A “Sista” Moment

First, I love my daughter and she is as quick witted as I am….but when it comes to our ongoing argument on the Neds/Cros….she is wrong!

A little background …..I say that the Neds are a separate sub species and my daughter says they are the natural progression between Neds and Cros…….that is a short version of the debate……I have found some more evidence for her to consider…….

(Newser) – Newly discovered bits of “foreign DNA” in modern Africans indicate that a mysterious “sister species” may have walked the earth with Neanderthals and humans, according to scientists. The DNA doesn’t resemble DNA from any modern-day humans, nor from Neanderthals, whose DNA sometimes shows up in modern-day Europeans. “We’re calling this a Neanderthal sibling species in Africa,” said Joshua Akey of the University of Washington. He believes human interbreeding occurred with the mystery species 20,000 to 50,000 years ago when Neanderthals were waning in Europe, and modern humans were beginning to spread out from Africa, reports the Washington Post.

So modern man began ranging out of Africa about 50,000 years ago and the Neds were waning in Europe…to my mind they are separate…..if modern man has no similar DNA then how can the Neds be a natural progression of the evolution of man?  (This is my comment on the findings)

A skull with unusual features found in Nigeria could be a remnant from the vanished species, notes the Post. Many scientists are not surprised that another species—and even others—existed and died out in the shadow of us. But others are skeptical, particularly because of the dearth of fossil and archaeological evidence. Stanford paleoanthropologist Richard Klein told the New York Times that it’s irresponsible for geneticists to publish findings on the origin of humans without trying to reconcile them with fossil and archeological evidence.

But I still see NO evidence that the Neds made to long trip from Africa around the Mediterranean and then into Southern Europe….I am still convinced that there a two separate species……what can I say…..the DEBATE GOES ON!

Show Us Your Teeth

As I my readers know my daughter and I have a difference of opinion on the Cros and Neds…….and we have a good argument almost every time it is brought up……she was a forensic anthropology major in college way before it became popular and she thinks she has it all over the old man…..HA!

I found another research paper that will probably start another row with her……first, she thinks that man began walking upright to hunt and I say it was basically to observe what was happening while they made their way to the next tree………

In a piece written by Ann Gibbons for the HufPo………..

Talk about a high-fiber diet: the newest member of the human family, Australopithecus sediba, ate enough bark, leaves, and fruit that its appetite was more like that of a chimpanzee’s than a human’s. That is the conclusion of a new study, in which an international team of researchers used state-of-the-art methods to analyze the diet of two australopithecines that fell into a death pit in Malapa, South Africa, almost 2 million years ago.

The creatures’ preference for foraging in the forest surprised researchers, who thought that by this time in human evolution, most members of the human family would be eating a broader range of foods from different habitats, such as noshing on savanna grasses and tubers—or the animals that fed on them. Although our lineage had long since split from chimpanzees, Au. sediba‘s “diet looks as much like a chimp’s or a giraffe’s than anything else,” says co-author Peter Ungar, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.

Ever since the discovery of the remarkably well-preserved partial skeletons of a female and juvenile male in 2008, researchers have wondered where Au. sediba fits in the human family tree—and if members of this species acted more like early members of our genus Homo or Australopithecus, which were both living in Africa at this time. Although classified as an australopithecine, the creatures were partly ape, with a tiny brain, long arms, a chimp-sized body, and a narrow birth canal. But they also were part human, with short fingers, a long thumb used for precision gripping, and a brain that had begun to reorganize more like a human’s, prompting some to think they may be a candidate ancestor of our genus. So any new window on their behavior could help researchers understand what they were like “as animals that were once alive,” says Ungar. “We thought, let’s try to get at their diets to see what they ate and what type of habitat they lived in.”

the Au. sediba individuals ate more C₃ plants than any other hominin tested. The carbon in its diet was “unusual for hominins,” and “more typical of giraffes.” Among hominins tested, its diet most closely resembled that of Ardipithecus ramidus, a more primitive hominin that lived 4.4 million years ago in Ethiopia. Ungar also examined the patterns of microscopic wear, or microwear, on the teeth and found that Au. sediba ate harder foods similar to those Au. robustus and H. erectus ate, but not as soft as food typically consumed by Au. africanus, another South African species that some researchers thought was closely related to Au. sediba

It seems that early man may have been more in common with the blue butted baboon than some cute ape woofing down a banana………this should start a whole new dialog with my daughter….damn I love this stuff!