Jawbone Fossil Fills a Gap in Early Human Evolution

Dylan James

Chemistry Current Event

Wilford, John Noble. "Jawbone’s Discovery Fills Barren Evolutionary Period." The New York

Times. The New York Times, 04 Mar. 2015. Web. 05 Mar. 2015.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/05/world/jawbones-discovery-fills-barren-evolutionary-period.html?ref=science&_r=0

Jawbone Fossil Fills a Gap in Early Human Evolution

On the morning of January 29, 2013, a man by the name of Chalachew Seyoum was climbing in his native country of Ethiopia, and stumbled onto a rare fossil. The area in which he was climbing in was swarmed in rare fossils. But on a ridge, whilst climbing he spotted a jawbone looking fossil. Around the jaw bone there were five teeth. He gathered the remaining visible pieces. Yet recently in studies conducted by Mr. Seyoum, a graduate student in paleoanthropology at Arizona State University, discovered that this rare jaw bone nearly 2.8 million years old, is at least 400,000 years older than any other known Homo fossils. In the article it explains how this fossil is 200,000 years older than Lucy, a skeleton found in the 1970’s. Yet that led the scientists to question which species this creation truly was. Yet the final still questionable conclusion was that the creatures unknown species was more similar to an A. afarensis rather than a Homo erectus or Homo sapien which are known for being relatively more like humans , due to how modern humans are said to have emerged around 200,000 years ago. This discovery also describes how with the new knowledge discovered with the skull could lead scientists to discovering more about  the evolution of our genus, Homo.

This article is very significant toward humanity. The new information discovered on this topic is very important when discussing the evolution of humans. It gives us some insight on the origin of the human race, and where we came from. This is also significant because it may also give our world more insight on a new species, a species which we have gather little evidence on, which may also help scientists piece together more of the puzzle on where we as humans came from.

The author did a great job when writing this piece. Yet there were a few parts of his article that frustrated me a little bit. One of these things was the vagueness of his writings in some parts. Like when describing different species, I would have enjoyed it if he gave a little background on what these species were like. Not doing this made his writing a little complicated. But other than that I loved the piece and the information I learned when reading it.