“If someone kills one person they go to jail,” anthropologist Zeresenay Alemseged of the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco noted last month at a meeting here in France's deep south. “But what happens if you kill off a whole species?” The answer soon became apparent: anguished debate. In the balance was Homo heidelbergensis, a big-brained human ancestor generally seen as a pivotal figure during a murky period of evolution. At the invitation-only meeting, researchers debated whether this species really was a major player—or no more than a paleoanthropologists' construct.

Notes:

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/345/6193/129.full

URL: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25013041

DOI: 10.1126/science.345.6193.129

Custom 1:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25013041?dopt=Abstract

Alternate Journal: Science

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