An ancient member of the human family has gotten a digital facelift, and the new mug looks more ape-like than scientists previously thought.
The new reconstruction suggests the large brains and flatter faces characteristic of modern humans did not appear in our lineage until much later in our history.
‚ÄúFor how many years now, people have been using this [skull] and the numbers may not be very meaningful,‚ÄĚ said Timothy Bromage, an anthropologist at New York University who led the new reconstruction effort....
It's worth noting that they're talking about basic rules of skull design and the requirement that structures work together, as if they were, well, designed. Good for them!
It's also worth noting that they're trying to create a timeline of human descent based (at least at their estimated time-frame of 1.5-2 million years ago) based on no more than two skulls. I'm not quite sure that, as a trained statistician, I'd put much confidence in a line drawn through only a few points like this.