A jawbone fossil unearthed in Ethiopia throws new light on evolution of Man

#humanorigin #fossil A fossil jawbone has been found in Ethiopia and it dates back to nearly three million years and it is proof that the first humans emerged 400,000 years earlier than previously thought as reported in news.sky.com dated 5 March 2015.
In the opinion of scientists, the discovery of this artefact would narrow down the evolutionary gap between the first humans and their ape-like ancestors, according to scientists. The concept till now was that the earliest known fossil (labeled as LD 350-1) of the Homo genus was 2.3 million years old – it had been found less than 20 miles from where the latest discovery has taken place.
Specimens that are more than 2.5 million years old have been hard to find and are poorly preserved.
Dr Brian Villmoare of the University of Nevada, who co-led the fossil hunters, has indicated that despite lots of search, fossils on the Homo lineage that are older than two million years ago are very rare. His colleague Dr William Kimbel, director of the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University, has added that the Ledi jaw would, without doubt, help to narrow down the evolutionary gap between Australopithecus and early Homo.