Smelling out fear

In following the fossil tracks of human evolution, scientists have for years searched for links between Australopithecus, the kin of the famous 8220;Lucy8221; skeleton left, and even earlier possible ancestors. Now, they think they have found some connections in Ethiopia.

An international team of palaeontologist is reporting the discovery of transitional species superimposed in sediments in the neighbourhood of a single site. The findings appeared in the journal Nature on Thursday. Tim D White, a paleontologist at the University of California, Berkeley, who was a team leader, and his colleagues said the 4.1-million-year-old fossils were anatomically intermediate between the earlier species Ardipithecus ramidus and the later species Australopithecus afarensis, the Lucy family. The newfound bones and teeth are the earliest remains of the most primitive Australopithecus, known as anamensis.

8220;This new discovery closes the gap between the fully blown Australopithecines and earlier forms we call Ardipithecus,8221; . White said in a statement. 8220;We now know where Australopithecus came from before four million years ago.8221; The scientists said the fossils supported the hypothesis that Australopithecus anamensis was a direct ancestor of afarensis, which lived 3 million to 3.6 million years ago. The Australopithecus genus8212;resembling apes in stature and brain size but unlike the great apes in that it walked on two legs8212;is thought to have given rise to our own genus, Homo.