Everything Science Forum

Well-preserved remains of a three-year-old girl of the species Australopithecus afarensis (http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=scienceNews&storyID=2006-09-20T191529Z_01_L20291595_RTRUKOC_0_US-ETHIOPIA-FOSSIL.xml&WTmodLoc=NewsArt-L3-Science+NewsNews-3)

LONDON (By Patricia Reaney, Reuters) - A 3.3 million-year-old skeleton of the earliest child ever found shows the ancient ancestor of modern humans walked upright but may also have climbed trees, scientists said on Wednesday.

They found the well-preserved remains of a three-year-old girl of the species Australopithecus afarensis -- which includes the fossil skeleton known as "Lucy" -- in the Dikika area of Ethiopia, 400 kms northeast of the capital Addis Ababa.

"It represents the earliest and most complete partial skeleton of a child ever found in the history of paeleoanthropology," said Dr Zeresenay Alemseged, of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.


The skull, torso and upper and lower limbs, including the hand, show both human and ape-like features. The state of the ancient bones suggest she was buried in a flood which may also have caused her death.

The remains provide the first evidence of what babies of early human ancestors looked like. The nearly complete skeleton will also provide information about the child's height and structure.

"This child will help us understand a lot about the species to which it belongs," said Alemseged, leader of the international team of scientists who reported the findings in the journal Nature.

"The lower part of the body, which includes the foot, the shin bone and the thigh bone clearly shows us that this species was an upright walking creature," he told Reuters.

A number of phrases in that article insinuate that A. afarensis was a human ancestor.  The hypothesis that the homo lineage is descended from australopithicenes was overturned just a few years ago. 

While the australopithicenes were definitely an interesting family of species, I think public articles about them need to reflect the fact that science does not currently include them in the direct ancestral lineage of humans -- that they fall somewhere between the humans and the chimpanzees.

That said, this is an amazing find.  I seem to recall when "Lucy" was first discovered (and assumed to be an ancestor), it was thought that the branch of evolution was caused by australopithicenes venturing out into the savannah -- which would indicate a "knuckle-walking" bone structure rather than a "tree-swinging" bone structure.