The paleontologists who are announcing the discovery in the journal Nature said the 3.3 million-year-old fossils were of the earliest well-preserved child ever found in the human lineage. It was estimated to be about 3 years old at death, probably female and a member of the Australopithecus afarensis species, the same as Lucy?s.
An analysis of the skeleton revealed evidence of a species in transition, the scientists said in interviews today. The lower limbs supported earlier findings that afarensis walked upright, like modern humans. But gorilla-like arms and shoulders suggested that it possibly retained an ancestral ability to climb and swing through the trees.
?The child really confirms that afarensis was walking upright,? said Tim D. White, a paleoanthropologist at the University of California, Berkeley. ?It has the potential to answer old questions and raises some new ones? ? including their behavior in trees.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/20/science/21childcnd.html?hp&ex=1158811200&en=269f73ec99908815&ei=5094&partner=homepage
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