{"id":712038,"date":"2010-04-08T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-04-08T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2026-10-04T12:08:16","modified_gmt":"2026-10-04T16:08:16","slug":"fossils-shake-up-our-family-tree","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/712038","title":{"rendered":"Fossils shake up our family tree"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><DIV align=center><br \/>\n<TABLE id=table1><br \/>\n<TBODY><br \/>\n<TR><br \/>\n<TD><IMG data-recalc-dims=\"1\" border=1 src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/msnbcmedia.msn.com\/i\/MSNBC\/Components\/Photo\/2010\/April\/100407\/100407-coslog-sediba-466px-6p.jpg?resize=466%2C306\" width=\"466\" height=\"306\"><BR><br \/>\n<DIV align=right><FONT size=1 face=Tahoma align=\"right\">Brett Eloff \/ Courtesy of Lee Berger, Univ. of the Witwatersrand<\/FONT><\/DIV><\/TD><\/TR><br \/>\n<TR><br \/>\n<TD><br \/>\n<DIV align=left><FONT size=1 face=Verdana align=\"left\">Rock partially encases the cranium of a juvenile male representing the species <BR>designated Australopithecus sediba. The skull was found in a South African cave.<BR><br \/>\n<HR><br \/>\n<\/FONT><\/DIV><\/TD><\/TR><\/TBODY><\/TABLE><\/DIV><br \/>\n<P>Well-preserved fossils found in a South African cave pit mark an important transition between the 3.2 million-year-old pre-human known as Lucy and our own branch of the evolutionary family tree. That much, anthropologists can agree on. But exactly where do they fit in that transition? That&#8217;s the subject of a high-profile debate.<\/P><br \/>\n<P>It may be tempting to call these fossils a &#8220;missing link,&#8221; as some of the <A href=\"http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/science\/evolution\/7550033\/Missing-link-between-man-and-apes-found.html\">leaked news reports<\/A> did earlier this week. But scientists say that&#8217;s too simplistic a term for what the bones signify.<\/P><br \/>\n<P>There are so many elements to the tale that it&#8217;s hard to know where to start. Here are the main points relating to the find, announced today by the journal <A href=\"http:\/\/www.sciencemag.org\/\">Science<\/A>:<\/P>&#8230;(<a href=\"http:\/\/cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com\/archive\/2010\/04\/08\/2260581.aspx\">read more<\/a>)<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com\/aggbug.aspx?PostID=2260581\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Brett Eloff \/ Courtesy of Lee Berger, Univ. of the Witwatersrand Rock partially encases the cranium of a juvenile male representing the species designated Australopithecus sediba. The skull was found in a South African cave. Well-preserved fossils found in a South African cave pit mark an important transition between the 3.2 million-year-old pre-human known as [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3300,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4821],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-712038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9NivD-2Zeu","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3300"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=712038"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712038\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":813388,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712038\/revisions\/813388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=712038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=712038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=712038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}