Evidence of New Human Species Found in Philippines
In a handful of fossilized teeth and bones, scientists say they’ve found evidence of a previously unknown human species that lived in what is now the Philippines about 50,000 years ago. The discovery deepens the mystery of an era when the world was a melting pot of many different human kinds on the move.
Small-jawed with dainty teeth, able to walk upright but with feet still shaped to climb, these island creatures were a mix-and-match patchwork of primitive and advanced features in a unique variation of the human form, the scientists reported Wednesday in the journal Nature.
“Evolution creates mosaics of traits like this,” said anthropologist Matt Tocheri at Canada’s Lakehead University and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History Human Origins Program in Washington, D.C., who wasn’t involved in the project. The report makes “a good case that this is something new that we have not seen before,” he said.
The announcement of a new species brings a region of the Pacific once considered a backwater of evolution into the mainstream of early human development, several anthropologists who study human origins said.
Many specialists in human fossils believe that a half dozen or so species of hominins, as closely related human species are called, may have co-existed around the world between 50,000 and 250,000 years ago. Several intermingled with our direct ancestors, bearing children together and leaving a legacy of hereditary traits that affect our health and well-being today, recent studies of ancient DNA reveal.
Full story at site.
In a handful of fossilized teeth and bones, scientists say they’ve found evidence of a previously unknown human species that lived in what is now the Philippines about 50,000 years ago. The discovery deepens the mystery of an era when the world was a melting pot of many different human kinds on the move.
Small-jawed with dainty teeth, able to walk upright but with feet still shaped to climb, these island creatures were a mix-and-match patchwork of primitive and advanced features in a unique variation of the human form, the scientists reported Wednesday in the journal Nature.
“Evolution creates mosaics of traits like this,” said anthropologist Matt Tocheri at Canada’s Lakehead University and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History Human Origins Program in Washington, D.C., who wasn’t involved in the project. The report makes “a good case that this is something new that we have not seen before,” he said.
The announcement of a new species brings a region of the Pacific once considered a backwater of evolution into the mainstream of early human development, several anthropologists who study human origins said.
Many specialists in human fossils believe that a half dozen or so species of hominins, as closely related human species are called, may have co-existed around the world between 50,000 and 250,000 years ago. Several intermingled with our direct ancestors, bearing children together and leaving a legacy of hereditary traits that affect our health and well-being today, recent studies of ancient DNA reveal.
Full story at site.
