Human Hand Fossil Turns Back Clock 500,000 Years on Complex Tool Use

coredrill
Slayer,

Question - Does the presence of a Third Metacarpal bone with styloid Process in one single fossil be the evidence that the Homo erectus did use and handle tools?

This single bone in and of itself is not proof of the tool making capabilities of H. Erectus. However when we combine this with other more complete specimens as well as the tools made by other Homo Erectus as well as a compare/contrast to other apes like Gorillas for example who do not have the styloid process or the manual dexterity that modern humans have it gives a more clear picture. The styloid process is just one piece of the puzzle.

Couldn't this have been a bone deformation?

If it didn't continuously show up in the fossil record of later specimens it Could have been indicative of a random deformity but its continued presence in later Erectus fossils would indicate otherwise.

Have they found other skeletal remains from the same period or closer periods in our around the same location?
Do those skeletal finds have the styloid process on their third metacarpal bone?

That is why this is considered an important find, it's the oldest example of the stylized process we have yet seen in a member of the genus Homo. It definitely exists in later H. Erectus and every other member of the Homo genus since(though I can't say that with 100% certainty for Denisovans as weave a very incomplete fossil record for them as yet).

Just a single bone doesn't make a statement

They are speculating only and they can never make a statement that homo erectus did make and handle tools.

actually, we can definitively tie H. Erectus to Achuelean technology from East Africa all the way to Asia.
delamagente.wordpress.com...

articles.latimes.com...

anthro.palomar.edu...

Just because the bone was found in a location where ancient tools have been found doesn't make it a fact that the hand the bone belonged to did make tools and handle them. If we found tools from the same era from the same location/surroundings , it could be closer to a fact or a statement.

edit on 18/12/13 by coredrill because: too add some more stuff. any issues???

Again, many many instances of Achuelean technology can be directly linked to H. Erectus being their makers.

reply to post by Asktheanimals


I agree. Look at the raccoon it's hand are very similar and almost as nimble as ours. They don't use tools but the hand is already there. Maybe in a billion years raccoons will be sentient like humans.

I say the development of the hand spurred the development of the brain to utilize tge new technology.

reply to post by BASSPLYR


There is no evidence that one species will turn into another species a raccoon will always be a raccoon. Even simple creatures that have been experimented on for the better portions of a hundred years like say the fruit fly has been manipulated to try and force some kind of genetic trait and out of the probably millions of generations of experimentation not one instance of the fruit fly changing into another species much less expand its life cycle.

Aleister
reply to post by Asktheanimals

 

Yes, but by that time humans had the brains to start making things, imnho.

And did I tell you about the time I learned we don't need our thumbs to do things? www.abovetopsecret.com... I still don't use them when I type (whoops, correction, I do use one when I grab the mouse to click)

edit on 17-12-2013 by Aleister because: (no reason given)

We needed brains just to carve a flint spearhead. That itself required stereoscopic vision, hand-eye coordination, forward planning (to determine the next stone strike) but probably not much communication.

Communication (hearing/language) would start from learning to recognize the natural sounds (thunder, water flowing, rain in the trees, wolves, bears, bird song or the lack of it). Language would start off from emotional sounds to mimicking sounds of animals, then spoken word for hunting and trade.

Vision would start from recognising water from sand (blue-yellow opposition), and vegetation from fire (green-red opposition), shade and open ground (intensity).

Brotherman
reply to post by BASSPLYR

 

There is no evidence that one species will turn into another species a raccoon will always be a raccoon. Even simple creatures that have been experimented on for the better portions of a hundred years like say the fruit fly has been manipulated to try and force some kind of genetic trait and out of the probably millions of generations of experimentation not one instance of the fruit fly changing into another species much less expand its life cycle.

