One of the earliest known hominids, a 6-million-year-old member of humanity’s evolutionary family, walked upright with nearly the same facility as do people today, according to a new fossil analysis.
In 2001, a French team recovered teeth and limb-bone fragments of Orrorin tugenensis in Kenya. A disagreement quickly arose about whether the fossil teeth more closely resembled those of even-older apes or of later hominids (SN: 7/14/01, p.
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