Ancient hominid not our ancestor finds new study
mongabay.com
December 7, 2006
Scientists have shown that ancient remains once thought to be a key link in man’s evolutionary history are 400,000 years to young to be part of human evolution.
The results, published in the journal Science are controversial but the researchers behind the study say that their dating using uranium lead chronology shows that the remains are 2.2 million years old. The findings suggest that “Little Foot”, as the hominid is called, is only a distant cousin of humans.
Little Foot, which belonged to the genus Australopithecus, walked on two legs but had the brain the size of a chimpanzee and stood only 130 cm tall.