well fortunately for us all research in genetics has born fruits and you can actually trace small changes in genetics through populations as those traits become more common and new traits arise

it would appear you dont understand how species are actually classified
there is no sudden shift from one species to another but the stacking effect of many many small changes

i take it you believe in micro evolution? (not many people dont as it is observable)
so small changes occur correct?
now imagine that the classification process requires that something that is predominantly blue in color is classified as x and something predominantly red in color must be classified as y
so lets say you have an animal that is predominantly blue it has a blue level of 75 but theres also some red in there as well (lets say on its rump) and its red level is 25
k with me still?
eventually a very small mutation occurs and the offspring of one of these animals is born with a red level of 26 and a blue level of only 74
now lets imagine this animal gets laid more because red is sexy (or maybe it stands out more in mating rituals) and it passes on those genes to its offspring
so now we have a bunch more of these things with blue levels of 74 and red levels of 26 until eventual most of the population of this animal has blue levels of 74 and red levels of 26
eventually another mutation occurs (maybe it takes one generation maybe it takes a thousand..... but roll those dice enough times and your numbers going to come up sooner or later) this time the animal has has a little more red ....its red level is 27 and its blue level is 73

now imagine this continues to occur until such a time as you have one born that has a red level of 51 and a blue level of 49

because of the naming conventions used (despite the fact that there was in fact no large change that occured at any one time) this animal now has to be classified as y instead of being classified as x (because it is now predominantly red in color rather than blue)
so you see there was no big change from one into the other in fact in this overly simplistic example there where 26 variations of this species before it was actually referred to as a different species

and now you understand how if micro evolution is a reality (and you can observe it quite quickly with yeast and other micro-organisms.... drug resistant strains of bacteria come to mind) that macro evolution is an inevitability



edit: i would also like to point out that ancestral dna exists in currently living organisms and can be expressed again if certain changes occur to the overriding genes or if a mutation occurs in the ancestral gene that causes it to override current one.... this is called atavism and is why occasionally people are born with tails etc.
en.wikipedia.org...

reply to post by sirhumperdink


Oh dear, this is non sense I will make it simple There is zero evidence of one species turning into another the theory of evolution is anecdotal at best providing no conclusive results that one species evolved from another. There is no transitional missing link and if there was where is the transitional link of all other species? Why is it that species go extinct and no new species fills its roles? I am not saying creationist but I am certainly saying evolution as it is, is absurdly wrong. And this micro evolution can be summed up in terms of dominant and recessive genes a mutation or interbreeding between to compatible species is not grounds for this evolutionary transition a dog will not breed with a pony a human cannot impregnate an elephant but if it did that would be a new hybrid and still wouldn't constitute evolution under the context of the junk you are trying to feed me.

Brotherman
reply to post by sirhumperdink

 

Oh dear, this is non sense I will make it simple There is zero evidence of one species turning into another the theory of evolution is anecdotal at best providing no conclusive results that one species evolved from another.There is no transitional missing link and if there was where is the transitional link of all other species? Why is it that species go extinct and no new species fills its roles?

Are you referring to the missing link in human ancestry? The concept was pretty popular 100 years ago when Neanderthal was still fresh and Piltdown man was a hoax but the idea of a specific missing link is a misnomer at best. In human evolution, every member of the genus Homo is a transitional form. Modern humans are the sum of the anatomically modern humans who migrated out of Africa 100,000 years ago and Neanderthal and Denisovans. The degree of admixture varies depending on geographic location with subsaharan Africans having none, Europeans hAving more Neanderthal and Aboriginal Australians having more Denisovan than their European counterparts. Thee Neanderthal and Denisovan lines are the sum of the various members of Homo Erectus and possibly H. rudolphensis. There are several different australopithecines, some overlapping some not. Each shows a progression of variation and adaptation that shows a fairly linear progression towards what we re today. A for one species going extinct and new ones filling their roles, that's exactly what happened 65 MYA when dinosaurs lost their foothold and mammals took over their niches. You're never going to see a perfect copy or analogue filling up the same niche for a variety of reasons. In this particular example as well as many others, the main reason is massive environmental changes. Transitional fossils in other species-
news.nationalgeographic.com...#/ambulocetus-missing-link_5098_600x450.jpg
evolution.berkeley.edu...

