The Missing Link Appears

After painstakingly cleaning and reassembling hundreds of fragments pulled from 200 meter stretch of an Ethiopian riverbank, an international team of archeologists have assembled three full skulls. Because they were buried with volcanic rocks between layers of ash, geologist can confidently date them at around 160,000 years old, the oldest fully human fossils ever found.

There are good human fossils from 100,000 years ago, he adds, but from then back to 300,000 years ago the remains are either highly fragmented, poorly dated or both. In contrast, the newly revealed skulls have precise dates thanks to the fragments of volcanic rocks found with the fossils. When rocks cool, they begin to accumulate argon gas from the decay of a potassium isotope. Analysing the gas gives the rock's age, in this case 154,000 to 160,000 years old.

The anthropological implications:
1. It lays to rest any lingering notions that we evolved from Neanderthals. They were a competing branch on the tree.
2. It pretty much ends any debate: we evolved once in Africa, not in multiple places around the globe.

Also of interest, these fossils show that the earliest humans were quite large and seem to have already developed ritualistic mortuary practices.

They collected more than 600 stone tools, including hand axes. But they never uncovered the lower jaws to the skulls or any parts of the skeletons. Anthropologists suspect that the skulls had been deliberately removed from the bodies as part of some ancient mortuary practice. Close inspection revealed parallel incisions around the perimeter of one skull, more cut marks on the other two. Similar modifications have been observed by anthropologists in societies, including some in New Guinea, in which the skulls of ancestors are preserved and worshiped.

The three skulls, all missing the lower jaws, were excavated a few hundred feet from one another. The most complete one, probably that of an adult male, especially impressed scientists with its humanlike size and shape, very nearly modern. So the discoverers decided the specimen belonged in the same genus and species as modern humans, Homo sapiens. But there were just enough differences, the scientists concluded, that the fossils were probably a subspecies, Homo sapiens idàltu, to differentiate them from fully modern humans, Homo sapiens sapiens. Idàltu is a word meaning "elder" in the local Afar language.

As of yet, there is still no comment from the standard bearers of creationism.