Sentences with phrase «for paleoanthropologists»

For paleoanthropologists, the Holy Grail of last common ancestors is the one we share with chimpanzees, our closest living relative.

The Lomekwi 3 discovery raises many new challenging questions for paleoanthropologists.

Those same scanners also make it possible for paleoanthropologists to look inside the fossils of ancient hominids and see things that until now have been shrouded in mystery.

Not exact matches

If the new dates for the Spanish cave art are confirmed, they could indicate that Neandertals and H. sapiens exchanged artistic traditions earlier than previously thought, says paleoanthropologist Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London, who was not involved in the studies.

Tim White, a paleoanthropologist not connected to the project, says the findings were published too early, with too much left unknown — including the age of the fossils and whether concrete evidence for the intentional placement of the dead exists.

To create a foot skeleton for Lucy, I essentially executed a 3 - D version of a graphic reconstruction done earlier by Berkeley paleoanthropologist Tim White and the University of Tokyo's Gen Suwa, scaled to Lucy's size using her preserved foot bones.

For years, some paleoanthropologists argued that hominins like the famous 3.1 - million - year - old Lucy weren't graceful on the ground because they retained traits for climbing trees, such as long fingers and toFor years, some paleoanthropologists argued that hominins like the famous 3.1 - million - year - old Lucy weren't graceful on the ground because they retained traits for climbing trees, such as long fingers and tofor climbing trees, such as long fingers and toes.

It was «a lineage that existed for 1 million years or more and we missed it,» says co-author John Hawks, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

«I think for the first time, by virtue of the Dmanisi hominins, we have a solid hypothesis for the origin of H. erectus,» says Rick Potts, a paleoanthropologist at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.

rom the moment in 2013 when paleoanthropologist Lee Berger posted a plea on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn for «tiny and small, specialised cavers and spelunkers with excellent archaeological, palaeontological and excavation skills,» some experts began grumbling that the excavation of a mysterious hominin in the Rising Star Cave in South Africa was more of a media circus than a serious scientific expedition.

«This is astonishingly young for a species that still displays primitive characteristics found in fossils about 2 million years old,» says paleoanthropologist Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London.

«Lee has to be congratulated for finding this stuff,» says Fred Grine, a paleoanthropologist at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

This is a «plausible scenario for the demise of Lucy,» says paleoanthropologist William Jungers of the State University of New York at Stony Brook, who reviewed the paper for Nature.

For now, there is no way to know whether Graecopithecus jaws and teeth belonged to an ape with some hominid - like features or a hominid with some apelike features, says paleoanthropologist Bernard Wood of George Washington University in Washington, D.C. «My guess is the former.»

The traditional answer has been that Neanderthals have a big nose because they have a big mouth and a wide jaw, useful for ripping apart tough food, says Nathan Holton, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Iowa.

According to paleoanthropologist Lee Berger and his colleagues, who unearthed and analyzed the remains, they represent a new species of human — Homo naledi, for «star» in the local Sotho language — that could overturn some deeply entrenched ideas about the origin and evolution of our genus, Homo.

But paleoanthropologists had for a long time assumed that the same did not apply in colder regions such as the Mammoth steppes.

A new method for analyzing CT scans of fossils, however, is giving paleoanthropologists a new, more detailed look at the internal structure of hand bones, revealing how their habitual handiwork shaped their hands during life.

Rather than inheriting big brains from a common ancestor, Neandertals and modern humans each developed that trait on their own, perhaps favored by changes in climate, environment, or tool use experienced separately by the two species «more than half a million years of separate evolution,» writes Jean - Jacques Hublin, a paleoanthropologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, in a commentary in Science.

Whatever its name, others agree that the foot is unexpectedly primitive for 3.4 million years ago: «I would have expected such a foot from a much older hominin, not one that overlapped with A. afarensis, which has a much more derived foot than this thing,» says paleoanthropologist Jeremy DeSilva of Boston University, who is not a member of Haile - Selassie's team.

Additional commentary from paleoanthropologist Chris Stringer (Natural History Museum, London), geneticist Sarah Tishkoff (University of Pennsylvania), and study author Svante Pääbo (Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology).

«This is exactly what the DNA tells us when one tries to make sense of the Denisova discoveries,» says paleoanthropologist Jean - Jacques Hublin of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.

The Morocco fossils indicate that humankind's emergence involved populations across much of Africa, and started about 100,000 years earlier than previously thought, says paleoanthropologist Jean - Jacques Hublin of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.

Paleoanthropologist John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, for example, plans to ask his students to determine whether there's more intermarriage between hunter - gatherer groups that live close together and, therefore, are likely to have similar cultures.

Paleoanthropologists Jean - Jacques Hublin and Luke Premo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, tested this hypothesis by simulating how mating preferences alter gene flow between individuals in different groups.

«For me personally, I think Africa is still a strong contender for the split between chimpanzees, bonobos and whatever ends up with us, ancient hominins, but they are certainly putting forward a case in these two papers that is well worth archaeologists, paleoanthropologists, experts in the field, looking again at the record and thinking of if the African story does still stack up.&raqFor me personally, I think Africa is still a strong contender for the split between chimpanzees, bonobos and whatever ends up with us, ancient hominins, but they are certainly putting forward a case in these two papers that is well worth archaeologists, paleoanthropologists, experts in the field, looking again at the record and thinking of if the African story does still stack up.&raqfor the split between chimpanzees, bonobos and whatever ends up with us, ancient hominins, but they are certainly putting forward a case in these two papers that is well worth archaeologists, paleoanthropologists, experts in the field, looking again at the record and thinking of if the African story does still stack up.»

Kivell, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Kent and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, lead author Matthew Skinner, and their colleagues came to that conclusion after analyzing bones from Australopithecus hands from the Pliocene Epoch, approximately 5.3 - 2.6 million years ago.

«The first recognizable stone tools consist of stone pebbles and simple flakes and date to about 2.5 million years ago from Ethiopia,» Skinner, who is a paleoanthropologist at the University of Kent and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, said.

«This is a rock - solid case for having early humans — definitely Homo sapiens — at an early date in eastern Asia,» Chris Stringer, a paleoanthropologist at the Natural History Museum in London, who was not part of the research, told Nature.

Paleoanthropologists have been trying for decades to learn more about how australopiths evolved into Homo.