Many of us thought we'd had the key features of evolution figured out. Creatures faced competition with others and changed accordingly. Lucy, a skeleton found in 1974, became an iconic figure in mankind's lineage.
But news released over the past week has thrown evolution for a loop, causing many to reexamine the nature of the process, as well as where in the world we came from.
Take Australopithecus sediba, the creature with both ape and human characteristics now thought to possibly be the real precursor to "Homo erectus."
As project leader for sediba Lee Berger said, "Sediba shows a strange mix of primitive australopithecine traits and derived Homo traits - face and anterior dentition like Homo, shape of the cranium like Homo, other parts of the face and size of the cranium like an australopithecine, arms like an australopithecine, pelvis and lower limbs like Homo and feet and ankles like an australopithecine."
So mankind's real progenitor was a South African ape-man that had a pigeon-toed walk, human-like teeth and spent most of its time in trees?
Or how about the new research into hobbits on the island of Flores, thought to have died out around 12,000 years ago? Called Homo floresiensis, the species were only about three and a half feet tall and had short legs in comparison to their feet and arms. Having evolved from Homo erectus, the species are now believed to have larger brains than previously thought.
In contrast, some creatures haven't changed much at all. Take the Coelacanth fish. Dwelling in the deep sea off the coast of South Africa, Coelacanth was thought to have gone extinct around 70 million years ago, until one was found in 1938. Since their deep sea environment didn't change much, neither did they.
"We often talk about how species have changed over time," study co-author Kerstin Lindblad-Toh said. "But there are still a few places on Earth where organisms don't have to change, and this is one of them."
Maybe this week is a reminder that sometimes the best thing science can do for us is cause us to rework past assumptions, giving us some time to move back in order to move ahead.
