APE ASCENDANCY

Fossil find casts doubt on origins of man

Research published in the journal Nature today has thrown up a serious challenge to the widely accepted view on human evolution.

An international team of researchers, including a geologist from the Australian National University (ANU), has found that two different species of early man lived side by side in the same place for almost half a million years.

Susan Anton, an associate professor of anthropology at New York University and co-author of the research, said "the co-existence of the two species suggests that they were more like sister species, as opposed to homo habilus being the mother to homo erectus".

ANU geologist Ian MacDougall was part of the research team that travelled to the Koobi Fora Formation in Kenya.

"It really does throw into doubt a whole series of assumptions that have previously been made on the basis of the fossils," he said.