November
24
/ 2021
A team of scientists has analyzed a set of two-million-year-old so-called ‘missing link’ fossils. Unlike anything presented before, their new study shows how the ancient human relative, Australopithecus sediba, 'walked like a human, but climbed like an ape'. Is this the missing link Darwin dreamed of? A collection of two-million-year-old fossil vertebrae from an early human relative, discovered in Africa, has finally put to bed a long outstanding anthropological debate. The argument had always been whether Australopithecus sediba could both walk and climb trees, or not. Now, a new paper shows that this early hominin was like a cat, being a master of both vertical and horizontal planes. The researchers have demonstrated how A. sediba used its upper limbs to
