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It’s not often that a respected professor embarks on an investigation into a scientific discovery by a 15-year-old, but in 1938 Robert Bloom made an exception. The British-born paleontologist was keenly aware that South Africa in the 1930s was gaining a reputation for extremely primitive-looking hominin fossils. So when he heard that elementary school student Gerd Terblanche had discovered a fragment of a human skull in a cave there, he immediately tracked him down. Bloom’s visit to the boy’s school was successful. The boy later recalled that he was walking around with children. “Probably the world’s four most precious teeth are in his pants pocket.”.
Within a few months, Bloom completed his analysis of the fossil. He determined that they were different from anything previously discovered; He gave ancient humans a new name. paranthropus.
However, although he was convinced that the remains were valuable, paranthropus He never became famous. Perhaps it was because it was a misfit. It resembled one of our small-brained ancestors, but existed on Earth long after other ape-like hominids were replaced by large-brained hominins. Even among paleoanthropologists, paranthropus They are depicted as a “forgotten” human race.
It probably won’t last very long. Spurred by the discovery of more fossils, researchers are finally starting to re-evaluate this addition to the evolutionary tree – and their research suggests it was one of the strangest. ing. paranthropus They may have been skilled tool makers, but they also may have grazed like cows and communicated with low calls like elephants. The question now is whether this research will bring us any closer to understanding how the last apemen survived in a world dominated by…
Source: www.newscientist.com
