Ape-man species' skeleton found

New York: Scientists have discovered a remarkably complete skeleton of a 3-year-old female from the ape-man species represented by "Lucy".

The discovery should fuel a contentious debate about whether this species, which walked upright, also climbed and moved through trees easily like an ape.

The remains are 3.3 million years old, making them the oldest known skeleton of such a youthful human ancestor.

"It's pretty unbelievable" to find such a complete fossil from that long ago, said scientist Fred Spoor.

"It's a once-in-a-lifetime find." Spoor, professor of evolutionary anatomy at University College London, describes the fossil in yesterday's issue of the journal Nature with Zeresenay Alemseged of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and other scientists.

The skeleton was discovered in 2000 in northeastern Ethiopia. Scientists have spent five painstaking years removing the bones from sandstone, and the job will take years more to complete.

Judging by how well it was preserved, the skeleton may have come from a body that was quickly buried by sediment in a flood, the researchers said.

The skeleton has been nicknamed "Selam," which means "peace" in several Ethiopian languages.

Creature

The creature was a member of Australopithecus afarensis, which lived in Africa between about 4 million and 3 million years ago. The most famous afarensis is Lucy, discovered in Ethiopia in 1974, which lived about 100,000 years after the newfound specimen.

Most scientists believe afarensis stood upright and walked on two feet, but they argue about whether it had ape-like agility in trees.

That climbing ability would require anatomical equipment like long arms, and afarensis had arms that dangled down to just above the knees. The question is whether such features indicate climbing ability or just evolutionary baggage.

Spoor said so far, analysis of the new fossil hasn't settled the argument but does seem to indicate some climbing ability.

While the lower body is very human-like, he said, the upper body is ape-like: The shoulder blades resemble those of a gorilla rather than a modern human.