Anthropology, Missing Link | featured news

An analysis of 2 million-year-old bones found in South Africa offers the most powerful case so far in identifying the transitional figure that came before modern humans - findings some are calling a potential game-changer in understanding evolution....

A shrunken brain may potentially lie inside the fossil skull of a newfound candidate for the immediate ancestor to the human lineage, researchers now reveal. This new species, dubbed Australopithecus sediba, was accidentally discovered in South Africa by the 9-year-old son of a scientist. Two members of this hominid were introduced to the world last week — a juvenile male and an adult female, who might have known each other in life and who could have met their demise by falling into the remains of the cave where they were discovered.

A fossil skeleton of a child discovered in a cave system known as the Cradle of Humankind may represent a previously unknown stage in the evolution of man, The (London) Sunday Times reported. The skeleton, which is almost complete despite being two million years old, is believed to belong to one of the hominid groups that includes humans.

A publicity blitz called the discovery of Ida "the link" that would reveal the earliest evolutionary roots of monkeys, apes and humans. In fact,it's as far removed from the monkey-ape-human ancestry as a primate could be.