Exiting Discoveries

Following are a few recent discoveries (by no means comprehensive) in evolutionary science:

1) Another Branch In The Human Family Tree, Homo luzonensis
Fossil remains of at least two adults and one child of a new hominin species were found in Callao Cave on the island of Luzon in the Philippines dated to between 50,000-67,000 years old. Since its hands and feet have features that are even more ancient than those of Homo erectus, this could mean that its ancestor is an even earlier hominin that migrated out of Africa? Only the discovery of more fossils will answer this question. 

2) Australopithecus anamensis skull discovered
This species was known from teeth, jaws, and some postcranial bones from the sites of Allia Bay and Kanapoi in northern Kenya dated to between about 4.2 and 3.9 million years ago. But last year, a team led by the Cleveland Museum of Natural History’s Yohannes Haile-Selassie made a stunning announcement: they had found a nearly complete 3.8 million year old Australopithecus anamensis skull, MRD-VP-1/1, at the site of Woronso-Mille in Ethiopia. This shows that a small group of genetically isolated A. anamensis – rather than the entire species A. anamensis – evolved into A. afarensis, which then lived side by side together for 100,000 years.

3) DNA of Diverse Denisovans
ancient mitochondrial DNA was extracted from the 30,000-50,000 year old fossil finger bone of a young woman.from Denisova Cave in Siberia, where both modern human and Neanderthal fossils had been discovered. But she was neither human nor Neanderthal – she was from an extinct population which before then had been unknown to scientists. The results indicate that modern humans interbred with at least three Denisovan groups that were geographically isolated from each other in deep time.

4) Neanderthals Made Ornaments
Early depictions of Neanderthals, our short, stocky now-extinct relatives who were built for the cold and lived in Europe and western Asia between about 400,000 and 40,000 years ago, portrayed them as brutish and unintelligent – but subsequent research indicated they were accomplished hunters who made complex tools, buried their dead, and may have taken care of the sick and injured. Scientists studied imperial eagle talons from Cova Foradada Cave in Calafell, Spain and concluded that since there’s hardly any meat on eagle feet, the cut marks on these talons must mean that the Neanderthals were using them as jewellery. While a handful of previous examples of Neanderthals making necklaces from the bones of birds of prey have been found, this is the first evidence of the use of personal ornaments among Iberian Neanderthals, and at 44,000 years ago.

5) Bent-backed Bipedal Apes
In November of this year, a team from the University of Missouri reported on their study of a recently discovered 10 million year old pelvis of a medium dog-sized fossil ape species Rudapithecus hungaricus from Rudabánya, Hungary. This species had a much more flexible torso than any of today’s living apes, who have short lower back and longer pelves and it might have been able to stand upright when it was on the ground, like modern and ancient humans. This suggests that a Rudapithecus body plan might be a better model for the body plan our earliest ancestors than the body plan of modern apes who have all been evolving for just as long as we have.

6) Ape teeth, ancient proteins, and orangutan relatives: Gigantopithecus
The University of Copenhagen published a paper on their analysis of proteome (ancient protein) sequences they retrieved from a 1.9 million year old Gigantopithecus blacki molar from Chuifeng Cave, China. They concluded that the enormous Gigantopithecus blacki, which probably stood nearly 10 feet tall and weighed over a thousand pounds (although it is only known from teeth and lower jaws), is most closely related to living orangutans with whom it shared a common ancestor between about 12–10 million years ago.

These discoveries are pretty exciting and as I mentioned, there are many more discoveries showing the evolution of humans continually being added to the mounds of confirmed evidence that we already have that irrefutably prove evolution through natural selection.
I don't want to sound as though I am boasting and blowing my own trumpet so, in order to be balanced and fair, I invite any creationist to share what recent amazing discoveries have been made in support of creation.