A team of scientists detailed a fossilized hand bone that is the oldest known sample to resemble one in a modern human's hand.
According to Live Science, authors of a study published in the journal Nature Communications detailed the hand bone and what it says about modern man's ancestors. The hand is a major part of what separates humans from the rest of the animal kingdom, and studying how it evolved can help understand how humans evolved.
"The hand is one of the most important anatomical features that defines humans," study lead author Manuel Domínguez-Rodrigo, a paleoanthropologist at Complutense University of Madrid, told Live Science. "Our hand evolved to allow us a variety of grips and enough gripping power to allow us the widest range of manipulation observed in any primate. It is this manipulation capability that interacted with our brains to develop our intelligence.
"A modernlike hand in the past would tell us when humans became fully terrestrial and when and how efficiently our ancestors used tools."
Domínguez-Rodrigo indicated the human species the bone belonged to was a direct descendant of a more primitive species with curved finger bones.
"That creature was no longer using the trees," he told CBS News. "By liberating the hand from the tree climbing locomotion and adaption, it became very useful for manipulation. It became the modern hand that we have. Basically what this discovery is saying is that our modern hand, which is the best manipulation hand in any primates, at least has a 2 million year history."
