More evidence suggesting that human evolution can happen relatively very quickly. Perhaps changes to lifeforms can be nearly instantaneous and it is not linear, more episodal? Can you get a wide variety of hominins all naturally built using many different building blocks from previous and future versions of man and woman?
discovered species had a novel mix of primitive and modern features. Its head was tiny, with a brain the size of an orange, but its skull was humanlike in shape. Its hands were adapted for manipulating objects and its feet for walking upright, but its shoulders and fingers were built for climbing. We never expected to see a combination of characteristics like this, says John Hawks, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, but they’re all in Homo naledi, and that’s surprising.
A New Human Relative | Archaeological Institute of America
a new fossil discovery in South Africa instead suggests that P. robustus evolved rapidly during a turbulent period of local climate change about 2 million years ago, resulting in anatomical changes that previously were attributed to sex.
It’s very important to be able to document evolutionary change within a lineage, said Angeline Leece of La Trobe University. It allows us to ask very focused questions about evolutionary processes. For example, we now know that tooth size changes over time in the species, which begs the question of why. There are reasons to believe that environmental changes placed these populations under dietary stress, and that points to future research that will let us test this possibility.
Newly discovered fossil documents small-scale evolutionary changes in an extinct human species | Washington University in St. Louis
The Platypus creature is an example of this, it is either evolved over millions of years from a bizarre heritage, or, it could just be what the electromagnetic nature has created for this recent environment we and it lives in.
The evidence of rapid but significant climate change during this period in South Africa comes from a variety of sources. Critically, fossils indicate that certain mammals associated with woodland or bushland environments went extinct or became less prevalent — while other species associated with drier, more open environments appeared locally for the first time.
Newly discovered fossil documents small-scale evolutionary changes in an extinct human species | Washington University in St. Louis
More broadly, the researchers think that this discovery serves as a cautionary tale for recognizing species in the fossil record.
A large number of fossil human species have been discovered over the past quarter century, and many of these new species designations are based on a small number of fossils from only one or a few sites in small geographic areas and narrow time ranges.
We think that paleoanthropology needs to be a bit more critical about interpreting variation in anatomy as evidence for the presence of multiple species, Strait said. Depending on the ages of fossil samples, differences in bony anatomy might represent changes within lineages rather than evidence of multiple species.
Newly discovered fossil documents small-scale evolutionary changes in an extinct human species | Washington University in St. Louis
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