London - A 2.5 million-year-old missing link bridging the gap between apes which stood on two feet and humans may have been found in Africa, scientists said yesterday. Fossils unearthed in an Ethiopian desert belonged to creatures which had ape-like arms but human-like legs with long thigh bones.
Furthermore, there was evidence that they used stone tools to strip meat and scrape marrow from the bones of antelopes and horses. This was the earliest example known of tool-assisted meat eating.
One specimen found at the site consisted of skull and tooth remains, which allowed the team of Ethiopian, American and Japanese researchers to assign this creature to a new species. They named it Australopithecus garhi - garhi being the local word for "surprise". Writing in the journal Science, the scientists said the newly-discovered hominid may have been the immediate ancestor of humans.