New Hominid Identified

New Hominid Foot Bones

Newly discovered fossilized foot bones have helped anthropologists to identify a previously unknown hominid, one that appears to have lived alongside Australopithecus afarensis. The 3.4 million-year-old partial fossil was unearthed in Ethiopia in an area very near to where the famous Lucy fossil was uncovered nearly 30 years ago; with Lucy’s age pegged at about [...]

African Diversity in Tutu’s DNA

Desmond Tutu

Knowledge of genetic diversity has taken a leap forward with the results of testing being done in southern Africa released last week with a surprise finding related to the ancestry of Archbishop Desmond Tutu. In a study of local tribes and their DNA, Stephan Schuster and his team from Pennsylvania State University found more than [...]