Newly Found Ancient Skull Could Rewrite History of Human Evolution Jim Axelrod - CBS News
go to original October 29, 2013

The skull of an ancient proto-human found where Eastern Europe meets Western Asia has scientists rethinking human evolution, saying the discovery profoundly alters and simplifies everything we know. Jim Axelrod reports. (CBS This Morning)

From the moment they discovered the skull buried under a village in the former Soviet republic of Georgia, scientists knew they had something applause-worthy.

At 1.8 million years old, the skull may do nothing less than rewrite the history of humanity.

"Skull 5," as it's known, belonged to an adult male with a large jutting jaw and brain case less than half the size of a human today.

"It's an almost perfectly complete skull," said Jamie Shreeve, executive science editor for National Geographic, "and because of that, it has a lot of information."

"Skull 5," as it's known, belonged to an adult male with a large jutting jaw and brain case less than half the size of a human today. Four other partial skulls were found with it, dating from the same time but with great variations from each other - the same kind of variations seen in modern humans.

"We don't call modern human pygmies and Eskimos different species obviously," said Shreeve, "and so they think we should not call these things a different species, too."

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