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The famed Australopithecus Lucy may have a cousin. A new discovery of fossilized teeth in an Ethiopian field has researchers theorizing that they came from a new species of Australopithecus. They dated the teeth to the same period as the oldest known specimens of the genus Homo, found in the same field, upending some traditional theories of human evolution.

Researchers say recently discovered teeth come from a previously undiscovered species of Australopithecus, adding to our understanding of human evolution.

The story of human evolution is not a simple ladder from early forms to more advanced ones. For decades, fossils shaped a picture of steady, linear progress – one form giving rise to another in a neat sequence.

Ancient, fossilized teeth, uncovered during a decades-long archaeology project in northeastern Ethiopia, indicate that two different kinds of hominins, or human ancestors, lived in the same place between 2.6 million and 2.8 million years ago — and one of them may be a previously unknown species.

The discovery of thirteen teeth dating back 2.6 to 2.8 million years confirms that Homo and an enigmatic Australopithecus coexisted in Ethiopia, revealing a more complex human evolution.

The research team discovered 13 teeth in sediments dating back to 2.6 to 2.8 million years ago. Tooth fossils discovered in Ethiopia introduced a new Australopithecus species to the scientific world.

This was announced in a study published in Nature, in which an international team of researchers describes the discovery in the Afar region of Ethiopia of 13 fossilized teeth between 2.8 and 2.6 million years old, which could belong to a previously unidentified species of Australopithecus that coexisted with early humans.

The human family tree is looking more and more like an unruly bush. Paleontologists have now uncovered the teeth of two different ancient human lineages at the same site in northeastern Ethiopia. The discovery collapses the distance between the first of our genus and the last of the australopithecines in eastern Africa.