an ape.

The creature was a member of Australopithecus afarensis, which lived in Africa between about 4 million and 3 million years ago. The most famous afarensis is Lucy, discovered in Ethiopia in 1974, which lived about 100,000 years after the newfound specimen.

She still had a few traits from the previous species still left in her....but that's evolution. I mean, a species does not just evolve from one to another over night (or a couple million years) and not have any old traits. Read a little more down the article and it list a few traits that are common in Apes.

Australopithecus is more of a middle man between us (modern humans) and our even older ancestors, Pronconsul and Dryopithecus who spent a bit more time in the trees.

Most scientists believe afarensis stood upright and walked on two feet, but they argue about whether it had ape-like agility in trees.
Ofcourse it didn't have "ape-likw agility", it wasn't an ape. Maybe something similar, but not the same.

That climbing ability would require anatomical equipment like long arms, and afarensis had arms that dangled down to just above the knees. The question is whether such features indicate climbing ability or just evolutionary baggage.

[edit on 20/9/2006 by SportyMB]

Another Source:

www.usatoday.com... human-ancestor_x.htm

But the remains already support earlier finds indicating this ancestral human species walked upright but had a small brain and many seemingly apelike features. The child's gorilla-like arms and shoulders seem more adapted to tree climbing, while her legs and hips are plainly adapted to walking on two legs, Kimbel says. The researchers cannot say for sure how the child died, he says.

Another good reference I've seen that refers to Lucy is the Discovery Channel's broadcast of "Walking with Cavemen". Also, you can use that title as keywords to see what the Discovery website still has in archive. I think it's also possible to oder a video of that broadcast from the website.

According to that TV episode (I've seen it several times, because I taped it while it was broadcast ), Lucy did walk upright...Her troupe lived in a broken forest environment. To get from tree to tree, they had to spend a bit of time on the ground to reach them.

Also, they revealed from lucy's bones that her pelvis was more "cup shaped" to support her innards, in contrast to how a "non-upright" ape's pelvis is structured: Lucy's innards were supported by her pelvis, while an ape's innards are supported by their ribs.

Another point they made was that Lucy's upper thigh bones were connected to the hip joint at a slight angle, which improves an more balanced upright posture.

The article you linked mentioned the find as not being Lucy, but the broadcast I saw indicated that Lucy wasn't a mere three years old...She was fully adult, even though she only stood about as tall as a modern 5-year old child.

When the archeologists found Lucy's bones, they knew that all of the bones were from the same skeleton, because she wasn't found in a boneyard...She died alone & there weren't any "duplicates" present, such as two jaw bones, for example. More than half of her bones were recovered & they matched the general structures of other partial skeletons from that period, so they were able to extrapolate some informationby the comparison...However, Lucy was the most intact single find ever discovered.

[edit on 22-9-2006 by MidnightDStroyer]

Walking with Cavemen is a great show, I recently bought a DVD package that included that and other shows like "The real eve", which deals with modern humans dating back to around 200k years.

MidnightDStroyer, good point about the pelvis....I never really read anything on that before, but after a google search there seems to be allot on it. Interesting

The article you linked mentioned the find as not being Lucy...

The article just says that the find is of a 3-year old child but the same type of hominid or species as Lucy, Australopithecus afarensis. And the new find is about 100-200K older than Lucy.

[edit on 22/9/2006 by SportyMB]

As far as the evolutionary development of the skull goes, one thing that biologists look for is the sloping forehead, especially on a speciman as young as the one they found; Baby apes are born with high foreheads, just like humans. The ape's forehead starts sloping as it gets older...I'm not sure at what age or what rate the ape's forehead starts sloping though.

Of course, it all depends on how much of the skull was found...