Evidence points toward solving evolutionary "missing link"

After four years of intense analysis, a team of paleoanthropologists is making its most detailed case yet that a pair of ancient skeletons discovered in a grassy South African valley could represent the direct evolutionary link between modern humans and the family of human ancestors that includes the Australopithecus known as Lucy.

In a series of six papers published in Friday’s edition of the journal Science, the researchers argue that the “mosaic nature” of the Australopithecus sediba specimens makes them a strong candidate to be the “missing link” — the branch of Australopithecus that ultimately gave rise to the genus Homo, which includes Homo sapiens.

The skeleton fossils have so many human-like features “across the whole of the body that it must be considered, at the very least, a possible ancestor,” said Lee R. Berger, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, who discovered the fossils in 2008. Berger was senior author of all the new studies.