Science News Daily

Do new discoveries ever "rewrite evolutionary history"?

A team of researchers at the University of Bristol decided to find out, with investigations of dinosaur and human evolution. Their study, which is published this week in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, suggests most fossil discoveries do not make a huge difference, confirming, not contradicting our understanding of evolutionary history.This is especially true of the fossil record of human origins from their monkey relatives. Even though early human fossils are immensely rare, and new discoveries make a big splash in the scientific literature and in the media, they sit randomly across the evolutionary tree of early humans. In other words, most discoveries of new fossil species simply fill in gaps in the fossil record that we already knew existed.As Dr James Tarver, leader of the study, said: "Human fossils are very rare, and they are costly to recover because of the time involved and their often remote locations. Scientists may be pushed by their sponsors, or by news reporters, to exaggerate the impor

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