Saturday, September 26, 2009

More Evolution Debate

    On May 15, 2009 a new fossil was discovered that may change the way people see who we evolved from.  Before this fossil was found, it was believed that all humans evolved from an ancestor common to humans, apes and chimpanzees.  A fossil of a young female adapid was found looking very much like humans are believed to look like during their evolution.  A female adapid is a lemur, but this one wasn't like the ring-tailed lemurs we think of today.  This lemur was very different because it was missing two of three big components that normal lemurs would be guaranteed to have.  Normal lemurs have a tooth comb, which is a tooth for grooming fur, a groom claw (which is similar), and a wet nose.  While this lemur doesn't have the first two, we do not know if it has a wet nose.  This discovery will spark new debates regarding which animal we evolved from.
            I found this topic to be very interesting because I had always thought that humans had definitely evolved from apes.  I thought that because this information came out that the future generations will think about lemurs instead of how I thought about apes.  This relates to science (I think) because we will be studying about the life cycle and most likely evolution from whatever it is we truly evolved from.

~DW
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