Features

Fossils Reveal Early Ancestors

David Scharfenberg
Friday June 13, 2003

UC Berkeley paleoanthropologist Tim White and a team of researchers reported this week that the fossils they found in eastern Ethiopia in 1997 are the oldest known remains of near-modern humans. 

The discovery of three 160,000-year-old skulls, reported in the June 12 edition of the journal Nature, fills a major gap in the fossil record between pre-human ancestors, known as Homo erectus, and modern humans, or Homo sapiens.  

It also bolsters the theory that human beings originated in Africa and spread throughout the world. The European Neanderthal, this argument holds, is a relatively insignificant cousin who went extinct before significantly impacting human development.  

“These fossils show that near-humans had evolved in Africa long before the European Neanderthals disappeared,” said UC Berkeley biologist F. Clark Howell, who served on the research team, in an article on the university’s Web site. “They thereby demonstrate conclusively that there was never a Neanderthal stage in human evolution.” 

The team discovered the Ethiopian site on Nov. 16, 1997, near the village of Herto. White first noticed stone tools and the fossil skull of a butchered hippopotamus. 

“These were people using a sophisticated stone technology,” White said, in the Web article. “Using chipped hand axes and other stone tools, they were butchering carcasses of large mammals like hippos and buffalo.” 

Researchers returned to the site 11 days later and discovered the most complete of the two adult skulls the team would find. The team also unearthed a child’s skull and fragments of seven other skulls. 

An artist’s rendering of how one of the adults may have appeared is strikingly similar to the modern human. 

“We can now see what our direct ancestors looked like,” said White. 

 

—David Scharfenberg