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Google Earth Helps Uncover Human Species

  • LA Times, Friday, April 9, 2010 2:14 PM

Making the spirit of Louis Leakey proud, Google Earth recently helped paleoanthropologists discover a human species that they say pre-dates our "genus Homo" ancestors. Over the last two years, professor Lee Berger at the University of the Witswatersrand in Johannesburg used Google Earth to track down over 500 previously undiscovered "caves and fossil sites" around the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site in South Africa. Based on those findings, scientists searched the newly discovered sites where they then discovered a new human species.

Christened "Australopithecus sediba," the species "was an upright walker that shared many physical traits with the earliest known species of the genus Homo." Google reports that while the findings are preliminary, scientists do believe that the species could provide valuable insight into human ancestry. Whether Google plans to officially add paleoanthropology to its long list of interested fields is not known.

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