Is Karabo the ancestor of Homo Erectus?

[John ''True Grit'' Wayne]

Smile from 2m years ago: Revealed, the face of the 'missing link' between ape and man

• Paleo-artist bases painting on the well-preserved skeleton of a boy
• Karabo is probably our earliest ancestor

A curious smile playing on his face, the eyes and mouth are unmistakably human while the cheekbones and jutting brow say wild animal.
Meet Karabo, probably our earliest ancestor and the ‘missing link’ between man and ape – ‘seen’ for the first time thanks to this incredible portrait.
Created by paleo-artist John Gurche, it is based on the remarkably well-preserved skeleton of a boy aged around 13, found in a cave in South Africa.

Link to our past: The portrait of Karabo is a 'forensic reconstruction' of the teenage male






Human-like: Skeletal hand of the female found with Karabo (left). The skull of Australopithecus sediba (right) - the animal stood 4ft 4in and lived nearly two million years ago


Karabo – which means ‘the answer’ and is somewhat more catchy than his official name of Australopithecus sediba – stood 4ft 4in and lived nearly two million years ago.
When he was discovered in 2008, the greatest shock for researchers was his human-like hand.



Lee Berger, professor of evolutionary biology at Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg, said: ‘We’ve never seen that before.
‘It really is undeniable when you lay it in your hand that it’s not a chimp. It looks like a hand capable of making tools. He shares more with humans than anything else ever discovered but is still so primitive and that’s exciting.’

Perfectly preserved: Karabo's skull was discovered in South Africa in 2008



Just like us: Karabo and his species walked upright on two legs. Their small teeth may indicate they had found ways to process food using implements or even by cooking


The first bone fragment of Karabo was found by Professor Berger’s nine-year-old son near his father’s dig site.
The portrait was released as the skeleton – and the incomplete skeleton of a woman in her 30s found with him, possibly his mother – went on display at the Natural History Museum in London.
Professor Berger said the picture was a ‘forensic reconstruction’ of how the boy would have looked, made possible because his skull was found intact.
He said: ‘That is probably him. Normally with early human fossils, they are in such lousy condition, but here the anatomy is pretty much fixed. I think it’s the most accurate that’s ever been done.
‘It’s a more human-like nose than we have seen before, he’s just wrinkling it because he’s smiling, chimps can’t smile.’
The only guesswork involved the pattern of hair loss and the precise skin tone.
But even these mysteries could soon be solved as Professor Berger’s team believe they have found on Karabo a sample of the protein keratin, which could lead to an analysis of his DNA.
Karabo and his species walked upright on two legs. Their small teeth may indicate they had found ways to process food using implements or even by cooking.
Studies in September hailed him as the best candidate for being a direct ancestor of homo erectus, the earliest modern human.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencete...#ixzz1eQSNcaNB

[don_Durandal]

I think this belongs more in the Athenaeum than in here, since it’s a scientific discovery (although the first specimen of Australopithecus Sediba was found in 2008, so it's not exactly news).

Of course it’s an article written for laymen. This species is not quite the transitional form between man and ape, but between Homo and Australopithecus. “Ape” is a rather vague term, since depending on how you use it can either englobe all hominoids (including humans and australopithecus) or be used as a colloquial term for tail-less non-human monkeys (where does the Australopithecus genus fit then?).


That being said the thread could have done without such a provocative title. That the Earth and universe are way older than what is written in the bible has been known with certainty for over a century now.
Whether gods exist or not can’t be proven or disproven by science though. The supernatural doesn’t produce empirical data, can’t be tested, can’t be reproduced and is not falsifiable. It fails on all requirements of the scientific method, and as such falls outside the scope of science. The supernatural (gods, Santa Claus, fairies, leprechauns, etc…) is irrelevant to science.


That being said there are plenty of religious people who have no problem fitting religion and science together (including evolution). Bible literalism is thankfully limited to an undereducated fanatical minority.

[Erebus Pasha]

Changed Thread title and moved to Athenaeum. Deleted all off-topic posts.

[LSJ]

What's with people and "missing links"? Evolution occurs over millions of years, with every offspring being different in some way. Humans didn't go from ape to ape-man to man. It is a long, sliding scale. Every individual down a specific branch of a family tree is a missing link.

[Sphere]

What's with people and "missing links"? Evolution occurs over millions of years, with every offspring being different in some way. Humans didn't go from ape to ape-man to man. It is a long, sliding scale. Every individual down a specific branch of a family tree is a missing link.

It's a hold over anti-evolution term from the era of Darwin and Huxely. It is flawed to begin with because there is no real need for a species that is half-chimp/gorilla half human in the same way as you wouldn't need a cousin to be half you and half your mutal grandfather to have a valid family tree (both you and your cousin could look very different from your grandfather and still be decended from him.) But of course since Darwin and Huxely's time we have discovered the skeleton of dozens of such Homo Sapien ancestors, all of which fit quite well with the theory of human evolution.

[don_Durandal]

It's quite ironic that creationist rhetoric hasn't evolved that much since On the Origin of Species has been published.

They keep advancing the same discredited arguments over and over.

[John I Tzimisces]

It's quite ironic that creationist rhetoric hasn't evolved that much since On the Origin of Species has been published.

They keep advancing the same discredited arguments over and over.

If anything it's just the media liking the term "missing link" out of their desire to sensationalize everything. Proponents of creationism tend to demand proof for so-called "transitional fossils", and they'll plainly never be satisfied unless we find the bones of every human ancestor who ever lived and breathed.

[.L.]

"Home Erectus." Teehee.

[Sir Winston Churchill]

Tom Cruise you're never going to convince the religious types that they came from apes. As true as it is, they feel it is below them.

I would take this to the Athenaeum where this will be properly appreciated.