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Could be OT for this thread but need to think about it.



Pioneer Op-Ed.



LINK

Hominid to humanOctober 25, 2010 8:24:03 PM



The Pioneer Edit Desk



New research debunks old theories



Human evolution has been one of the enduring mysteries of our time, and the more it is sought to be understood with the help of cutting edge technology and advanced research, the further surprises it throws up, sometimes forcing us to rewrite earlier assumptions. For instance, we have grown up believing that more the researchers travel backwards in time, the greater confirmatory evidence they will get of our linkage with chimpanzees. Fifteen years ago, scientists were taken back 4.4 million years when they encountered in Ethiopia the fossils of a female hominid, soon named Ardipithecus Ramidus. This female hominid was not only at least one million years older than the famous Lucy skeleton whose discovery had enthralled the world’s scientific community for years, it also triggered a new thought process that, perhaps, Ramidus was the direct launch pad for the present day human evolution. According to a report published in a recent issue of the National Geographic, while this veteran hominid had some very primitive traits found in monkeys and some extinct species of apes, she also bore characteristics like a big toe and a short and broad upper pelvis that helps humans to walk erect — unique to our own hominid lineage. Anatomists and others who have been studying her are also excited by another aspect — which confounds our long-held belief of clearly demarcated evolutionary stages — and it is that Ramidus could be that rare hominid who was caught midway, as it were, while evolving to another level. Take just two examples: If its upper pelvis was human-like, its lower pelvis bore all the characteristics of a monkey, and the fingers and palm of its hands were so built that they might have been used both for clambering on trees like monkeys do and walk upright on the ground like present day humans do. The National Geographic report points out that if Ramidus’s discoverers are right, it would mean that our ancestors neither knuckle-walked nor were they chimps. Of course, the final verdict is yet to come. In fact, some experts quoted in the National Geographic report have wondered if Ardipithecus Ramidus was indeed a hominid, and if so, was it bipedal? Because if it were not, several of the novel theories that are emerging of our evolution following the Ramidus discovery would crash.



But what remains uncontested is that barely 200,000 years after Ardipithecus Ramidus made her baffling appearance, the fully bipedal Lucy arrived. She represented the Australopithecus genus, and every hominid that followed her stuck to bipedalism, making it easier for researchers to trace back our evolution. But simply because Lucy came later, it does not automatically follow that her Australopithecus genus evolved from Ardipithecus Ramidus. So, is this wonderful Ramidus woman the last common ancestor we share with the chimpanzee? That’s possible. It’s equally possible that there was someone else as fascinating as Ardipithicus Ramidus waiting to be discovered. For the moment, we can only consider with amazement the fascinating possibilities of our evolution through the ages.

To me Ramidus represents the historical memory of vanaras that is passed on to us in the Ramayana. Its the half monkey, half man that is so vividly described.



Watch out for future 3-D model reconstructions of Ramidus on Discovery and BBC. Anyone recall the Humanzee episode on Discovery channel.