Unfortunately, there is scant fossil evidence from this key evolutionary period. One became a large-toothed, big-jawed, "robust" version of australopiths. Around 2.5 million years ago, that line divided into two branches. The skull and associated jaw show that the creature, a large male, belonged to the now-extinct hominid group called Australopithecus, bipedal foragers anatomically about midway between apes and true humans. The newly unearthed specimen "is in the right place, at the right time" to be that ancestor, the international researchers write in today's issue of the journal Science. If ultimately accepted by a majority of experts – an outcome that is always uncertain in the notoriously contentious field of paleoanthropology – the new finds could answer one of the paramount puzzles in human evolution: Exactly what species was the direct ancestor of the first humans? That ability, said co-discoverer Tim White of the University of California at Berkeley, no doubt contributed to the "dietary revolution" that provided humans with sufficient high-energy, high-fat nutrition to migrate out of Africa eventually. They also found what appears to be the earliest known evidence of ancient hominids (our two-legged, human-like forebears) using stone tools to butcher animal carcasses and prepare meat. : Fossils May Be Humans' Missing LinkĪ side view of the cranium of Australopithecus garhi.įrom the remote Ethiopian outback, fossil hunters have recovered the partial remains of a previously unknown, 2.5 million-year-old creature that may well be the long-sought immediate predecessor of human beings.
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