Rethinking Our Roots
Seems like just yesterday I was making my way from Westwood to Berkeley to visit my dear friend Susan Antón and attend the UCLA-Cal football game. But that was actually 1982. Karl Dorrell was a freshman wide receiver for the Bruins, not the head coach. And Susan is today thinking about weightier matters as reported here by Reuters:
An ancient skull and upper jawbone from two early branches of the human family tree - Homo erectus and Homo habilis - suggest the early human ancestors may have lived close together for half a million years, researchers say.
The fossils, discovered in eastern Africa, challenge the understanding that humans evolved one after another like a line of dominoes, from ancient Homo habilis to Homo erectus and eventually to Homo sapiens, or modern people.
“There has been a view that has suggested habilis very slowly evolved into erectus,” Susan Anton said, a professor of anthropology at New York University.
“Now we have the two cohabitating, so that can no longer be the case.”
The research, published in the journal Nature, was conducted by nine scientists including Professor Anton, paleontologist Meave Leakey and her daughter Louise Leakey, both explorers in residence at the National Geographic Society and Professor Fred Spoor of University College London.
