By Elliot Meschach
Associated Press

Lake Eyre, Australia, Sept. 20th - Amid loud controversy and vocal disputes in the field, a new piece of the puzzle that is "gargoyle-man" has been discovered. On the outskirts of the Lake Eyre region of South Australia, a research team from the Hokes Institute of the University of Tennessee at Knoxville has unearthed the fossil of a mandible bone dated at 1.6 to 1.2 million years old. The jaw bone is quite possibly that of gargo gargolis, a.k.a. Gargoyle Man, discovered earlier this summer.

"The jaw is rather elongated, compared to a modern human; this is in keeping with the prognathic (elongated) nature of the maxillary bones recovered in the U of W find," says Gulliver Belisle, head anatomist on the team. "This in itself is not so unusual for primates, but over the course of evolution the hominid face has been shown to become increasingly flatter, less prognathic, as the angle of chewing receded to a more efficient vertical angle in homo sapiens." This would normally indicate that the gargolis was a much heavier chewer than other species of the time, homo habilis and later homo erectus, except that gargo gargolis had relatively small molars and premolars, much like sapiens.

"The jawbone of the gargoyle-man proves to be a confusing mixture of both primitive and advanced hominid attributes." Indeed, that the species raises more questions than it answers is perhaps the only definite attribute of Gargoyle Man.

Associated Press
20 September 2000

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