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Australopithecus sediba: a human by accident
Australopithecus sediba: a human by accident  ·  1
theadvancedapes  ·  4447 days ago
theadvancedapes.com  ·  #thehumancondition

Recently published research sheds more light on Australopithecus sediba; a fascinating member of the human family. It suggests that they belonged to a lineage very distinct from our own and that their human-like traits are therefore the product of convergant evolution.

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Torbjorn_Larsson  ·  4433 days ago  ·  link  ·  

"Since the first members of Homo lived 2.3 million years ago (Aiello and Wells, 2002), Au. sediba obviously couldn't have been their ancestor ... This is the final nail in the coffin of the idea that Au. sediba was the ancestor of modern humans".

Quite the opposite, in fact. The mosaic with human traits shows conclusively that no single trait is enough to proclaim whether a fossil is human or not. (And I've seen anthropologists note this. Me, I'm interested in astrobiology.) And that is precisely the case with the single Homo-like maxilla from, arguably as well as far as I know, 2.3 Ma bp, which only Homo-like trait is its parabolic curvature.

So what has happened, everything else alike, is that these new finds have opened up the case for Au. sediba as an ancestor of modern humans. And this is what seems to be the reception among anthropologists, nothing conclusive either way but a more open field.

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