Dizzying New Evidence In Human Evolution Provokes Debates
From new discoveries in human evolution in South Africa and California emerge fierce and welcome scientific debates, says anthropologist Barbara J. King.
On Tuesday, paleoanthropologists led by Paul Dirks at James Cook University revealed in the journal eLife that Homo naledi, a small-brained hominin found in South Africa, lived — and may have cared for their dead in careful, intentional ways — as recently as 236,000 years ago.
This was, to put it mildly, a surprise.shows an intriguing mix of characteristics — a small brain, curved fingers (apparently an adaptation related to tree-climbing) and certain primitive-looking joints but more modern-looking teeth, hands (except for the finger curvature), legs, and feet. The suspicion, since the fossils were first discovered by Lee Berger of the University of Witwatersrand and his team), was that they were perhaps as old as two million years.