Early primate transitions

Plesiadapids: Gingerich (summarized in 1976, 1977) found smooth transitions in plesiadapid primates linking four genera together: Pronothodectes, Nannodectes, two lineages of Plesiadapis, and Platychoerops. In summary: Pronothodectes matthewi changed to become Pro. jepi, which split into Nannodectes intermedius and Plesiadapis praecursor. N. intermedius was the first member of a gradually changing lineage that passed through three different species stages (N. gazini, N. simpsoni, and N. gidleyi). Ples. praecursor was the first member of a separate, larger lineage that slowly grew larger (passing through three more species stages), with every studied character showing continuous gradual change. Gingerich (1976) noted "Loss of a tooth, a discrete jump from one state to another, in several instances proceeded continuously by continuous changes in the frequencies of dimorphism -- the percentage of specimens retaining the tooth gradually being reduced until it was lost entirely from the population." The Plesiadapis lineage then split into two more lineages, each with several species. One of these lineages shows a gradual transition from Plesiadapis to Platychoerops,"where the incisors were considerably reorganized morphologically and functionally in the space of only 2-3 million years." Early lemur-like primates: Gingerich (summarized in 1977) traced two distinct species of lemur-like primates, Pelycodus frugivorus and P. jarrovii, back in time, and found that they converged on the earlier Pelycodus abditus "in size, mesostyle development, and every other character available for study, and there can be little doubt that each was derived from that species." Further work (Gingerich, 1980) in the same rich Wyoming fossil sites found species-to-species transitions for every step in the following lineage: Pelycodus ralstoni (54 Ma) to P. mckennai to P. trigonodus to P. abditus, which then forked into three branches. One became a new genus, Copelemur feretutus, and further changed into C. consortutus. The second branch became P. frugivorus. The third led to P. jarrovi, which changed into another new genus, Notharctus robinsoni, which itself split into at least two branches, N. tenebrosus, and N. pugnax (which then changed to N. robustior, 48 Ma), and possibly a third, Smilodectes mcgrewi (which then changed to S. gracilis). Note that this sequence covers at least three and possibly four genera, with a timespan of 6 million years. Early monkey-like primates: Gingerich (1982, also discussed in Gingerich, 1983) also describes gradual species-species transitions in a lineage of early Eocene primate: Cantius ralstoni to C. mckennai to C. trigonodus.

I am not saying creationist but I am certainly saying evolution as it is, is absurdly wrong. And this micro evolution can be summed up in terms of dominant and recessive genes a mutation or interbreeding between to compatible species is not grounds for this evolutionary transition a dog will not breed with a pony a human cannot impregnate an elephant but if it did that would be a new hybrid and still wouldn't constitute evolution under the context of the junk you are trying to feed me.

Wouldn't it have been easier to just say you don't understand how evolution works than to make a multitude of glaring errors? It's quite obvious when you go on about pele mating with elephants or dogs and ponies. That's not the crux of evolutionary theory, it is s you said merely hybridization. However, discounting the copious amounts of genetic data that quite clearly demonstrates common ancestry, never mind the fossil record is mind blowing.

reply to post by peter vlar


I still don't buy it

The Neanderthal mtDNA sequences were substantially different from modern human mtDNA (Krings et al. 1997, 1999). Researchers compared the Neanderthal to modern human and chimpanzee sequences. Most human sequences differ from each other by on average 8.0 substitutions, while the human and chimpanzee sequences differ by about 55.0 substitutions. The Neanderthal and modern human sequences differed by approximately 27.2 substitutions. Using this mtDNA information, the last common ancestor of Neanderthals and modern humans dates to approximately 550,000 to 690,000 years ago, which is about four times older than the modern human mtDNA pool. This is consistent with the idea that Neanderthals did not contribute substantially to modern human genome.

Link

An early inference that can be drawn from the new findings, which were announced Thursday in Leipzig, Germany, is that there is no significant trace of Neanderthal genes in modern humans. This confounds the speculation that modern humans could have interbred with Neanderthals, thus benefiting from the genes that adapted the Neanderthals to the cold climate that prevailed in Europe in last ice age, which ended 10,000 years ago. Researchers have not ascertained if human genes entered the Neanderthal population.

Link


It is just my humble opinion that the theory is wrong.

reply to post by Brotherman


The study of the human and related genomes is likely one of the most dynamic fields in all of
science. Spectacular discoveries come on an almost monthly basis, so quickly some sources can't keep up.
The latest work on Neanderthals, from Siberia, shows that all modern humans, with the exception of some africans, have on average, 2 % Neanderthal DNA.

