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The old evolution cartoons about the ascent of man were never very accurate, but new research indicates that they are even more off than scientists have thought. Two forms of early humans depicted in those cartoons appear to have lived at the same time, according to new research on two African fossils. What this means is that human evolution is a “chaotic kind of looking evolutionary tree rather than this heroic march that you see with the cartoons of an early ancestor evolving into some intermediate and eventually unto us,” study co-author Fred Spoor, a professor of evolutionary anatomy at the University College in London, told Associated Press. It also means, Spoor said, that there is some still-undiscovered common ancestor that probably lived 2 million to 3 million years ago, a time that has not left much fossil record.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee