Human-faced missing link found in Spain ?

The species has an unusually flat and human-like face suggesting the ancestors of modern humans split from European as oppose to African apes. It is cool that anything 11.9 million years old is discovered. Calcination and luck help. Imagine the millions of evolutionary animals turned to dust.

"The discovery suggests" These are the key words. Finding one skull with a flat face does not constitute an entire species transition. It's called an anomaly and it happens every day. Quite simply, this skull has features that one would never find in another known species. For example, you will simply not find a human with these characteristics. Although we may look different on the outside, when you take away our outer layers there are some very simple clues that indicate our obvious humanity. I'm a hardcore atheist science lover but I'm man enough to admit that current human evolution theori... [More]

Oh, we evolved from apes, I know this. But 100,000 - 300,000 ago? And I'm supposed to believe that it took modern human beings, with the exact same brain capacity as us, a massive 91,000 - 291,000 years just to figure out how to build the first civilization, a simple collection of houses and fields? No way. There is fossil evidence that proves modern homo sapiens sapiens is much, much more ancient, stretching back into the tens, if not hundreds of millions of years. The basic model for human evolution, ascension from apes, is sound. However, the current theories on the processes, timelines, lo... [More]

The chimpanzee in the middle of this picture looks exactly like my grandfather:

Oh, we evolved from apes, I know this. But 100,000 - 300,000 ago? Ehh, not exactly. I'm not sure where you heard that. The "Homo" genus probably evolved sometime around 2 million years ago. The "Homo" genus then split into several species. Currently, humans(Homo Sapien Sapiens) are the only known surviving species of homo. I'd suggest reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_evolution And I'm supposed to believe that it took modern human beings, with the exact same brain capacity as us, a massive 91,000 - 291,000 years just to figure out how to build the first civilization, a simple collect... [More]

To me this creature's face doesn't look more human than a lot of other primate faces.

To me this creature's face doesn't look more human than a lot of other primate faces. There are subtle differences with this hominid that are more apparent to those who are experts in their field. This is described in the OP's article. The ape's wide nose and long palate, for example, resemble those of the ancient apes from which great apes and humans arose, the study says. But Anoiapithecus' thickly enameled teeth and robust jaw are like those of primitive Kenyapithecus fossil apes, which lived in both Africa and Europe, according to the team. I could not have told you the difference between ... [More]

"With this fossil, our opinion is that the origin of our family very probably took place in the Mediterranean region," said study leader Salvador Moyà-Solà of the Catalan Institute of Paleontology in Barcelona. This is an incredibly unscientific statement and makes me wonder if the speaker of it doesn't have an agenda behind the claim (Nationalism, Ego)? One fossil does not describe a descent of lineage and the species to which this fossil belonged could have been an evolutionary dead-end. There is a huge gap in the fossil record in Europe between this discovery and the advent of hominid fos... [More]

Humans originated in the middle east, not Africa.

But I've seen equally-human-appearing faces in living orang-utans.