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Researchers uncover new species of human
Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – @ParkstBrett
An international team of researchers working in Ethiopia has uncovered fossil remains of a new species of ancient human, according to a new report in the journal Nature.
The remains of Australopithecus deyiremeda were dated to between 3.3 and 3.5 million years ago, indicating this newly discovered primate was alive at the same time as other early human species, the study team concluded.
In their report, the study team said the jaw bones and teeth they recovered belong to four different individuals that had both ape-like and human features.
“We had to look at the detailed anatomy and morphology of the teeth and the upper and lower jaws, and we found major differences,” study author Yohannes Haile-Selassie, curator of physical anthropology at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, told BBC News. “This new species has very robust jaws. In addition, we see this new species had smaller teeth. The canine is really small – smaller than all known hominins we have documented in the past.”
The researcher said their newly-found species probably lived around the same time as our most famous ancestor – Lucy, a member of Australopithecus afarensis, who lived between 2.9 and 3.8 million years ago.
Adding another layer
Researchers have also discovered two other species – Kenyanthropus platyops and Australopithecus bahrelghazali – relatively recently and Haile-Selassie said the latest discovery adds yet another layer to the complexity of human evolution.
“Historically, because we didn’t have the fossil evidence to show there was hominin diversity during the middle Pliocene, we thought there was only one lineage, one primitive ancestor – in this case Australopithecus afarensis, Lucy – giving rise to the next,” he said. “That hypothesis of linear evolution has to be revisited. And now with the discovery of more species, like this new one… you have another species roaming around.”
“What this means is we have many species that could give rise to later hominins, including our own genus Homo,” Haile-Selassie added.
The study team said future work should focus on continuing to unearth more fossils of these known lineages and searching for more currently-unknown hominin species. The researchers said they were also curious to find out if these early human species interacted, or even interbred, with each other.
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Source: http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1113398836/researchers-uncover-new-species-of-human-052815/
