Accidental Discoveries

Dugger, Celia W. and John Noble Wilford. " New Hominid Species Discovered in South Africa." The New York Times April 8 2010

Celia W. Dugger and John Nobel Wilford describe a nine-year-old boy named Matthew Berger in Johannesburg, South Africa, who "tripped over a log" after chasing his dog on August 15, 2008 and found the bones of "a new hominid species that lived almost two million years ago during the fateful, still mysterious period spanning the emergence of the human family." It was lucky for this boy to find these, since his dad is Paleoanthropologist Lee R. Berger. Lee R. Berger had been searching the same area for the past twenty years, finding very little, so Matthew must have known this was exactly what his dad wanted to find. Sometimes it takes an accident or not looking to discover great things.
The hominid Matthew discovered was a "4-foot-2 boy who had been just a few years older than Matthew himself," buried along with three other individuals and several animals close by. This new hominid species has been named "Australopithecus sediba. " Dugger and Wilford say, "Geologists estimated that the individuals lived 1.78 million to 1.95 million years ago," descending from "Australopithecus africanus," and they believe they are a possible "immediate" ancestor to Homo erectus.
In class we learned about several species and how they are connected to the modern humans. I bet it is very exciting to discover new clues on how we are connected to other species, as scientists who spend their entire lives trying to create a timeline and family trees. I figure finding a new species is like finding piece to a puzzle you're trying to complete, but sometimes discoveries leads to even more questions instead of answers. Hopefully one day, we will be able to put the entire puzzle together.