Missing link no longer missing; Michael Jackson still unexplained
Written by: Beck
A problem which had long flustered anthropologists and encouraged creationists was the lack of fossil evidence for a species connecting
human ancestors (australopithecus and company) and the other
great apes. And now, it would appear, they've found him:
Pierolapithecus catalaunicus, a.k.a. Rupert.
A 13 million years old ape living in what is now Spain may have been the last common father of all apes, including chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans and humans.
[...] "This probably is very close to the last common ancestor of great apes and humans," said Salvador Moya-Sola of the Miguel Crusafont Institute of Paleontology in Barcelona, Spain, who led the study.
His colleague Meike Kohler said that it would have looked something like a modern chimpanzee and probably ate fruit.
"I would call it a missing link, because it really fills a gap," she added.
Not exactly politics or economics, but I find this kind of stuff fascinating, and it's my blog, so you'll just have to deal with it.
