Top 6 Human Evolution Discoveries of 2018
Posted December 11, 2018 by Jason Organ in Public science communication
Here we are, once again, at the end of a calendar year filled with lots of exciting news in the field of human evolution. Last year, just as we were finalizing edits on the 2017 Top 5 Human Evolution Discoveries list, the remainder of the skeleton of a human ancestor known colloquially as “Little Foot†(belonging to the genus Australopithecus, the same genus, but different species, as the famed “Lucy†fossil) was finally revealed after 20 years of cleaning and excavation from its embedding rock. Amazingly, just as we are finishing the edits for this year’s installment of top human evolution discoveries, Little Foot is back in the news. As of the last week of November, full descriptions and analyses of the remainder of the fossils are now available (prior to undergoing peer-review) on the preprint server bioRxiv. Enjoy reading our Top 6 list for 2018! Why 6? These stories are too cool not to share.–JMO
By Ella Beaudoin, BA, and Briana Pobiner, PhD, Human Origins Program, Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of Natural History
What does it mean to be human? What makes us unique among all other organisms on Earth? Is it cooperation? Conflict? Creativity? Cognition? There happens to be one anatomical feature that distinguishes modern humans (Homo sapiens) from every other living and extinct animal: our bony chin! But does a feature of our jaws have actual meaning for our humanity? We want to talk about the top six discoveries of 2018, all from the last 500,000 years of human evolution, that give us more insight into what it means to be human. If you want to learn more about our favorite discoveries from last year, read our 2017 blog post!
https://blogs.plos.org/scicomm/2018/12/11/top-6-human-evolution-discoveries-of-2018/
