Cape Town — Three
new research papers have brought evidence that human evolution was a less
linear process than previously theorised, according to Gizmodo's George Dvorsky.
They also suggest evidence of "sister-species", relating to some
ancient human species that partially contributed to the genetic makeup of
modern humans.
The First Study
The first paper
published by Nature and co-authored by Rainer Grün and Chris Stringer, from
Griffith University in Australia and the Natural History Museum in London
respectively, studied the Broken Hill skull. Discovered in a cave in Kabwe,
Zambia in 1921 by Swiss miner Tom Zwiglaar, the study estimated the fossil to
be 299,000 years old, 200,000 years less than the previous projection.
According to the Smithsonian Institution, the skull is one of the oldest known
to have tooth cavities. It also shows features similar to Homo erectus like
large brow ridges and a bulge at the rear of the skull.
Several months after its initial discovery,
the skull was examined by paleontologist Arthur Smith Woodward and classified
as that of a new species, Homo rhodesiensis. It was later designated Homo
heidelbergensis, now a synonym for the archaic human subspecies -
H.heidelbergensis/rhodesiensis - that lived between 700,000 to 300,000 years
ago, according to research by Italian paleontologist
Giorgio Manzi |||READ MORE ….