Fossil Might Give Evidence for Past

    One way scientists and historians find out about the past is throughout fossils, these have been discovered throughout our whole lives. Have you ever wondered where we came from ? How we where made? If our ancestors had something different and what we have from them? In 2008 2 fossils had been discovered who nobody took any notice of until about a year ago when they come in suspicion. After examination scientists have an estimate the fossils go up to about 2,000,000 years ago, these may give us clues about the ancestors and if our predictions of how we evolved are correct, close or totally off. One thing you should know right away, there is a special name for our ancestor such as these, Australopithecus sediba, these specific ones where discovered in South Africa. The studies demonstrate that the fossils come from a teenage boy and a fully grown approximately 30 year old female. By examining the fossils scientist think they have evidence that the species not only were able to use and create tool but also they fit into the evolution of people/humans. The female had to closest human like hand from all the fossils found until now, by the shape of the hand we were also able to conclude that the female was able to climb trees because of the thumb helping take grip but also able to walk on 2 feet. The size of the brain was also interesting to figure out, because the human skull is what creates the shape of your brain, scientists were able to re-create the brain of the fossil, surprisingly it was 1/4 as much as our. It was bigger than the brain of a chimpanzee, this demonstrates that our brain started developing faster than our height. The team working on this project, might have found fertilized skin, the skin is now being worked on, if the results will be positive, this will be the first type of any soft tissue recovered from the past. Lastly, studies demonstrate that the female and male fossils were very similar to us: The ankles were human like, feet allowed them to walk even thought the heels were apelike this suggest they could climb up trees. Further studies are still being made and in a few months maybe years, the real mystery will be uncovered.




In my perspective, I think it is interesting and important fro people to know that a new fossil was found in the world because this could answer some questions many of us are asking ourselves. Discovering if the layer on the fossil was really skin or not is something I am looking forward to and am excited to know the answer to. I think its great that with our technologies now a days we can tell from which time period fossils and objects came, a few years ago that was not available.
This picture and article came from:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/09/110908-apes-humans-evolution-australopithecus-sediba-lee-berger-science/