The “Insights into hominid evolution from the gorilla genome sequence” report, published by the British journal Nature this last week, stands as a historical milestone in the study of human origins, sequencing the gorilla genome.
Aylwyn Scally (pictured right below) at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute led the research team to complete the gorilla genome sequence project, the last genus of the living great apes to have its genome decoded.
In the journal Science September 9 edition, a collection of reports generated a storm of controversy on the evolution status of Australopithecus sediba. Nicknamed Karabo, meaning “answers,” the fossils have emerged as the latest human ancestor candidate.
While last week’s topic focused on Karabo’s transitional links, this week examines the dating of these two remarkable fossilized skeletons recovered from the Malapa site in South Africa. The dating of Karabo was surprising.
The October 2009 special edition of the journal Science (cover pictured right below) entitled Ardipithecus ramidus, kindly known as “Ardi,” featured a series of 11 papers by 47 authors from 10 countries – launching the Ardipithecus ramidus (pictured left) saga.
With an estimated age of 4.4 million years, Ardi is considered the oldest hominid skeleton ever discovered, predating Lucy and casting unexpected clues into the increasingly complex human evolution jigsaw puzzle.
This is the story of the Ida fossil fiasco. “This little creature is going to show us our connection with the rest of all the mammals, with cows and sheep, and elephants and anteaters,” said Sir David Attenborough, who narrated the BBC documentary in May 2009. “The more you look at Ida, the more you can see, as it were, the primate in embryo.” Really?
According to Jørn Hurum, the paleontologist from Oslo University’s Natural History Museum who assembled the scientific team
“It tells a part of our evolution that’s been hidden so far. It’s been hidden because the only [other] specimens are so incomplete and so broken there’s nothing almost to study”,
In a letter to Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker, his closest friend in 1857, Charles Darwin confided, “I cannot swallow Man [being that] distinct from a Chimpanzee.” Chimp genetics, by extension of Darwin’s theory, were expected to be similar to humans. Charles Darwin writes in his Autobiography –
“My Descent of Man was published in Feb. 1871. As soon as I had become, in the year 1837 or 1838, convinced that species were mutable products, I could not avoid the belief that man must come under the same law.”
