Paleontology: The Age of Man

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The identification of Ramapithecus has even more profound implications to paleontologists. If he is indeed a hominid, Rama would be the direct predecessor of a creature called Australopithecus (southern ape), who, in turn, has long been accepted by scientists as being man's most immediate ancestor among the primates. Unlike the ape: who lived with him in East Africa, the short (just over 4 ft.), heavy-jawed man ape, Australopithecus, stood erect, eating meat as well as fruits and vegetables and was probably the first creature to make and use tools of stone.* Until recently, most paleontologists were certain that Australopithecus lived no more thar 2,000,000 years ago—or at least 6,000, 000 years after Rama. The Yalemen's discovery thus creates a huge gap in man's history between Australopithecus and Rama.

As it happens, new fossil finds made by other investigators, operating quite independently, are closing the gap by showing that Australopithecus is really much older than had been thought—in fact, as much as 6,000,000 years.

Ferocious Neighbors. The evidence comes, in part, from Africa's Omo River Basin, a fossil-rich area where the borders of Ethiopia, Kenya and the Sudan meet. There, a University of Chicago expedition has found 40 prehistoric teeth and two jawbones buried in volcanic ash that is perhaps 4,000,000 years old. The expedition's leader, Anthropologist F. Clark Howell, is convinced that the creatures are members of the Australopithecus family, even though they must have belonged to a branch that probably did not eat meat or make tools. Despite their proximity to various ferocious neighbors in the fossil bed, says Howell, these man-apes were apparently able to survive with no other weaponry than their wits.

A few miles west of Kenya's Lake Rudolf, Harvard Paleontologist Bryan Patterson discovered the fragment of a jaw that he reckons is 5,000,000 years old. In roughly the same area, the University of London's William Bishop found a lone primate tooth that may be several million years older. Most tantalizing of all, jaws and teeth dating back 6,000,000 to 8,000,000 years have been uncovered in Southern Europe and mainland China.

The discoverers have not yet acknowledged their finds in formal reports to scientific journals, perhaps because the bones upset too many old theories. Their scientific caution is understandable. In a few short years, man's fossil record has been extended from less than 2,000,000 years to possibly more than 14 million. Yet even that startling leap back into the past amounts to only a few moments in the 4.5 billion-year history of the earth. Three billion years before man's ancestors took their separate evolutionary path from the apes, life already existed and flourished. Despite the new paleontological evidence, man remains a mere infant.