When a group of researchers discovered the partial skeleton of two hominid in a cave in South Africa in August 2008 did not imagine that would be the remains of early human ancestors. In two studies, which publishes Science This week, the international team of 60 scientists described the new species, Australopithecus sediba, Which walked upright and shared features with the first kind of Homo.
The fossils found in a cave, called the Cradle of Humanity, of Malapa, on the outskirts of Johannesburg (South Africa), dating back between 1.95 and 1.78 million years and belong to two individuals, one adult female and a young male-to Australopithecus sediba. The remains belong to a species that appeared close to a million years after Lucy, So that their characteristics show a transition to progressive stages of early hominids to the genus Homo.
“It is not possible to establish the precise phylogenetic position Sediba Austalopithecus in relation to several species assigned to Homo primitive, “said Lee Berger, a lead author with Paul Dirks of James Cook University (Australia),
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