Page 82 - The Restless Earth Fossils

Fossils in the human Family 1

relatives), chimps, and gorillas share enough similarities to be
placed in the common family Hominidae. Humans, both modern
and extinct, have their own “tribe” within the Hominidae family
called the Hominini. Thus, various members of this scientific tribe
are called hominins. The collection of hominin fossils grows larger
each year. They demonstrate that human evolution resembles a
berry bush that has been trimmed over time to the one branch on
which we all dangle.

Missing linKs, Missing Branches

Perhaps the most famous hominin remains were discovered in
a German cave in the Neander Valley in 1857, two years before
The Origin of Species was published. The bones certainly looked
quite human, with a brutish sort of flare. The thick limb bones
spoke of hard use by those who possessed them. A ridge of bone
shielded the eye sockets like the brim of a cap. One early descrip-
tion depicted the living man who belonged to these bones as a
stooped and half-human “ape man,” an image that stuck for a
hundred years. Today, we know that the first bones described
belonged to a fairly old individual suffering from arthritis.
Others must have fed and cared for him. These Neandertals,
now given the scientific name Homo neanderthalensis, made and
used complex tools, butchered and cooked food, and buried
their dead with evidence of respect and ceremony. They lived
in Europe (and perhaps as far east as Siberia) between 130,000
and 27,000 years ago, coexisting on the Arabian Peninsula and
southern Europe with fully modern humans toward the end of
their existence as a species.
In 1997, it became possible to extract small samples of DNA
from Neandertal bones. Sequencing that DNA and comparing
it to modern humans indicates that our common ancestor lived
more than a half-million years ago. Neandertals developed from
an archaic version of human beings forced to adapt to climatic
“spasms” in Europe that involved the advance and retreat of huge
glaciers over a period of several hundred thousand years. But our
common ancestor lived farther south. Fossil and DNA evidence

RE_Fossils2print.indd 81 3/17/09 9:00:37 AM