What the authors have done is to just pick up all these individual specimens and toss them back into the mixing bowl, so we just don't know how many species there were, which belong to which. "The big gap between those two is really interesting because something must have happened that led to the evolution of us." "And then at two million years ago you have Homo with the tools and large brain and more modern body plan with shorter arms. "At three million years ago, you have a very ape-like creature with long arms, living in the forest, probably eating fruit," Dr Villmoare said. The teeth found in the jawbone suggest a change in diet from the mainly fruit-eating Australopithecus towards a more meat-based diet that would also have required the use of tools. "It does have some more primitive traits that come from Australopithecus, the more than three-million-year-old group, but also has a lot of traits that link it with the species that we see around two million years ago," Dr Villmoare said. While the front of the jawbone is very primitive - suggesting it comes from the Australopithecus - the back of the jawbone and teeth resemble those of Homo habilis. The fossil provides clues to changes in the jaw and teeth in Homo only 200,000 years after the last known occurrence of the Australopithecus genus that includes the fossil Lucy from the nearby site of Hadar.Ī detailed map shows where the Ledi Heraru site is located in reference to other important fossil sites in Ethiopia.
"The fossil record for humans between two million and three million years ago is just very poor and has long been known as a gap in human evolution," said lead author and anthropologist Dr Brian Villmoare, from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Together with another study that examines the evolution of Homo habilis, the find could fill a gap in the fossil record that has frustrated scientists for nearly 50 years.
The primitive jawbone is approximately 400,000 years older than Homo habilis, also known as Handy Man, which is the earliest known species in the Homo lineage that led to modern humans. Here are five other significant finds in the study of human evolution.
The 2.8-million-year-old jawbone fossil found in Africa could be the missing link in the human evolution puzzle. The discovery of a 2.8-million-year-old partial jawbone in Africa could rewrite the history of human evolution.Īn international team of researchers found the lower jawbone, complete with teeth, at the Ledi-Geraru site in the Ethiopian Rift Valley, and published the finding in a report today in the journal Science.
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