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Is this man or ape?
PARIS - A fossil touted as part of modern man's oldest ancestor has sparked a squabble, with some anthropologists declaring the find makes a monkey out of the human family tree.
The conflict is being played out in the weekly science journal Nature.
According to its discoverers, the fossil nicknamed Toumai - found in the Djurab desert of northern Chad and unveiled last July - was a man-like creature or hominid, about the size of a chimpanzee which lived seven million years ago.
They claim Toumai overturns the conventional view of mankind, because the evolutionary split between apes and humans clearly occurred earlier than thought.
But a team led by Dr Milford Wolpoff of the University of Michigan, suggests the ape-like features found on Toumai meant he was no more than that - an ape.
The teeth, brow and point at the back of the head where neck muscles once attached, point to 'a small ape', they argue. --AFP
Sources :
http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/world/story/0,1870,148220,00.htmlhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2313695.stm 
