New humaniod fossil found in SA

[LogicalFallacy]

Wish they'd stop using the term "missing link" though. People keep expecting to see a half monkey half human which is never going to be the case.

 

http://www.msn.com/en-nz/news/world/fossils-discovered-in-south-africa-are-the-missing-link-in-human-evolution-study-finds/ar-BBSydXJ

[pantheory]

This fossil is one more piece of the lineage of humanity. According to this article this species was not in our direct line of evolution,  instead it was the result of an evolutionary off-shoot that lived maybe a million years after our direct-line descendant.  

[sdelsolray]

Something I learned recently (that I should have realized years ago, but didn't) is that homo sapiens is the only currently living species within the genus homo.  All others are extinct.

 

[LogicalFallacy]

Yes, interesting and humbling to realise there were other 'humans' but we were the ones who survived. Heck we even breed with some of them! A far cry from "God created man in his image."

[sdelsolray]

If a species is extant, members of that species are alive.  Feeling interested or humbled for being a living member of an extant species is recognized, seems limited to that organism's internal thoughts and has little or nothing to do with genetic evolutionary processes.  I'm leaving out memetic evolutionary processes, as they can have an influence on the future of sentient species.