Humanity may have originated in the woods

HUMANITY MAY HAVE ORIGINATD IN THE

 WOODS

The immediate ancestor of humans may have lived exclusively on leaves, fruits, wood and bark instead of a menu based on open savanna as other extinct relatives of humanity did, scientists say. The findings, published in the journal Nature, are based on two million years fossils of the extinct hominine Australopithecus sediba.

Au-sediba’s mix of human and primitive traits has made a strong case for it being the immediate ancestor of human lineage. Chimpanzees, humans’ closest living relatives, prefer fruits and leave even when grasses are abundant. By contrast, extinct humans’ species preferred diets richer in grasses or grass eating animals. The findings suggest there wasn’t a single, straight line from an early, primitive hominine to humans, said study author Amanda Henry, a paleoanthropologist at Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.”Many of our ancestors and relatives branched out, tried new things and generally worked at doing what was best in their environment at that particular time,” Henry was quoted as saying by Live Science. 

From

                                       DC 29.06.2012.