CAMBRIDGE (Massachusetts, USA): A Harvard University palaeontologist said yesterday [Jan 14] he had found a two-inch (50 mm) bone fragment in Kenya which came from the upper arm of an early human living 2.5 million years ago.

The fragment thus represents the earliest find of human family remains in the Pleistocene period whose earliest limit is 3.5 million years.

It pre-dates specimens discovered in recent years by Kenya born expert, Dr Louis Leakey, who found fragments of feet bits of skull and other bones dated at 1.8 million years in northern Tanzania.

Announcing the discover Mr Brian Patterson, Professor of Vertebrate Palaeontology at Harvard, told “Reuters” in a telephone interview that he found the fragment in August 1965 near Lake Rudolph in north-west Kenya.

Prof Patterson said he believed the fragment “has to do with a member of the human family and is very possibly on the ancestral line dating to ourselves.”

The only other possibility was that the fragment was from a member of the great ape family, but the chance was minimal. — Agencies

[Meanwhile, as reported by our correspondent in Lahore,] making a strong plea for economic equality, the Punjab Zonal Muslim League (Council) Executive has said that Pakistan can never become a truly Islamic welfare State unless economic disparity is removed from among various sections of society. ...

The meeting called upon the Government of Pakistan to immediately adopt measures aimed at curing the national economy of its ailment of disparity and bridge the yawning gulf between the rich and the poor.

As practical steps to achieve this end, it urged that banks and insurance companies be nationalised and the labourers be made co-sharers in the ownership of industrial output.

Published in Dawn, January 16th, 2017