USF geologist finds key details of human evolution

Posted Aug 5, 2011 by Lindsay Peterson

Updated Aug 5, 2011 at 04:44 PM

University research isn’t always an ivory tower experience.

Check out the guy walking behind USF geologist Jonathan Wynn.

Wynn carries a hippo bone

He and others from around the world have spent years in Ethiopia, searching for clues to the origins of man.

Armed local guides go with them everywhere. It’s a basic necessity of being there, particularly with the costly equipment the researchers carry with them.

And it seems to be worth the risk. Wynn and several others published their latest findings in the journal Nature this week.

Their work shows that it was on the savannahs of eastern Africa that early man started to become more like us, learning to walk on two legs and developing more advanced survival skills.

“This is a whole new step in human evolution – even if it just means they were foraging for plants, they were learning new skills and new behaviors,” Wynn told USF’s Vickie Chachere.

Wynn has been working in Ethiopia for years, which is parched and rough now, nothing like a savannah. He was part of a Nature publication last year that presented evidence that human ancestors used tools nearly a million years earlier than previously thought.

Early man appeared to be a meat-eater

And he was part of the group that discovered the skeleton of a creature they named “Selam.”

Believed to be about 3.3 million years old, she had long ape-like arms but feet and a lower body that allowed her to walk like a human.

You can read more about that here.