April 12, 2006

Oldest Hominid Fossils Found An international team including Tim White, of Berkeley, finds 4.1 million y.o. Au. anamensis fossils.

Tim White was part of the team that discovered Lucy in Ethiopia (scroll down page, the find was in 1974). I thought all you archeo/paleo/geekmonkeys might find this as cool and exciting as I do!

posted by Medusa 18 years ago
  • The crazy part was, the skeleton was behind the wheel of a giant fossilized Ford Crown Victoria, and lodged firmly into the desicated remains of what appears to be an ancient farmer's market.
  • I love me some old hominin bones. 'Cause apparently we're hominins now, not hominids. DNA evidence says that chimps and gorillas are hominids, too. So now we have to say "hominin" to mean what "hominid" used to mean. Go figure. But this is fun. The holes in the fossil record aren't empty forever. It's so cool that a thigh bone and a tooth mean as much as they do. Such a small amount of bone, but enough to say so much about our origins!
  • Suck it, fundies.
  • The crazy part was, the skeleton was behind the wheel of a giant fossilized Ford Crown Victoria... Mandatory re-licensing tests for any driver over a million years old: How many more innocent hominins must die before we get it?
  • I say forget the sub-family crap. We are hominids and hominins. homininae is a sub-family, not a replacement of hominidae (We kicked out the Pongos!). Anyway, I think taxonomy gets ridiculous at a certain point. The DNA percentage as a rule for splitting thing is a really weak argument considering almost two thirds of our genome is synonomous with a fruit fly. It may offer some help in the identification of temporal markers, but pretty soon if the splitters have their day there will be a sub-infero-tribe called Cadillac emptori. Too many splitters out there trying to justify weak PhD research.
  • Lumping is more fun than splitting, anyway.
  • There's one big flaw in your theory, Mister Scientist.
  • MonkeyFilter: Almost two thirds of our genome is synonomous with a fruit fly. Whoot!! The crazy part was, the skeleton was behind the wheel of a giant fossilized Ford Crown Victoria, and lodged firmly into the desicated remains of what appears to be an ancient farmer's market. GACK! Fes, you dog, you owe me a new keyboard! *GramMa finds keys to the Edsel, puts on hat, goes careening down the driveway
  • *buzzes furiously: hominin, homonym, hominy, hummininnny, human ninny*
  • *honeyman*
  • *honey I shrunk the hominidae*
  • Hum, a NIMH. Those rats are getting out of hand.
  • Just to clear something up: Tim White wasn't a part of the Lucy discovery. He worked with Richard Leakey in Koobi Fora and Mary Leakey at Laetoli. He discovered Australopithecus garhi (2.5 mya) and Ardipithecus ramidus (4.4 mya). I think White did some analysis on Turkana Boy, however. You may be thinking of PhD candidate Tom Gray who worked with Johansen and accompanied him on the first discovery of Lucy.
  • ah! very interesting. It would appear that you are correct. I was taught, in my undergrad physical anthro class at Rutgers, that Tim White had been part of the team (which is why I knew his name already, altho I had never heard of Tom Gray) however, according to this site Tim White worked with D.Johansen on the classification of the skeleton, but was not present on the dig.
  • I can understand that. They're a small, core group, by all mentions; those rift valley diggers! Looks like the glory days of archaeology are coming to a head. Hopefully, new finds like this will keep the interest in research moolah alive. Nice link, by the by!
  • thanks! I was primarily excited to hear about this find because, from what I understand, for quite a while in the 80s, and some o' the 90s, the gubmint of Ethiopia was not allowing foreign researchers in. this had been a cause of pretty severe frustration amongst these archaeology types, who just wanted to go in there and find some old bones, which I am glad to hear they are doing again :D
  • Wasn't the Ethiopian government imposing strict sanctions against female and Jewish team researchers and that was why the team decided not to return after some heavy deliberation? I may be thinking about somewhere else?
  • you seem to know more in-detail than I do, IC, but I may have to go do a little research now....
  • Seem is the key word there, I think, Medusa. I really don't know for certain, but I remember it as if it were Johansen's team that struck that problem with Islamic law. I think that's why Johansen had the time to scoop the Laetoli find by Mary Leakey, compare the data and give Aus. afarensis the name from the Afar valley rather than Laetoli (in a speech moments precluding Leakey's own now defunct speech), pissing her off to no end, I'm sure. I don't remember it exactly, tho'.
  • MonkeyFilter: Suck it, fundies. MonkeyFilter: Those rats are getting out of hand.