Hairy problem for scientists

South African scientists have called on world experts to help unravel a new mystery - whether early human ancestors had hair or fur.

Professor Lee Berger, a paleoanthropologist at the University of the Witwatersrand's Institute for Human Evolution, found evidence of what appeared to be mineralised or preserved soft tissue on the two Sediba fossils he discovered near Sterkfontein in 2008.

"We were staggered to see a skull like that. There was a little fine black line above the skull. "

He said there was now a real possibility, for the first time in history, that soft tissue may have been preserved in an early human ancestor. "If it is, we could theoretically answer the question of whether they had hair or fur."

Berger said they had decided to enlist the help of the world's scientific community because this was "an investigation for the impossible".

Now the world's largest blogger on paleoanthropological issues, John Hawks, has invited the international scientific community to conduct research and co-author scientific work in the quest to unravel the mystery.