mankinds missing link... found?

**Don in the North** · September 10, 2011, 02:44 AM

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/high...-1226133167039

NEW testing on prehistoric skeletons found in South Africa has found they are 2 million years old -- providing compelling evidence the discovery could be mankind's earliest known ancestor. An international research team determined the age of the primitive human remains using uranium-lead dating and analysis of the flowstone surrounding them at the excavation site.
The age of the skeletons, named Australopithecus sediba -- meaning "natural spring" in the South African language of Sotho -- puts forward a strong case for the hominids being the missing link between man and ape.
The fossils were found in 2008 at the Malapa Cave site -- in an area known as the Cradle of Humankind, west of Johannesburg -- and were brought to the world's attention last year by Professor Paul Dirks from Australia's James Cook University in Townsville and Professor Lee Berger, from the University of Witwatersrand.

Dating of the fossils by an international team including Dr Andy Herries from La Trobe University indicated Australopithecus sediba is a good candidate for being the oldest ancestor of modern man. Their work is being published this week in a series of five papers in the international journal ‘Science’.
Until now fossils dated to 1.9 million years ago, including Homo habilis and Homo rudolfensis, were considered ancestors of Homo erectus, the earliest undisputed human ancestor.
"We are able to say far more definitely that we have a lot of very good evidence that these fossils are older than Homo erectus," Dirks said.
"Last year, we got a bit of criticism from people who said we weren't certain about the age of the fossils and there was an overlap with the Homo erectus fossils. But this year, we can be far more definite."
There have now been six skeletons unearthed at the cave -- including what appears to be a family of five with a male adult, a female adult, a juvenile, a small child and a baby.

forgive me if this has already been posted, i heard this on the news yesterday morning and what caught my eye was the age.... 2,000,000 years.
that is a remarkable step up from 200,000 years (homo erectus). i wonder if they had a culture or whether this was just an isolated group of a certain mutation?

**Veliky Kaiser Theos** · September 10, 2011, 03:14 AM

Quite fascinating.

**Mangerman** · September 10, 2011, 06:57 AM

Until now fossils dated to 1.9 million years ago, including Homo habilis and Homo rudolfensis, were considered ancestors of Homo erectus, the earliest undisputed human ancestor.

Eh, the Homo Erectus being our ancestor is far from undisputed actually.

**Claudius Gothicus** · September 11, 2011, 03:55 PM

Actually latest Anthropology Theories aim at removing Erectus from the Sapiens Line.

According to this graph Erectus was another line of the Ergaster that never reached Sapiens and instead of turning west to Europe went east to Asia, and we Modern Humans are a product of Rhodesiensis.

This theory explains quite smoothly the particular existence of the Homo Floresiensis as a smaller version of the Erectus that was able to survive isolated during thousands of years.

**Phier** · September 11, 2011, 04:59 PM

Just more of a point of information. Missing link is creationist talk. They love 'missing links' because claiming there isn't enough evidence and therefore we can ignore all evidence is just how they operate in their special brand of logic.

Being we don't have a fossil of every generation from this point into the distance past, there will always be 'links' missing, which is completely irrelevant to the evolution of modern man, for whom we have plenty of evidence already.

This story is more about hype than any real advancement in human evolution. Saying 'Missing link found!' shows that it wasn't written by a anthropologist

**Legionary Jezza** · September 12, 2011, 06:53 AM

**Portuguese Rebel** · September 12, 2011, 06:31 PM

I'm a biology and geology major. During all the courses i took there wasn't a single instance where the need to find a "missing link" as popularly understood by mainstream media was presented. The "missing link" idea spawns from the 19th century when people were expecting to see a magical half-homo-sapiens half-great-ape creature. Reality, in the way of fossil records and advances on the study of how evolution works demonstrated that the issue was not that simple. We are all "missing links" (well, maybe not missing yet) of a long reproductive chain that hasn't got a stable evolutive rate.

Now the expression "missing link" is only used by creationist websites because they are still busy criticizing 19th century science (since it was at that level that their ideas were declared obsolete). It's like a trauma they have that cannot be satisfied ever. If you show them 10 intermediary forms they will ask for the "missing links" between those, and if you show them more 10 intermediaries between the originals they'll ask for the other intermediaries and so on. Basically they demand that all beings in the chain to be documented in the fossil record (but even if they were they wouldn't care because what they aren't really interested in proofs since they have their own conclusion no matter what).