Out Of Africa New "Human" Species?
April 9th 2010 02:07
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You can find your house from anywhere in the world using Google Earth. You can also find evidence of ancient rivers, cave openings which makes the job of scientists a little easier as they can look for clues without the need for costly reconnaissance.
Thanks to the great resource of Google Earth which guided Archaeologists to ancient caves in South Africa where they discovered the remains of two human-like skeletons has shed further light on the evolution of humans.
The skeletal remains of an ape human hybrid creatures were found at the base of what was once a network of underground caves, described by scientists as a "death trap".
The find is set to provide more controversy for the never-ending debate over the evolution of humans.
The journal Science describe the fossils of what has been called Australopithecus sediba and the environment in which they were found.
The fosselised remains of a juvenile male and adult female were found together in sediments dated between 1.95 and 1.78 million years old.
The find is significant, the scientists who used magnetic resonance and radioactive decay to determine the age of the fossil remains. The earth changes the magnetic polarity this process takes many Millennia,North becomes South and vice versa.
The magnetic changes are deposited in the sediments within the fossils at around the time of death.
"From looking at the sediments you can get an idea that the material has been washed down from a higher location," says one of the Australian researcher,Dr Andy Herries of the University of New South Wales in Sydney.
The researchers, which included Dr Lee Berger from the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa, found the fossils in a cave called Malapa in the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Area.
It is believed where the fossils were found was once the base of an underground cave system that extended tens of metres below the surface.
The entrance to the caves would have been a sink hole in the ground.
Ancient “humans” actually fell into these caves, they die, they become partly mummified and then they get redistributed into lower sections by floodwater according to Dr Herries, who was involved in dating the sediments.
"It would have been what we call a death trap."
The researchers found fossils of at least 25 animals in the cave, including large-toothed cats, a brown hyena, a wild dog, antelopes and a horse.
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