LEIPZIG, GERMANY—Scientists have extracted and analyzed DNA from the 50,000-year-old toe bone of a Neanderthal woman found in Siberia's Denisova Cave in 2010 and put together a high-quality draft of the genome of modern human's closest extinct relative. The sequence allows for comparison between modern humans and other hominins, like Denisovans, another extinct hominin. For example, about two percent of the DNA of modern humans living in outside of Africa is from Neanderthals. The research also showed that Neanderthals and Denisovans interbred but not to the extent that there was a lot of genetic crossover—the Denisovan genome gets less than one percent of its genes from Neanderthals. Further, an unidentified human ancestor may have contributed up to six percent of the genes in the Denisovan genome. “This ancient population of hominins lived prior to the separation of Neanderthals, Denisovans and modern humans,” says Kay Prüfer, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig. “It is possible that this unknown hominin was what is known from the fossil record as Homo erectus.”,

www.archaeology.org...

reply to post by punkinworks10


Some studies also suggest that humans and chimps share 98% of the genes of a neanderthal which is a bunch of garbage unless of course you suggest that humans can breed with chimps neanderthals can breed with chimps and chimps can breed with both humans and neanderthals which is absurd. Where is there ever a case of cross hybridization of chimps and humans to except these studies is a far cry from the truth.

Link

Apparently our gene structure is 50% like a banana too is a banana a common anscestor of humans

The genes of organisms that look very different are surprisingly similar. For example, human DNA sequences are over 95% identical to chimpanzee sequences and around 50% identical to banana sequences.

Link

Personally I tend to believe all life came from a singular source and do not find it odd that creatures can share a similar genetic sequence but with different configurations it still seperates the species as its own unique species. I don't buy into evolution

Brotherman
reply to post by peter vlar

 

I still don't buy it

I don't buy broccoli either but it's there whether I like it or not.

The Neanderthal mtDNA sequences were substantially different from modern human mtDNA (Krings et al. 1997, 1999). Researchers compared the Neanderthal to modern human and chimpanzee sequences. Most human sequences differ from each other by on average 8.0 substitutions, while the human and chimpanzee sequences differ by about 55.0 substitutions. The Neanderthal and modern human sequences differed by approximately 27.2 substitutions. Using this mtDNA information, the last common ancestor of Neanderthals and modern humans dates to approximately 550,000 to 690,000 years ago, which is about four times older than the modern human mtDNA pool. This is consistent with the idea that Neanderthals did not contribute substantially to modern human genome.

you're using 15 year old data for a source. As pumpkinworks pointed out, there are new advances made on a monthly basis further expanding our base of knowledge exponentially.

www.hypothesisjournal.com... Evidence from studies of nuclear and mitochondrial DNA extracted from Neanderthal fossils and humans points to fascinating hypotheses concerning the types of interbreeding that occurred between these two species. Humans and Neanderthals share a small percentage of nuclear DNA. However, humans and Neanderthals do not possess the same mitochondrial DNA. In mammals, mitochondrial DNA is exclusively maternally inherited. Taking into account an understanding of interspecific hybridity, the available data leads to the hypothesis that only male Neanderthals were able to mate with female humans. If Haldane’s Law applied to the progeny of Neanderthals and humans, then female hybrids would survive, but male hybrids would be absent, rare, or sterile. Interbreeding between male Neanderthals and female humans, as the only possible scenario, accounts for the presence of Neanderthal nuclear DNA, the scarcity of Neanderthal Y-linked genes, and the lack of mitochondrial DNA in modern human populations.

The Lapedo child is a complete prehistorical skeleton found in Portugal. In 1998, this discovery of an early Upper Paleolithic human burial at Abrigo do Lagar Velho, by the team led by pre-history archeologist João Zilhão, provided evidence of early modern humans from the west of the Iberian Peninsula. The remains, the largely complete skeleton of an approximately 4-year-old child, buried with pierced shell and red ochre, is dated to ca. 24,500 years BP.[1] The cranium, mandible, dentition, and postcrania present a mosaic of European early modern human and Neanderthal features.[1]

This (morphological) mosaic indicates admixture between late archaic and early modern humans in Iberia, refuting hypotheses of complete replacement of the Neanderthals by early modern humans and underlining the complexities of the cultural and biological processes and events that were involved in modern human emergence
.

