Registered: Sep 2000
Location: Playa d'en London
Posts: 9855

Flat-Faced man discovered in Kenya

from the bbc:

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Scientists have unearthed the remains of what they say is yet another new hominid, or human-like creature, in Kenya.
The discovery by Meave Leakey, of the National Museums of Kenya, and colleagues threatens to blur still further the already murky picture of man's evolution.

The find, made at Lomekwi on the western shore of Lake Turkana, includes the battered but almost complete skull and face of the hominid. The fossils were dug up from deposits which have been reliably dated to between 3.2 and 3.5 million years ago.

Leakey and her fellow researchers have called the creature Kenyanthropus platyops - the Flat-Faced Man of Kenya - and claim in the journal Nature that it represents an entirely new branch on our family tree.

Scientists are struggling to sort the relationships between their diverse collection of hominids (species of bipeds that are more closely related to humans than to apes).

Until fairly recently, there were only three known groups. Two of these, Homo (the genus from which modern man eventually evolved) and Paranthropus, were presumed to have descended from an early species in the third group, or genus, called Australopethicus; the most likely candidate being A. afarensis, the famous 3.2-million-year-old Lucy specimen unearthed in 1974.

But the picture has since been complicated, not least by the French discovery last year of a hominid now called Orrorin tugenensis.

This creature, which could represent an entirely new group of hominids, is claimed to be the oldest human-like creature known to science, taking the our lineage back to around six million years ago.

full story and related articles:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sc...000/1234006.stm

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I still think there was alien intervention at some point.

"the earth is a farm. we are someone elses property" - charles fort.

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Registered: Aug 2000
Location: Myrtle Beach, SC
Posts: 15181

Neato.

The guy who found Lucy teaches here at ASU.

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Groovin' in self-pity!
Graphic Cheeseworks.

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Registered: Oct 2000
Location: Illinois
Posts: 1217

Are they sure it wasn't just some prehistoric dude who got hit in the face with a prehistoric shovel by a prehistoric bully and left to die in a prehistoric puddle?

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†Insanity† Insanity as a religion
E=Insane² Insanity as a science

Which is right? (Just add mushrooms)

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Registered: Feb 2001
Location: Chicago, IL
Posts: 2149

I'm the guy who found Lucy.

Yes, you can love me. It's okay.

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Live In Freedom

In retrospect, I probably should have taken the vanilla icecream. But the chocolate looked far too tempting. Little did I know at the time, it was actually little children all mushed up into a fine icey paste. Needless to say, I didn't sleep well that night, and neither did those kiddies. Well, I didn't stand for such a crime!! NO WAY. I marched back in that store and demamded an explanation. And there is was. Double chocolate icecream. Sitting there, waiting to be ingested. Oh, the taste. Oh the pure orgasmic feeling when you consume the delicious cream. Oh, how I love chocolate icecream.

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Registered: Oct 2000
Location: Dumbfucksville!
Posts: 12164

I Love Lucy!

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