The missing link between humans and apes
The remains now being brought to light by Dr Berger and his team are wonderful", the Daily Telegraph quoted him as saying. "It is not a single find, but several specimens representing several individuals. It is one thing to find a lower jaw with a couple of teeth, but it is another thing to find the jaw joined onto the skull, and those in turn uniting further down with the spinal column, pelvis and the limb bones. "To find a skeleton as opposed to a couple of teeth or an arm bone is a rarity.
Phillip Tobias, an eminent human anatomist and anthropologist at the university who was one of three experts to first identify Homo habilis as a new species of human in 1964, described the discovery as "wonderful" and "exciting". The team, led by Lee Berger of the University of Witwatersrand, found the skeleton while exploring cave systems in the Sterkfontein region of South Africa, near Johannesburg, an area known as "the Cradle of Humanity". According to the palaeontologists, the skeleton shares characteristics with Homo habilis, whose emergence 2.5 million years ago is seen as a key stage in the evolution of humans. An international team has found a two-million-year-old skeleton of a child, which it claims belongs to a new species of hominid that may have been an intermediate stage as apemen evolved into advanced humans known as Homo habilis. LONDON: In a find that could rewrite the history of human evolution, palaeontologists claim to have found the "missing link" between humans and their apelike ancestors.