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Article: AN APE-MAN TUMBLED INTO HISTORY 3.5 MILLION YEARS AGO.(News)
- Article from:
- Seattle Post-Intelligencer
- Article date:
- December 10, 1998
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1998 Seattle Post-Intelligencer. All rights reserved. Reproduced with the permission of the Dialog Corporation by Gale Group. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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About 3.5 million years after it fell face first into a shaft - possibly while fleeing a voracious carnivore - a fossilized South African ape-man was unveiled yesterday as the best clue yet to the conundrum of human evolution.
South African paleontologists said the skull and skeleton of the Australopithecus hominid - the only one to be found near-complete - would provide more information on our transition from ape to human than any other similar fossil find.
Ron Clarke, director of excavations at Sterkfontein cave near Johannesburg, where the specimen was discovered, said he had not been able to determine its sex.
But Clarke added that it had ...