An early inference that can be drawn from the new findings, which were announced Thursday in Leipzig, Germany, is that there is no significant trace of Neanderthal genes in modern humans. This confounds the speculation that modern humans could have interbred with Neanderthals, thus benefiting from the genes that adapted the Neanderthals to the cold climate that prevailed in Europe in last ice age, which ended 10,000 years ago. Researchers have not ascertained if human genes entered the Neanderthal population.

this is from 3 days ago- phys.org...

analysis of 1 million base pairs of DNA- bioinformatica.uab.es...&sa=X&scisig=AAGBfm1BAzQAJtDjFj6cZipfwDjSiPfBLQ&oi=scholarr

It is just my humble opinion that the theory is wrong.

and you are more than entitled to it. Just don't be angry that my humble opinion is that you are wrong on this particular matter.

reply to post by peter vlar

and you are more than entitled to it. Just don't be angry that my humble opinion is that you are wrong on this particular matter.

Thats fair enough, guess I can't agree with everybody all the time. I see no point in continuing to debate this but thank you for the information, Ill have to get to reading it another time almost me bed time.

reply to post by Brotherman


not a problem at all, I'm always happy to share what I know, particularly if it's something I'm passionate about and Neanderthal's have always been one of my favorite topics. Besides, it's always a nice change of pace to civilly disagree with someone on here for once.

We are designers with no preconceived design that evolve the ability to create tools that we ultimately kill others with. We also kill other animals for fun, but disguise it under a word we call "Sport". We also do not mind killing any other species with the pollution we leave behind or the dislocation of their habitats.

Hardly the evolved species that we like to think we are. Can evolution save us from ourselves?... or does it require the intervention of a random asteroid..

As has been shown, many anthropologists often disagree with established "Theories" and come up with "New" discoveries regularly.
There was another "Skull" found recently in Africa, that is of Course, another version of a Homo etc etc.
They Never find another skull, and say, well this may be another form of early primate that turned into a Gorilla...for example.
It almost always has to be a new version of man from Africa.

Quite frankly, in logical terms, it is ridiculous and quite fanciful, that Every skull they find in Africa, that looks at all primate, is automatically deemed a Human ancestor, not a failed "Monkey" ancestor, always a Human one.

I can, right this minute, find 5 human skulls of modern humans, and present them to these experts, and quite sure that some of these experts will bet their degrees, that one or two are ancient human skulls, that died out 1 million years ago etc etc.
The skulls would be....1 Australian Aboriginal, 1 East Asian early Han relative, 1 white Western European, 1 African Bantu person, 1 East European (Caucus) person.

All of these people have entirely individual skulls, BUT with similarities that can describe them as Homo.

au.news.yahoo.com...

This article relates to "New" evidence that H Sapiens/Neanderthal/Denisovians/and a new mysterious Homo...all interbred...........which has been proposed and contradicted, about 100 times by the "Experts" in the past couple of years.
They really do not know, None of their theories are set in concrete....it is all guess work and speculation, regardless of DNA....yes, apparently even germs have DNA....it is the building blocks of every life. It has even been proposed that it is from beyond the Earth, and even the Solar System.

Interestingly, the first photograph of a Neanderthal in this article, looks Exactly, not sort of but Exactly like an old East European (Hungarian) family friend, we use to know....Same jaw feature, same brow, same sloped forehead... all very common traits for many East Europeans (that and the Mongoloid/Euro mix, from the Mongol invasion).
Im sure our family friend had a direct link to a Neanderthal...as we probably all have. .

gort51
As has been shown, many anthropologists often disagree with established "Theories" and come up with "New" discoveries regularly.
There was another "Skull" found recently in Africa, that is of Course, another version of a Homo etc etc.
They Never find another skull, and say, well this may be another form of early primate that turned into a Gorilla...for example.
It almost always has to be a new version of man from Africa.

It's harder to find gorilla precursors because gorillas have been gorillas for at least ten million years.

