Atlantica - 01.09.2007, Page 11

A T L A N T I C A 9
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Rock the Cradle
of Mankind
Forget your Cro-Magnons and Neanderthals. It’s that dynamic duo
of hominid evolution, Homo habilis and the slightly more upright,
axe-wielding Homo erectus, that have paleoanthropologists up in
arms these days.
Until now, evolutionary biologists thought that Homo erectus
evolved from Homo habilis. However, fossils recently unearthed
in Kenya have thrown a prehistoric wrench into the most widely
accepted theory of mankind’s origin. It seems a mistake has been
made somewhere along the evolutionary line—one of Darwinian
proportions.
In 2000, out in the volcanic deserts of Northern Kenya on the
shores of Lake Turkana, mother-and-daughter Meave and Louise
Leakey (following in the footsteps of their paleontologist namesakes)
finally made their contribution to the renowned Leakey name: the
discovery of a skull from the hominid Homo erectus.
Seven years later the University of Utah was finally able to
pronounce the age of the specimen using volcanic ash deposits.
According to this process the Homo erectus skull is about 1.55 million
years old.
Here’s the hitch. The skull was found within walking distance of a
1.44-million-year-old upper jaw of a Homo habilis. The ages of the
fossils indicate that the two hominid species coexisted in eastern
Africa for about half a million years, instead of one evolving from
the other.
“It is the equivalent of finding that your grandmother and great-
grandmother were sisters rather than mother-daughter,” comments
Fred Spoor, professor of evolutionary anatomy at University College
in London and co-author of a study on the apparent evolutionary
aberration.
But don’t muster your search party for Adam and Eve’s bones just
yet. While the fossils certainly complicate man’s development from
the ape, they hardly disprove the theory of evolution. So while these
evolutionary biologists may be getting a little hot under the collar,
Darwin can rest easy. That is, until someone digs him up. JM a