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A new species of ancient human has been unearthed in
the Afar region of Ethiopia, scientists
report. Researchers discovered jaw bones and teeth,
which date to between 3.3m and 3.5m years old. It
means this new hominin was alive at the same time as
several other early human species, suggesting our
family tree is more complicated than was thought. The
study is published in the journal Nature .
The new species has been called
Australopithecus deyiremeda, which means
“close relative” in the language spoken by
the Afar people. The ancient remains are
thought to belong to four individuals, who
would have had both ape and human-like
features.. Lead researcher Dr Yohannes
Haile-Selassie, curator of physical
anthropology at the Cleveland Museum of
Natural History in the US, told BBC News:
“We had to look at the detailed anatomy and
morphology of the teeth and the upper and
lower jaws, and we found major differences.
“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 age of the
remains means that this was potentially one
of four different species of early humans that
were all alive at the same time.
The most famous of these is
Australopithecus afarensis – known as Lucy
– who lived between 2.9-3.8m years ago,
and was initially thought to be our direct
ancestor. However the discovery of another
species called Kenyanthropus platyops in
Kenya in 2001, and of Australopithecus
bahrelghazali in Chad, and now
Australopithecus deyiremedaI, suggests that
there were several species co-existing.
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