From World Magazine::
“With every bone in the body represented multiple times, it is already practically the best-known fossil member of our lineage,” said paleoanthropologist Lee Berger in a conference call with reporters. Berger, a University of Witwatersrand professor and National Geographic explorer-in-residence, led the effort to excavate and study the fossils.
But the discovery has already stirred up controversy among researchers, some of whom are unconvinced the fossils represent a new species of hominin—an evolutionary label that includes modern humans and their ancestors.
The definition of “species” is itself somewhat arbitrary. Christoph Zollikofer, an anthropologist at the University of Zurich, doesn’t believe the new fossils have enough “new and unique” features to justify calling them a new species.
“The fossil ensemble fits very well into what is already known as ‘early Homo erectus,’” he told me by email.
A bunch of people have differing opinions .
O’Leary for News’s private opinion: At least Naledi is real news. It sure beats that parallel universe running backwards in time. Or maybe the parallel universe was twisted sideways, and who would know?
See also: Homo Naledi not published in Nature
and
The Science Fictions series at your fingertips (human evolution)
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