Hominid Fossil Speaks Volumes
— -- Move over, Lucy.
“Madeleine” is a new fossil star from Indonesia likely to further fuel the debate over where modern humans evolved.
A team of scientists from the American Museum of Natural History and other institutions is still analyzing data from the partial hominid skull which shows features of both Homo sapiens, our forebears, and Homo erectus, an earlier species. Their most stunning conclusion so far is that Madeleine probably had a capacity for language close to that of modern humans.
“We don’t know what the immediate ancestors of Homo sapiens are, really,” says Eric Delson of Lehman College in New York, leader of the scientific team. This creature, he adds, “had the mental capacity to undertake complex reasoning.”
Does that make it a candidate? Delson hedges, but admits that when details are published, many paleoanthropologists will think it “might represent a population evolving in the direction of modern humans.”
The specimen was actually unearthed two years ago, but disappeared into the obscurity of the private fossil market. Henry Galiano, owner of the Manhattan natural history store Maxilla & Mandible, returned the skull fragment to Indonesian government officials Aug. 30 in New York.
After the farmer who originally discovered the specimen near Sambungmacan, Central Java, sold it to a local fossil dealer, a short description was published in a journal in Indonesia. Then it vanished, apparently smuggled out of the country. Galiano says he bought it several months ago with items from a collector’s estate.
Once he removed a thick layer of dirt, Galiano recognized the skull as hominid, but peculiar. “It just seemed odd,” he recalls. As he examined it, he says, he realized, “Oh my God, this is important.” Galiano contacted several paleoanthropologists to help identify the specimen, which he dubbed Madeleine in honor of a friend’s daughter.
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