The Guardian - 29.08.2019

Section:GDN 1N PaGe:9 Edition Date:190829 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 28/8/2019 20:33 cYanmaGentaYellowbl

Thursday 29 Aug ust 2019 The Guardian •

National^9

Djibouti

Ethiopia

Eritrea

Addis Ababa

Yangudi Rassa

national park

Site where the

skull was found

100 miles

100 km

Scientists

put face

to name

of oldest

known

ancestor

Hannah Devlin
Science correspondent

The face of the oldest species that
unambiguously sits on the human
evolutionary tree has been revealed
for the fi rst time by the discovery of a
3.8 m-year-old skull in Ethiopia.
The fossil belongs to an ancient
hominin, Australopithecus anamensis,
believed to be the direct ancestor of
the famous “Lucy” species , Austra-
lopithecus afarensis. It dates to a time
when our ancestors were emerging
from the trees to walk on two legs, but
still had distinctly apelike protruding
faces, powerful jaws and small brains,
and is the oldest known member of the
Australopithecus group.
While Lucy became an icon of
human evolution, her direct prede-
cessor has remained a shadowy trace
on the record, with only a handful of
teeth, some limb bones and a few frag-
ments of skull to provide clues about
its appearance and lifestyle.
The latest specimen, a remarkably
complete adult male skull known as
MRD, changes this. “It is good to fi nally
be able to put a face to the name,” said
Stephanie Melillo of the Max Planck
Institute for Evolutionary Anthropol-
ogy in Germany and co-author of an
analysis of the fi nd.
Prof Fred Spoor of the Natural His-
tory Museum, London, who was not
involved in the research, said the dis-
covery of MRD – and its dating to a
period when the fossil record is very
sparse – would substantially aff ect
thinking on the evolutionary family
tree of early hominins. “This cranium

▲ Facial

reconstruction

shows how

MRD would

have looked

in life, with a

small brain

and prominent

cheekbones

looks set to become another celebrated

icon of human evolution,” he said.

The skull shows that MRD had a

small brain – about a quarter of the size

of a modern human – but was losing

some ape-like features. Its canines are

smaller than those seen in even earlier

fossils and it is already developing the

powerful jaw and prominent cheek-

bones seen in Lucy and the famous

Mrs Ples fossil (another later member

of the Australopithecus group).

The dating of the skull also reveals

that Anamensis and its descend-

ent species, Lucy, coexisted for at

least 100,000 years. This discovery

▼ The skull found in Ethiopia, which

scientists say casts new light on our

earliest ancestors PHOTOGRAPH:

CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY

challenges the long-held notion of lin-

ear evolution, in which one species

is replaced by another. Anamensis,

which now spans from 4.2m to 3.8m

years ago, is still thought to be Lucy’s

ancestor, but continued to hang

around after the Lucy group branched

off from the parent lineage.

Geological evidence suggests

the landscape would have featured

extremely steep hills, volcanoes, lava

fl ows and rifts that could easily have

isolated populations, allowing them

to diverge.

Divergent groups may have later

crossed paths and competed for food

▲ Yohannes Haile Selassie, who led the research, holding

the skull of the male known as MRD

and territory. Yohannes Haile- Selassie,

curator at the Cleveland Museum of

Natural History and professor at

Case Western Reserve University,

who led the research, said: “This is a

game changer in our understanding of

human evolution during the Pliocene.”

Afarensis, which continued to

appear on the fossil record until at

least 3m years ago, has often been put

forward as a likely candidate for ulti-

mately giving rise to the Homo lineage

of modern humans.

But the discovery that multiple dif-

ferent lineages coexisted makes this

hypothesis much less certain, accord-

ing to the researchers.

Spoor described Anamensis as the

“oldest known species that is unambig-

uously part of the human evolutionary

tree”. The fi rst piece of the fossil, the

upper jaw, was found by a local worker

in February 2016, in the Afar region of

Ethiopia. “I couldn’t believe my eyes

when I spotted the rest of the cranium.

It was a eureka moment and a dream

come true,” said Haile-Selassie.

The fi ndings are published in the

journal Nature.

Ban on far-right hate groups

‘could glamorise extremists’

Jamie Grierson
Home aff airs correspondent

The watchdog on terror legislation
has urged caution over plans to ban
far-right hate groups before they turn
to violence , warning doing so could
glamo rise designated organisations.
Jonathan Hall QC was respond-
ing to recommendations by the Tony
Blair Institute for Global Change to
draw up new laws to punish non-vio-
lent hate groups. The thinktank said
any fresh legislation would be simi-
lar to proscription powers – banning

could not be overestimated, he said.

“There are not just the immediate and

intended consequences of restricting

freedom of speech and assembly, but

the risk of unintended consequences :

for example, individuals suspected of

being associated with banned groups

having banking or other services

withdrawn .”

Hall said Blair’s government in 1998

found the pros and cons of a power

to ban non-Northern Ireland terror-

ist groups were “fi nely balanced” as

there was a real risk of the list quickly

becoming out of date. T he g overnment

might also come under pressure to tar-

get organisations that might not be

regarded as terrorist.

Off ences related to designation as a

hate group should be treated as civil,

not criminal, the thinktank recom-

mends. The authors also acknowledge

groups concerned with terrorism – but

would not be directly linked to vio-

lence or terrorism. Instead, it would

designate hate groups as organisations

that spread intolerance and antipathy

towards people of a diff erent race, reli-

gion, gender or nationality.

Hall, who took up the role of

independent reviewer of terrorism leg-

islation in May, said the proscription

model had many diffi culties, adding

“great care [is] needed before taking

specialised counter-terrorism tools

such as proscription out of their box,

and applying them to other areas”.

The impact of an official ban

that the issue of linking violent and

nonviolent extremism is contentious

and steps would need to be taken to

protect free speech.

The recommendations and con-

clusions are based on analysis of the

overlap between four far-right groups

• Britain First, For Britain, the British
  National party and Generation Identity
  England – and the ideology of the ter-
  rorist Anders Breivik, who murdered
  77 people in Norway in 2011.

Hall said there was a risk of glam-

orising designated groups: “Given that

the TB Institute proposes only civil

penalties for contravening a designa-

tion, which may be of limited impact

where a designated group does not

have centrally held funds, groups are

likely to welcome designation and the

opportunity to defy it.”

He said it would be very hard to

prove whose words caused most harm,

given that innocent speech and legiti-

mate ideas may be taken up by violent

extremists to justify their actions.

He praised the report, Narratives

of Hate: the Spectrum of Far-Right

Worldviews in the UK, for drawing

attention to the accountability gap

if decisions on whether to permit or

ban speech are taken by social media

companies based on their terms and

conditions.

‘The impact of an

offi cial ban could

not be overestimated’

Jonathan Hall

Reviewer of terrorism

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