RE: Biggest misconceptions of human evolution

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RE: Biggest misconceptions of human evolution

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edwoodt1 (42)in #science • 8 years ago

Man that was so awesome. I would like the pictures to have been bigger so I could actually get a good look. The new species Homo Naledi where does it fit on the family tree?

8 years ago in #science by edwoodt1 (42)

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benfink (53) 8 years ago

Thanks @edwoodt1. I totally agree on the pictures. I'm not especially graphically savvy so formatting images into this first post was a challenge. I'll make sure bigger for future posts. In the mean time, let me know if there's any particular you want to see up close and below I've embedded a higher quality of the original tree.

Re: Naledi. That's a big open question. It's so new, there's no consensus yet. JUST this week they released the dates for it: between 236,000 and 335,000 years!

Previously, only large-brained modern humans or their close relatives had been demonstrated to exist at this late time in Africa, but the fossil evidence for any hominins in subequatorial Africa was very sparse. It is now evident that a diversity of hominin lineages existed in this region, with some divergent lineages contributing DNA to living humans and at least H. naledi representing a survivor from the earliest stages of diversification within Homo...

Excerpt form new paper, Berger et al. 2017

TL;DR Woah, there were many hominins running around even super recently. We didn't evolve from this one, but it's possible that Naledi a) invented tools we thought we had, b) interbred with us, c) coexisted with the lineage that became humans, bringing potential of ecological competition or co-evolution.

I'll consider doing a post on this, as it's all breaking news.

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