By Sarah Tebelman
For years earth scientist have been searching the rich fossil site in Africa called the Cradle of Humankind. It took the invention of Google Earth and the help of a nine-year-old boy named Matthew to find partial skeletons of what may be a candidate for the closest ancestor to the human race.
Because the skeletons had some features of both the early human race and some of the earlier ape-like race, scientists have been calling the species Australopithecus sediba. Australopithecus means southern ape, while Sediba means natural spring, or wellspring. Scientist seem to think this name is perfect for the species from which the genus Homo came originated.
The two skeletons found were of a young male and female from almost two million years ago. They were found along with a mixture of many other animal remains, which led scientists to believe it was possible they had fallen into a cave.
The shape of the jaws and hips told the sexes of the fossils. Dental examinations showed that the male was about twelve years old and the woman was to be in her late twenty’s. The long legs and forearms that resembled us now meant to scientist that the A. Sediba was able to walk upright. Although the shape of the brain and skull features was not as advanced as ours now it was more advanced than other links in the learning.
Researcher Lee Berger used Google Earth’s 3-D availability to find over five hundred new caves from the images. After discovering the series of caves, Berger began to explore the fossil site in August of 2008 with his nine-year-old son Matthew and a previous student Job Kibii. With no luck Berger’s son, Matthew, went to adventure off site and came back to tell his father he had found a fossil. The fossil found was a collarbone and over the past two years scientists have worked to release the rest of the bones from the rock.
A variety of dating techniques has determined the rocks surrounding the fossils are at least 1.95 million to 1.78 million years old. The human timeline was thought to be originated between 1.8 million to 2 million years ago, but fossils found so far from previous time periods have been so poor, scientists have left the human family tree open to questions. “This fits in a critical moment in time,” Berger explained to a Live Science reporter. “ These fossils give us an extraordinarily detailed look into a new chapter of human evolution, and provide a window into a critical period when hominids made the committed change from dependency on life in the trees to life on the ground.”
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