Ancestors go South.Some of the oldest fossils in the human evolutionary family--including the skull and upper-arm bone shown above--come from South Africa South Africa, Afrikaans Suid-Afrika, officially Republic of South Africa, republic (2005 est. pop. 44,344,000), 471,442 sq mi (1,221,037 sq km), S Africa. , according to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. a study in the April 25 Science. A mix of new and already excavated Australopithecus fossils, found in two caves, date to 4 million years ago, reports a team led by Timothy C. Partridge partridge, common name applied to various henlike birds of several families. The true partridges of the Old World are members of the pheasant family (Phasianidae); the common European or Hungarian species has been successfully introduced in parts of North America. of University of the Witwatersrand Due to the 1959 Extension of University Education Act the school was only allowed to register a small number of black students for most of the apartheid era, even though several notable black anti-apartheid leaders graduated from the university. in Johannesburg. That's as many as 1 million years earlier than previous estimates for South Africa. The scientists suspect that the bones represent two forms of Australopithecus. An Australopithecus species of comparable age lived in eastern Africa (SN: 5/15/99, p. 315). The age estimates of the South African fossils hinged on measurements of the decay of radioactive isotopes in cave sediments. |
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