Fossils and molecular genetics are just some of the tools researchers have used to answer questions about the history of the human species

In 1961, geologists at the University of California at Berkeley used a new technique called potassium-argon dating to accurately place the species, whose scientific name had been changed to Paranthropus boisei, in history. According to this groundbreaking method, which involves dating the rocks surrounding the specimen, the skull was 1.75 million years old—four times as old as previously thought and 750,000 years older than the accepted time frame for all of human history.

Reconstruction: At the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology researchers reconstruct the Taung child skull using CT scanners.  philippe Plailly/look at sciences
Nutcracker man, as the skull was known, was the conclusive fossil evidence that the earliest human ancestors lived in Africa, despite the fact that they didn’t look like what scientists expected. Researchers streamed to East Africa in a fossil rush aimed at finding our earliest ancestors. Over the next few decades, a series of spectacular discoveries in East Africa pushed human origins deeper into the past.

In 1974, researchers in the Afar region of Ethiopia discovered “Lucy,” an astonishingly complete three-million-year-old A. africanus skeleton. Lucy could clearly walk upright and was considered our oldest ancestor for a time. More recently, fossil finds have pushed the date of our earliest ancestor back further, to between five million and six million years ago, and in 2002, French paleontologist Michel Brunet announced the discovery of the oldest species yet, the six- to seven-million-year-old Sahelanthropus tchadensis. Brunet found Toumai, as the oldest hominin fossil ever found has come to be known, in the Djurab Desert of northern Chad.

Beyond Fossils

In the 1960s, when potassium-argon dating was developed, paleontology began to go high-tech. For the first time, fossils older than 50,000 years could be dated. Genetic technology also came into play that decade, and today it is revolutionizing the study of human origins.

Vincent Sarich and Allan Wilson of the University of California at Berkeley were pioneers in the application of genetics to paleoanthropology in the 1960s. Their comparisons of chimpanzee and human DNA showed that the chimp lineage split from our common ancestor five million years ago. At the time, the findings caused an uproar. Anthropologists, who believed that humans and chimps diverged 15 million years ago, rejected the theory.

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9 Comments

1) It never ceases to amaze me how quickly an intentional deception and cover up by the British Museum over Piltdown man is so quickly overlooked. How good is a theory and how credible can any evidence be when forwarded by an institution willing to decieve in order to maintain its exploded theories?

2) If these fossil remains are so poor as to be easily dismissed as "an ape" or "a large gibbon or deformed human," how good can they be? A large gibbon and a deformed human are both VALIDLY offered explinations for a skull? That is amazing, since most third graders could distinguish a gibbon from a human by the skull alone. Dismissed evidence does not suddenly become valid gospel just because it no longer conflicts with FALSE evidence for an unproved theory. This is a clear evidence that the theory is driving the interpretation of the data in such a way as to be only self-serving of the theory.

Theories are like wood puddy. Valuable for filling small holes in understanding, terrible for putting under architectual stress.

You two kind of make me sick with your completely unrelated supremacist views thrown into the discussion. "Oh that guys *Insert religion here*, lets vote for him." What a load of crap.

Back to subject, there are so many holes in the theory it is hard to believe that it has become so widely accepted as fact. But then again look at our history and it's really not all that hard to believe. I doubt anyone could sit down and explain what happened, it just caught peoples imaginations and ran wild.

i'm just going to put this plain and simple, the theory of evolution has actually hard and very good empirical evidence to suggest that it is correct, it also include's more than just the work of darwin, and it is being re-tested and re-evaluated everyday by thousand's of sceintists.

and yes just like the any sceintific theory, the theory of evolution has holes is it, but that doesn't mean that because there are some holes that the hole f-ing theory should be thrown out the window.

and next time smart shit's, do some f-ing reasearch before you open your ignorant mouth's.....the THEORY OF EVOLUTION is the best theory avialable to us right now that explains how life came to be the way it is, there is nothing else that even remotly compete's with it.

Frankly, if you watch any morning TV show like Jerry Springer or the like, I'm not sure we have evolved...

All Life is created from the preexisting life.
All Life may evolve more then one way, and may exist and continue to evolve from its prolonged exposure to the elements over a period of time. Earth Life, is its Own life form. Organics are the oldest form of Earth life, proven cellularly. All living creatures need the basic essential nutrients to survive, and also are structurally similar to each and another in terms of Vital organs. Obviousness is found why a Cell; had the intellect to become what it has, through natural selection. So it continues...

Here's a Neat Theory that says the DNA Structure was Developed Helically On a Solar Wave.
-----> mypage.uniserve.com/~ghatton/lifespec.html

spartacus613 - Such foul language does not strengthen you arguement, it only reveals you emotional frustration at people arguing against your faith based belief in evolution.

I say "faith based" freely, because you obviously have no empirical evidence on evolution to share. I say this because you assert that there is "hard and very good empirical evidence" without stating or citing said evidence.

Such evidence, by the way, would indeed be important, since to be empirical, it must be observable. Hard empirical evidence would have to be observable evolution: something impossible on the timeline of evolutionary theory. It did, however, make for a humerous movie in Evolution.

So, without evidence, you believe propositions written down by others of authority whom you believe because it seems to line up with your empirical observations of the world. You then are hostile with competing viewpoints in defence of your own. That sounds like religion to me.

spartacus613 - Such foul language does not strengthen you arguement, it only reveals you emotional frustration at people arguing against your faith based belief in evolution.

I say "faith based" freely, because you obviously have no empirical evidence on evolution to share. I say this because you assert that there is "hard and very good empirical evidence" without stating or citing said evidence.

Such evidence, by the way, would indeed be important, since to be empirical, it must be observable. Hard empirical evidence would have to be observable evolution: something impossible on the timeline of evolutionary theory. It did, however, make for a humerous movie in Evolution.

So, without evidence, you believe propositions written down by others of authority whom you believe because it seems to line up with your empirical observations of the world. You then are hostile with competing viewpoints in defence of your own. That sounds like religion to me.

Without doing your homework on how Evolution is In Fact Probable, Through the Mathematical Trial And Error of Life vs. Endless Mixture of Elements, then you have no great argument to say that an all wise and powerful creator and destructor; other then Man, Created Life at All.

If all Life is not Related, All Life would be Completely Different. We would not have Races, or Species, because Each Individual Creature would be Its own unique thing ( Which, it is Because all is of Identical Uniqueness)

Life would not have Eyes, Ears, Mouths, digestive tracts, skin or other flesh Similar to each other if they were not Related, Let Alone be Cellularly Identical. Plants would NOT have a Nucleus, or Vacuoles or MOST importantly, DNA.

Don't be so arrogant to the obviousness of nature just because it effects the Mass majority of people. Theres a Reason for Everything, so just because you do not understand, or even care about that reasoning does not mean you can preach Fallacy's about superstitious beings doing it.

Besides, we all know the only reason religion exists is because Aneph aka Joseph aka Jesus, was born from his Virgin Mother (Who contained an Ancient Trait of being A-Sexual, and gave birth to herself, but out came the evolution of a boy) and every corner of the planet heard about it. Of Course thats only something a God could do..When you cant explain science ...



June 2013: American Energy Independence

Five amazing, clean technologies that will set us free, in this month's energy-focused issue. Also: how to build a better bomb detector, the robotic toys that are raising your children, a human catapult, the world's smallest arcade, and much more.


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