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Like Lucy?

The as yet unnamed fossil creature, found in February at a new site called Mille in the Afar region of Ethiopia, looks to be even older than Lucy.


Could the skeleton be even older than Lucy?
The remains include a complete tibia from the lower part of the leg, parts of the thighbone or femur, ribs, vertebrae, a collarbone, pelvis and a complete shoulder blade.

"The discovery of 12 early hominid fossil specimens estimated to be between 3.8 and 4 million years old will be important in terms of understanding the early phases of human evolution before Lucy," Yohannes Haile Selassie told a news conference.

Researchers are often happy to find isolated bones belonging to human ancestors of this age, so to find a partial skeleton is exceptional.

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Scientists say the bones prove the skeleton walked upright

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Originally posted by furshur

Very cool indeed. I couldn't help but notice the caption to the picture:

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Scientists say the bones prove the skeleton walked upright

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AiG will claim that it's an ape drowned in the Flood.

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Hominid Fever

Yet another alleged early human ancestor unearthed

by guest columnist Peter Line, Ph.D.

11 March 2005

It seems these days that there are precious few ordinary human or ape fossils unearthed, rather they all have to be a missing link between the two. The latest contender for ‘apeman' fame, this time as the ‘world's oldest early human skeleton' or ‘oldest walking hominid',1 consists of bones from a site in the northeastern Afar region of Ethiopia, ‘dated' at between 3.8 to 4 million years ago. The remains include a complete tibia and shoulder blade, as well as parts of a femur, ribs, vertebrae, collarbone and pelvis, as well as an ankle bone. The fossil remains of up to 11 other individuals are also reported to have been found. As the finds have not been published in a journal, nor been reviewed by outside scientists, it is difficult to make an assessment of the find at this stage, except what can be interpreted from a few quotes from ‘hominid' fossil experts released to the media.

It is stated that ‘Scientists are yet to classify the new find, which they believe falls between A. ramidus and A. afarensis. The fossils would help “join the dots” between the two hominids, said Yohannes Haile-Selassie, an Ethiopian scientist and curator at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History as well as a co-leader of the discovery team'.2 Falling between Australopithecus ramidus and Australopithecus afarensis (e.g. ‘Lucy') hardly boosts its status as a missing link hominid. According to Peter Andrews, of London's Natural History Museum, the thin enamel on the teeth of ramidus ‘is more of what you'd expect from a fossil chimp', and the features of an upper arm bone ‘suggests knuckle-walking, chimp-style'.3 Even the team that discovered ramidus admits that the specimen ‘shows a host of characters usually associated with modern apes'.4

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