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Now that scientists have a better idea on when Neanderthals split from humans, they can zone in on which species might have been our common ancestor. They do this mostly by process of elimination. Fossils found long before 400,000 years ago, such as the 800,000-year-old Atapuerca humans from Spain, are simply too old to represent the common ancestor. "I support the concept of a widespread ancestral species, Homo heidelbergensis," Stringer, a paleontologist at the Natural History Museum of London, told Discovery News. Neanderthal features began to emerge from Homo heidelbergensis just before 500,000 years ago. "Heidelberg Man" was muscular and tall, had a relatively large brain, and usually grew to heights of 6 feet or more. Markings on bones suggest the burly hominid dined on enormous animals, such as mammoths, rhinos and elephants, some of which weighed over 1,500 pounds. Stringer thinks that since Neanderthals and humans split relatively early, "we may need to designate the earlier part [on the human side] as 'Archaic sapiens.'" That would allow researchers to account for the different types of human fossils that fall between the divergence date and the appearance of more modern-looking people in Africa around 50,000 years ago. Osbjorn Pearson, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of New Mexico, recently conducted similar research on Neanderthals and humans. He told Discovery News that he fully agrees with the new findings. "From their, and other scientists' previous research, it has become clear that many of the physical differences between human skulls are due to random genetic changes that make populations diverge over time," Pearson said. "It is gratifying -- and, for many anthropologists, perhaps unexpected -- that the bones and genes tell the same story." "The results also reinforce the conclusion that it is unlikely that Neanderthals...contributed substantially to the modern human gene pool." Related Links: |
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