What will the missing link look like when it is found?

Question

Will it be a man-ape or ape-man?

Is the new Australopithecus a link?

Anthropologists thought it would look one way then started finding hominids that made them rethink.

I have read the article in National Geographic. Really I think she pretty much looked like a walking chimpanzee. Hair loss probably evolved later when increased walking\running necessitated increased heat dissapation through sweating. And at only three years old she personally would not have contributed to the gene pool but her species most likely did.

Answer 1

There may be an australopithecus in our ancestry but it looks like A. Afarensis probably is not. The so called missing link isn't really missing anymore. There are lots of them. There are always missing links in between the known "links". I think our ancestors have been bipedal for at least 6,000,000 years so our ancestor will look similar to us but have a brain similar to an apes. Humans are really a type of ape. It is only because we get to chose the categories that we are separated in my opinion. So our ancestor was an ape (even assuming we aren't). Our ancestors were apes for probably 15 million years and would be considered "apes" to at least 3 million years ago. In my family, my cousins would probaly still be considered as apes.

Answer 2

Generally speaking, I thought the new Australopithecus was a link, in part because of the old age of the fossil, but also in part because the fossil is apparently of a young female of the species.

And yeah, the computer rendered photo on the cover of this month's U.S. _National Geographic_ is as much a guess as anything, but it does cover what paleontologists believe a missing link to be: essentially an *ape species* that has the proto-type traits of a pre-human, it walks upright, still has the grasping, prehensile hands, and shows the *beginnings of* losing the fur and gaining *more brains*.

I mean, if you can get past the computer render on the cover, read the article...it goes into some detail explaining the logic of their thinking. I found it enlightening. Even if the render is a wee bit, um, creepy in a tabloid sort of way. ;)

Answer 3

It will look like me

Answer 4

The experts can't tell you, and thats why it can't be found.