Ancestors Go South
By Bruce Bower
Some of the oldest fossils in the human evolutionary family–including the skull and upper-arm bone shown at right–come from South Africa, according to a study in the April 25 Science.
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A mix of new and already excavated Australopithecus fossils, found in two caves, date to 4 million years ago, reports a team led by Timothy C. Partridge of University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. That’s as many as 1 million years earlier than previous estimates for South Africa.