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Kadanuumuu
Kadanuumuu ("Big Man" in the Afar language) is the nickname of KSD-VP-1/1, a 3.58-million-year-old partial ''Australopithecus afarensis'' fossil discovered in the Afar Region of Ethiopia in 2005 by a team led by Yohannes Haile-Selassie, curator of physical anthropology at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. Based on skeletal analysis, the fossil is believed to conclusively show that the species was fully bipedal. At more than in stature, Kadanuumuu is much taller than the famous Lucy (Australopithecus), Lucy fossil of the same species discovered in the 1970s, and is approximately 400,000 years older. Among other characteristics, Kadanuumuu's scapula (part of the shoulder blade), the oldest discovered to date for a hominid, is comparable to that of modern humans, suggesting that the species was land rather than tree-based. Not all researchers agree with this conclusion. See also * ''Dawn of Humanity'' References External linksAn early ''Australopithecus ''afarensis postcr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Australopithecus Afarensis
''Australopithecus afarensis'' is an extinct species of australopithecine which lived from about 3.9–2.9 million years ago (mya) in the Pliocene of East Africa. The first fossils were discovered in the 1930s, but major fossil finds would not take place until the 1970s. From 1972 to 1977, the International Afar Research Expedition—led by anthropologists Maurice Taieb, Donald Johanson and Yves Coppens—unearthed several hundreds of hominin specimens in Hadar, Ethiopia, the most significant being the exceedingly well-preserved skeleton AL 288-1 ("Lucy") and the site AL 333 ("the First Family"). Beginning in 1974, Mary Leakey led an expedition into Laetoli, Tanzania, and notably recovered fossil trackways. In 1978, the species was first described, but this was followed by arguments for splitting the wealth of specimens into different species given the wide range of variation which had been attributed to sexual dimorphism (normal differences between males and females). ''A. afa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
