The New York Times has a story about the skeleton of a little girl found in Ethiopia.  She was about three years old at the time of death, but her skeleton is about 3 million years old.

You can read more about it in the journal, Nature, where the findings will be announced, or in the National Geographic magazine in November.

The skeleton belongs to the same species as the famous “Lucy”, Australopithecus afarensis.

But being a child’s skeleton, and apparently better preserved than Lucy, it gives a lot of important information that was missing before.  For one thing, we all know that in any species, the bodies of children are very different than the bodies of adults.  The experts seem to espect that this child’s skeleton will give us information on how these creatures developed as individuals.  Also, the hyoid bone is preserved…the small bone in the larynx.  This is so small that it is rarely preserved.  It might shed some light on the nature of the evolution of speech. 

It will also most likely provide some insight into the culture, psychology and sociology of modern primitive man:  we will be able to observe how the creationist argument that Austarolpithecus afarensis is not a transitional fossil has evolved since the last one was found.

As usual, Pharyngula got to this first, but I got in a sarcastic swipe at creationists.  PZ must be mellowing.

Ben at Eclectics Anonymous has a critique of this as an example of poor science writing.

Also, I’d like to note for the record, that I got through a post about the history of humanity being dug out of the dirt, and didn’t make one single solitary lustful comment about Daniel.  Them jets cool enough for ya, Jason?  J