There ’s a new branch on the human syndicate tree diagram . anthropologist say they ’ve find a newfangled human ancestor , who lived 3.5 million years ago , powerful beside Australopithecus afarensis on the knit of what is now Ethiopia .
Casts of the upper and humble jaw . Credit : Laura Dempsey
You may have heard of the specie of human ancestor called Australopithecus afarensis , or at least its most notable specimen : Lucy , the partially complete skeleton of a femalehominin . Researchers say the newfound species co - existed with Lucy and her mintage , and the discovery is a remarkable raw piece in the puzzle of humanity ’s origination .
But it raises as many questions as answers .
Anthropologist Yohannes Haile - Selassie and his squad have name the novel metal money Australopithecus deyiremeda . They discover fossilise upper and lower jaw fossil at a paleontological dig internet site in the Afar region of central Ethiopia in 2011 , and after four years of work , they ’ve published their findings in the journalNature .
Based on radiometric dating and the geology of the soil in which they see the fossils , Haile - Selassie and his colleagues say that the fossils are about 3.3 million to 3.5 million years old . A. deyiremeda ’s teeth and jaws look quite a morsel dissimilar from Lucy and her fellow A. afarensis — it ’s this difference that direct anthropologists to classify them as a separate mintage . It ’s likely that the two species evolved to feed unlike nutrient that required different kinds of prick and chewing .
Credit : Yohannes Haile - Selassie
Researchers say it ’s the most conclusive evidence yet that multiple species of hominins coexist before 3 million years ago . Previously , Haile - Selassie had found the fossilized remains of a partial foot in the same country , but the team does n’t have enough grounds to say whether the foot is also from A. deyiremeda .
Until of late , scientists were fairly sure that only one hominin specie live at a time , gradually giving rise to the next through evolution . But now we know it can be hard to tell incisively where an earlier specie close and a later species stop , because the changes are so gradual . If there were two or even three species of hominin coexisting in eastern Africa 3 or 4 million years ago , it would n’t be without common law . Much more recently , between 50,000 and 60,000 yr ago , anatomically modern human in Eurasia coexist and hybridize with Neanderthals .
The A. deyiremeda jawbones were base just 22 mile from the site where research worker find oneself Lucy ’s continue in 1973 , and where other A. afarensis remains have been found since . Scientists ca n’t be completely certain how these two mintage are connect to each other yet , and they ’re still work out the exact frame of the family tree diagram between them and modern humans .
Still , their law of proximity raises interesting question about how these two distinct species might have interacted . Were they peaceful neighbors , or did they fight over outer space , food , and water ? Could , and did , they interbreed ? Anthropologists do n’t get laid yet — we’re only just begin to understand the complex history of man .
anthropologyEvolutionPrimatesScience
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