PALAEOLITHIC This discovery made in Ethiopia would push the origin of humans 400,000 years …
This is a rare fossil that was discovered in Ethiopia by an international team of researchers: half a mandible with five teeth, dated 2.8 million years. This would be the oldest fossil of the genus Homo ever found, according to the work of scientists published Wednesday in the journal Science . A find that ages 400,000 years mankind. That reveals exactly this discovery about the origin of man? In paleoanthropology, caution is … Explanations.
How is this an important discovery?
The mandible, 8 inches long, was exhumed in 2013 in an excavation area called Ledi-Gararu in the Afar Region of Ethiopia. For years scientists seek in Africa, the cradle of humanity, clues to the origins of Homo lineage, the ancestor of modern man. The fossil discovered has carastéristiques which resemble -the famous Australopithecus Lucy, dating from 3, 2 million years-but especially of the genus Homo. Scientists classify the owner of the jaw in the latter species. So far, the remains of the genus Homo known only dated back to 2.4 million years. “The teeth are elongated and narrow, and premolars are symmetrical: these are characteristics of the first representatives of the genus Homo,” says Sandrine Prat, paleoanthropologist at the CNRS, interviewed by 20 Minutes . For her, the discovery “confirms that the origin of humankind in Africa, and that the aging.” However, “this does not change the paradigm basically.”
How does the mandible -it was dated?
In the Afar region, located in the valley of the Great African Rift, plate tectonics causes the rise in ancient sediments that are flush with the surface, which makes them particularly interesting searches. “It is not the fossil itself is dated, but the sediments at or mandible was found,” says Sandrine Prat. “Scientists the tuffs are dated, that is to say the volcanic outpourings of the place, through radiocarbon called argon argon on.” She said the margin of error for this dating is roughly 50 000 years .
A jaw she simply telling us about human ancestors?
For the palaeontologist Brigitte Senut, expert on the evolution of apes and humans, the results should be interpreted with caution. It also regret not yet have access to the article published by Science . Certainly, every new discovery “fills a gap in our knowledge,” but “the discovery of a half-jaw is not sufficient to rewrite the history of man.” As such, it emits more reservations. “I would like to know with what this fossil was compared, how it was dated, what is the margin of error of dating,” says the researcher. Moreover, according to her, the teeth are one indicator among others of hominid evolution. They tell us fewer things that the skeleton, which shows significant variations in the evolution of hominids, such as the transition to bipedalism. For her, the discovery of the mandible is interesting “because it mixes the characteristics of Australopithecus and Homo.” But it has nothing new …
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