Our ancestors lived side by side with a mysterious hominid

The human genealogical tree is increasingly looking like an undisciplined shrub. The recent discovery of old teeth suggests that our ancestors lived side by side with a mysterious hominid.

A team of paleontologists discovered the tooth fossils of two different old human lineages in the same place in northeastern Ethiopia.

The discovery reduces the distance between the first of our genre and the last of the Australopithecs in East Africa. Both Probably coexisted.

The discovery was presented in a published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

“This new investigation shows that The image that many of us have In our minds from the evolution of a Symio to a Neanderthal for a modern human is not correct – Evolution does not work like this“, Says the paleoecologist Kaye Reedresearcher at Arizona State University (Asu) and the main author of the article.

“Human evolution is not linear; It is a leafy tree. There are life forms that are extinguished, ”adds Reed, quoted by.

The genre Australopithecus – to which the famous ” – existed long before the Neanderthals or our ancestors. It was one of the first hominids to usually walk erect.

These new discoveries suggest that the lineage existed in East Africa precisely when our genre was evolvingmore than 2.5 million years ago.

Maybe we shared land, or maybe we fought by resources. Who knows how close we lived, or how often our ways crossed. The two strains seem to have evolved side by side for hundreds of thousands of years.

The discovery was made in a place called LEDI-GERARUwhere scientists previously found older evidence of the genre Homo: A jaw with 2.78 million years.

Hidden nearby, paleontologists have now stumbled in the teeth another species Homodating from 2.59 million years ago, as well as teeth of a Australopiteco of 2.63 million years ago – The only definitive evidence of the genus in eastern Africa at this time.

Lucy was also found in Ethiopia, and her species, Australopithecus afarensis, It may be the lineage from which our Homo ancestors branch. But precisely the moment our ancestors appear in East Africa, fossil evidence for A. disappears.

Ledi-Geraru’s newly discovered teeth now put our ancestors closer to Australopithecs in time and space than ever.

Scientists still did not determine the exact species to which the teeth belong Homo and the teeth Australopithecusbut the latter do not correspond to Lucy or others of their kind.

Much seems to have changed in half a million years. We know what the teeth and jaw of the Homo older, but that’s all, ”says the American paleontologist Brian VillayAsu investigator and first author of the article.

“This emphasizes critical importance of finding additional fossils To understand the differences between Australopithecus and Homo, and potentially how they managed to overlap in the fossil record in the same place, ”he adds.

Scientists previously suspected that both these primitive human lineages Overcoming in timebut archaeological evidence has not existed so far. The old teeth found in Ledi-Gerraru helps fill a considerable gap in the fossil record between 2.5 and 3 million years.

The total number of known hominids living in eastern Africa now rises to four: two distinct species of Australopitheco, an ‘robust Australopiteco’ branch called Paranthropusand the gender Homo primitive.

“The hominid fossil registration It is more different than you knew Previously, ”conclude Villmoaare and colleagues.

This story is just starting …