Washington, April 9 (Inditop.com) Scientists have stumbled on a new species of hominid in an area of South Africa known as the Cradle of Humankind, providing unique insight in the period when the earliest human beings evolved.
The species — Australopithecus sediba — is thought to be at least two million years old and its skeletons are exceptionally well preserved.
It may, in fact, replace other candidates such as Homo habilis as our distant ancestor. Because of this, the new species was named Sediba (meaning fountain) reflecting its position at the base of the evolutionary tree.
Lawrence Livermore National Lab (LLNL) scientist Dan Farber’s work involved describing the geological, geochronological, geomorphological and faunal context of the Malapa site – which holds the fossils of an adult and a juvenile of the new species.
Using the LLNL Centre for Accelerator Mass Spectrometry, Farber and a team of researchers, were able to quantify the degree of post fossil landscape change.
In other words, they were able to track the evolution of the landscape from where the fossils originally were deposited to where they were found in the present day, an LLNL release said.
Australopithecus sediba is possibly the most important found to date and the site has produced arguably the most notable assemblage of early human ancestors ever found, including the most complete skeletons of early hominids ever discovered and the most complete remains of any hominid dating to around two million years ago, Farber said.
Hominid fossils and associated faunal and archaeological remains occur across the Cradle of Humankind, including the sites, Sterkfontein, Swartkrans, Kromdraai and Coopers.
The research appears in a pair of papers in the Friday issue of Science.