The world's oldest gorilla fossil has been found in Ethiopia, defying earlier assumptions about ape and human evolution, scientists at the National Museum of Ethiopia announced Wednesday.

Scientists believe the nine teeth unearthed during an excavation near Addis Ababa belong to a newly discovered type of 10-million-year-old gorilla. If their data is correct, the fossil could reveal several new truths on ape and human evolution.

Source

gort51 Quite frankly, in logical terms, it is ridiculous and quite fanciful, that Every skull they find in Africa, that looks at all primate, is automatically deemed a Human ancestor, not a failed "Monkey" ancestor, always a Human one.

Quite frankly, this is because people are more interested in human ancestors than gorilla ancestors, thus you hear more about possible human ones and less about possible gorilla ones.

gort51 None of their theories are set in concrete

This, at least, is certainly true and is acknowledged not just daily, but minute-by-minute in the scientific community.

Harte

gort51
As has been shown, many anthropologists often disagree with established "Theories" and come up with "New" discoveries regularly.
There was another "Skull" found recently in Africa, that is of Course, another version of a Homo etc etc.
They Never find another skull, and say, well this may be another form of early primate that turned into a Gorilla...for example.
It almost always has to be a new version of man from Africa.

Perhaps because that's the type of headline that draws advertisers. The average American is far more knowledgeable about what the Kardashians are up to than they are basic biology so you can't really expect mainstream type coverage for something of little interest. However if you know where to look or keep up on these things you would know that what you claim simply isn't true. There are plenty of finds ranging from interesting to amazing that have been popping up the past few years. See, this is never in normal news outlets, here's one from a super fringe publication called the NY Times-www.nytimes.com... It's about the earliest primate fossil ever found and pushes back the date for the inception of primates by about 8 million years. oh, it also lends credence to the hypothesis that primates started in Asia and moved to Africa later.
Here's one about recent finds in Tanzania detailing the oldest evidence to date of when old world monkeys and apes diverged. www.sciencenews.org... and this one as well www.the-scientist.com.../articleNo/35555/title/Oldest-Fossil-of-Ape-Discovered/

Heck, here's a primate fossil from Texas of all places- www.futurity.org...

Quite frankly, in logical terms, it is ridiculous and quite fanciful, that Every skull they find in Africa, that looks at all primate, is automatically deemed a Human ancestor, not a failed "Monkey" ancestor, always a Human one.

I agree 100%. Thankfully this is not true.

I can, right this minute, find 5 human skulls of modern humans, and present them to these experts, and quite sure that some of these experts will bet their degrees, that one or two are ancient human skulls, that died out 1 million years ago etc etc.
The skulls would be....1 Australian Aboriginal, 1 East Asian early Han relative, 1 white Western European, 1 African Bantu person, 1 East European (Caucus) person.

you realize that there are forensic anthropologists who specialize in just this type of detective work right? I seriously doubt you would be stumping someone whos entire existence revolves around skull morphology, but by all means give it a go and post the results for us.(I really didn't mean that as snarky as it looks in print). But even at that, nobody relies on just one methodology of testing and most people don't want to look silly when trying to publish so they do whatever they can to cover their tail and get as precise a date as possible which often involves other experts from other fields so this is all but an exercise in futility.

All of these people have entirely individual skulls, BUT with similarities that can describe them as Homo.

as would be Neanderthal, Denisovan(if we had a skull of theirs), Homo Erectus, H. Ergaster, Rudolphensis et al. as they are all members of the genus Homo but there are still very distinctive features to each that can help to differentiate

au.news.yahoo.com...

They really do not know, None of their theories are set in concrete....it is all guess work and speculation, regardless of DNA....yes, apparently even germs have DNA....it is the building blocks of every life. It has even been proposed that it is from beyond the Earth, and even the Solar System.

it's kind of a by product of people from varying disciplines looking at similar problems from different angles compounded with the fact that different people, even those who studied under the same professors, are going to have different ideas and hypothesis. Once they compile data, publish and send it for review things have a tendency to get sorted out little by little. It is an arduous process, especially if you're not a patient person. But between you and me, half the fun of science can be being wrong because your data may very well show where and why you were wrong which inevitably leads you to a different and sometimes even the correct path.