In The News: Department of Anthropology
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.
A new study in Nature described 13 fossilized teeth from Ethiopia’s Ledi-Geraru site that belonged to both a primitive Homo and an unknown species of Australopithecus. The paper detailed teeth dated between 2.8 and 2.6 million years ago and added evidence that at least two early hominin lineages coexisted in the same region around 2.6 million years ago.
Scientists in Ethiopia unearthed pieces of 2.65 million-year-old fossilized teeth belonging to two members of a newly discovered Homo species that could challenge previously accepted understandings of human evolution.
Researchers have unearthed tooth fossils in Ethiopia dating to about 2.65 million years ago of a previously unknown species in the human evolutionary lineage, one that lived in the same time and place as the earliest-known member of the genus Homo to which our own species belongs.
New hominin fossils recovered from the Ledi-Geraru Research Project area in the Afar region of Ethiopia suggest the presence of early Homo at 2.78 and 2.59 million years ago and a previously unknown species of Australopithecus at 2.63 million years ago.
Fossilized teeth discovered in Ethiopia have revealed a new-to-science species of Australopithecus, a genus of early hominins that lived from the Pliocene to the Early Pleistocene. Not only does it add to our busy human family tree, but the discovery proves they were living alongside the oldest specimens of Homo, the genus of early humans that includes our species, Homo sapiens.
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.
An unidentified early hominin fossil that might be a new species confirms that Australopithecus and Homo species lived in the same region of Africa in the same time frame.
The period between 3 million and 2 million years ago was a transformative time in human history — it was back then that the genus Australopithecus led to the genus Homo, a new branch in the hominin family tree. But Australopithecus didn’t disappear the instant that Homo appeared in the fossil record. For a time, these two lineages lived together, sharing the landscape of northeastern Ethiopia.
On Valentine’s Day in 2018, a team of scientists walked across a flat expanse in the badlands of northeastern Ethiopia, scanning the ground for fossils. An eagle-eyed field assistant, Omar Abdulla, spotted an ancient molar lying on the surface, exposed by wind erosion.
Fossil teeth unearthed in Ethiopia suggest two distinct human ancestor species lived alongside each other between 2.6 and 2.8 million years ago, reshaping what is known about our evolution.