http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20141127-lucy-fossil-revealed-our-origins
So for my last post, let's start at the beginning. The article above is about the importance of Lucy, the fossilized remains of an early hominid believed to be our ancestor. What I found most interesting is that she was not the first of her particular species found. In 1924, another skeleton was discovered in South Africa but that one was dismissed by the leading scientists at the time as 'just an ape' and not important to us trying to discover our evolutionary origins.
Lucy is special because she was accepted and encouraged scientists to search for more early human species. In 1974 when Lucy was discovered only seven early human species were known. Since then thirteen have been added.
Another thing that is very interesting is that scientists still don't know exactly where are evolutionary tree begins or how many of the hominids they are studying are 'dead ends' in that tree. They still have a lot to figure out about homo sapiens but they do know that our tree is not a straight line. We were built by experimentation and interspecies mingling of DNA.
