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Biology in the News is presented by Dr. Lamar's Biology A/B classes. Each student is responsible for posting ONE blog entry and commenting on ONE post submitted by a fellow student.

About your initial posting . . . . . (approximately 150- 300 words)

Your initial posting is worth 30 points. It must be submitted by October 15th. - Locate an electronic article about a new finding in biology. Article must be been written in the last 12 months. Your posting should include 1) the name of the article (3 point), 2) article source - be specific (3 point), 3) date of article (2 point), 4) link to article (2 points), 5) summary of article in your own words (0-10 points), and 6) significance of article (0-10 points). Comments on significance of article can include (but not be limited to) importance of article to self, to society, or to the further advancement of a particular area of biology.

NOTE: To add link, select text in post that you want to link, click on link icon above posting field, and then paste URL information into appropriate field.

About your comments to a fellow classmate's posting . . . . (approximately 100 - 200 words)

Your comments to another student's posting is worth 20 points. Comments must be submitted between October 16 and November 19 - "The more you know, the more you realize there's a lot more to know" is certainly true to science. Read our Biology in the News blob posts. Pick one post (not your own) and submit comments about this post. Comments should included 1) A question that is raised in your mind by the post. The question should have scientific relevance (0 - 5 points) 2) a response to your question. (0-15 points) Research your question and answer it. If the answer is currently unknown, provide additional background information, describe research that is being done in this field, and/or research that is required for the question to be answered.

Thursday, October 21, 2010

Scientists uncover new species of human ancestor

Name: Scientists uncover new species of human ancestor
Source: University of New South Wales
Date: April 9, 2010
Link:http://www.biologynews.net/archives/2010/04/09/scientists_uncover_new_species_of_human_ancestor.html

Summaries: In this article a team of 60 scientist have discovered a skeleton of an adult female and a child's skeleton. Dr. Andy Herries from the University of New South Wales was also apart of this discovery. These skeletons were found in South Africa. The skeletons are about 1.95 million to 1.78 million years old. Those two skeletons were from a new species. The name of the new species is called Australopithecus sediba. This species has similarities to the bipedal ape and an early homo. This article shows us that there are more species that were around that we don't know about that are extinct. It makes me wondered what other new species are out in the world.

4 comments:

  1. Question: How do they know the species is an ancestor of humans?

    Answer: The species has many traits that are similar to that of humans, such as being able to walk upright on two legs. Also, they were ancestors of many Primates, who happen to be closely related to humans. However, it's not certain that this species was an ancestor of either of these species; it's only known that the species was closely-related to both humans and our close relatives.

    P.S. - this is Erin Clingenpeel. I had to use a former name...

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  2. Also - got this same information from the site sourced.

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  3. IS Australopithecus sediba an actual Ancestor of humans?
    Actually some scientist are saying the fossils do not match that much. They look at the bones of the Female and it say that it may be ancestor of the ape but the bones doesn't directly match that of a human in most aspects. According to Dr. J.L Wile out of 7 claims the scientist made who discovered the "extinct Ape" Only 3 out of seven actually match. So it is still possible for it to be a direct descendant, but scientist still isn't sure. More research is still going to have to be made on the bones of the child before a conclusion can be made.
    http://blog.drwile.com/?p=899

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  4. Sorry - I had to repost under this name. -.- Anyway, copy and paste again - please don't take off points for me being late! I'm really sorry for not posting it under this name instead of posting it under my Google Blogger account!

    "Question: How do they know the species is an ancestor of humans?

    Answer: The species has many traits that are similar to that of humans, such as being able to walk upright on two legs. Also, they were ancestors of many Primates, who happen to be closely related to humans. However, it's not certain that this species was an ancestor of either of these species; it's only known that the species was closely-related to both humans and our close relatives."

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