Monday, November 2, 2020

Mug shot: HAVE YOU SEEN THIS APE?

 


It's not Bigfoot, though if Bigfoot looked this scary I'd be crashing through the bush trying to get AWAY from it, not chase it to ground in order to capture grainy, indecipherable footage which would be analyzed frame-by-frame on the History Channel. 




No, it's a reconstruction of Paranthropus Boisei, one of the earliest and most primitive human ancestors, with intimidating apelike faces and the upright bodies of hairy, stocky humans. You know - men. 

BTW, this photo from an anthropological museum display has been mislabelled (by ME, including) as Orang Pendek, a Bigfoot variation from somewhere, oh who cares. They're all fakes anyway, except for THIS one. We know it's real. . . 'cause it's on Wiki.

Paranthropus boisei is a species of australopithecine from the Early Pleistocene of East Africa about 2.3 to 1.34 or 1 million years ago. The holotype specimen, OH 5, was discovered by palaeoanthropologist Mary Leakey in 1959, and described by her husband Louis a month later. It was originally placed into its own genus as "Zinjanthropus boisei", but is now relegated to Paranthropus along with other robust australopithecines. However, it is argued that Paranthropus is an invalid grouping and synonymous with Australopithecus, so the species is also often classified as Australopithecus boisei.

(So's your old man.)