Farewell Habilis

Beagle · Post by **Beagle** » Wed Aug 15, 2007 7:31 am

http://www.evolutionnews.org/2007/08/pa ... wn_ho.html

The old theory was that the first and oldest species in our family tree, Homo habilis, evolved into Homo erectus, which then became us, Homo sapiens. But those two earlier species lived side-by-side about 1.5 million years ago in parts of Kenya for at least half a million years, Leakey and colleagues report in a paper published in Thursday's journal Nature. In 2000 Leakey found an old H. erectus complete skull within walking distance of an upper jaw of the H. habilis, and both dated from the same general time period. That makes it unlikely that H. erectus evolved from H. habilis, researchers said.
In other words, habilis can no longer be considered the ancestor to the rest of the genus Homo.

I'm sure there will be considerable dispute among paleoanthropologists as time goes by, but for now Habilis gets the boot from the Homo genera.

Post by **Minimalist** » Wed Aug 15, 2007 8:35 am

I wonder about this. I rather doubt that these things are like turning off a light switch. No one has explained why there could not be a period of overlap.

Beagle · Post by **Beagle** » Wed Aug 15, 2007 9:03 am

Minimalist wrote:I wonder about this. I rather doubt that these things are like turning off a light switch. No one has explained why there could not be a period of overlap.

I agree Min. Like I said, I think there may be a lot of dispute over this. It seems impossible that when a group differentiates from his fellow species and evolves, that the former would immediatly go extinct.

It could be a good show.

Post by **Minimalist** » Wed Aug 15, 2007 11:17 am

It could be a good show.

Dueling fossils at 20 paces!

Rokcet Scientist · Post by **Rokcet Scientist** » Wed Aug 15, 2007 6:31 pm

Minimalist wrote:I wonder about this. I rather doubt that these things are like turning off a light switch. No one has explained why there could not be a period of overlap.

Any transition, if there was one, has an overlapping phase. But a half a million years would be a helluva long one. Almost impossibly long. HN went the way of the Dodo in a mere 11,000 years. Totally gone! The impossible length of the transition phase from HH into HE could be the argument for the posit that it wasn't a transition at all. Thus no lineage.