Our Ancestor Homo Erectus Is 200,000 Years Older Than Previously Thought

[Judi Lynn]

A fossil that sat exposed at a cave site for eight years upends human family tree.
By Bridget AlexDecember 15, 2020 12:00 PM

For eight years, a crunched cranium protruded from an excavation pit in South Africa’s Drimolen Cave. Archaeologists ignored the fossil, assuming it to be a baboon, until they swept up pieces that had crumbled free in 2015. Early on, the remains looked more human than monkey.

Jesse Martin and Angeline Leece, researchers at Australia’s La Trobe University, jigsaw-puzzled together more than 150 bone bits, each no bigger than a quarter. Some were so fine that light shone through. Analysis confirmed the fossil wasn’t baboon. Then, in 2018, another skull surfaced at the Drimolen site, and chronometric dating placed both craniums around 2 million years old. The researchers published their big news in Science this April: Based on skull shape, the second cranium belonged to Paranthropus robustus, a Lucy-like relative with jumbo molars. The first came from Homo erectus — a species thought to have originated 200,000 years later in East Africa.

According to textbooks, “we’ve got the wrong fossil in the wrong place at the wrong time,” says Martin, a study co-author. He says the story needs to be updated.

A contemporaneous site 6 miles away yielded another cousin, Australopithecus sediba, in 2010 — meaning at least three lineages of the human family tree occupied South Africa about 2 million years ago.

More:
https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/our-ancestor-homo-erectus-is-200-000-years-older-than-previously-thought

[sinkingfeeling]

1. But, Judi, we've been told by those with direct knowledge, the earth is just

6,000 years old.

[lastlib]

2. An' all that sciency stuff...

like radiometric dating, is hooey becuz Jay-eezus.

[LittleGirl]

3. Wow! eom

[LudwigPastorius]

5. I often wonder what made Homo sapiens the evolutionary "winner".

Those other guys must not have touched the Monolith.

[IsItJustMe]

8. My guess is that most of it was being at the right place at the right time.

Africa went through some serious climatic weather changes in the last 6 million years. This caused enormous desserts, redistribution of animal populations, and probably the extinction of numerous lineages of the genus Homo.

Beyond that, I am sure that competition for resources and tribal warfare took out much of the rest. Other species of Homo, such as Neanderthals and Denisovans, may have simply been dissolved into the Homo sapien species, since modern day Homo sapien DNA includes both.

[wnylib]

9. Sounds about right. Neanderthal and

Denisovan intermating with sapiens would have produced a stronger hybrid, more capable of survival, so that "pure" hominins died out as the combo version expanded and absorbed them.

Smithsonian had an article some time ago about how we inherited genes from Neanderthal and Denisovan that made us more capable of fighting viruses that those two hominins had been exposed to prior to Sapiens' arrival to regions outside of Africa. The down side is that it also left us vulnerable to overactive immune responses like allergies, especially to grass and tree pollens.

As someone with multiple allergies (pollens, foods, medicines), who went into anaphylaxis in the doc's office when tested for pollens, I suspect that I have a lot of Neanderthal ancestors.

[Irish_Dem]

10. Interesting, DNA testing shows I have higher than typical Neanderthal DNA and I have serious

alleriges.

[wnylib]

12. I'll see if I can find a link

to the article, but I'm posting from my phone so copy and paste is a problem. If the URL isn't too long, I'll type it in.

[Irish_Dem]

13. Thanks, hope it is not too much of a bother.

I am at the high end of Neanderthal.

[wnylib]

14. There are several online articles

about the effects of Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA in modern humans and how their DNA affects us today. They all include references to the immune system and allergies, but you have to scroll through them to find the allergies reference. DNA from those two human relatives also affects things like blood clotting and strokes, fat metabolism, autoimmune disorders, a specific type of precancerous skin lesions (actinic keratosis), in addition to allergies.

Once beneficial according to life styles in the past, those genes are less so in the modern world environment. Besides having multiple allergies, I have also had an actinic keratosis skin lesion removed from my arm.

The articles that I found have pretty long URLs. You can find any of the articles easily by doing a search with the words "Neanderthals and allergies." Sources include Science Magazine, NPR, and Smithsonian Magazine among many others.

[Irish_Dem]

15. Thank you so much. I will google for further info. I do have some of the issues you list.

Fascinating.

[wishstar]

17. This article has information about Neandertal gene discoveries affecting various health issues:

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/02/our-hidden-neandertal-dna-may-increase-risk-allergies-depression

[Karadeniz]

6. I knew I was feeling older lately!

[ToxMarz]

7. So the belief that republicans can evolve into anything worth a sbit

could (likely would) be 200,000 years later than previously estimated.

[Irish_Dem]

11. They might be a different species altogether. :(

[GeoWilliam750]

16. The average Cro-Magnon brain was about 20% bigger than the average Republican brain

FACT!!!!