SIn today’s arid lands, there was once a sometimes flooded river, trees and meadows. It is there, in Ledi-Geraru, a paleoanthropological research zone of the Afar region, in the northeast of Ethiopia, that fossil teeth have just delivered a secret old of almost three million years: the oldest Homo Specimens-like to which we, modern humans, belong-and Australopithecus trampled, at the same time. and 2.8 million years.
Led since 2002 by Kaye Reed, anthropologist and professor at the Arizona State University, the excavations of this research site have already delivered the oldest jaw in 2013 in 2013, dated 2.8 million years. The new study of this team of international researchers, published in Naturerenowned scientific review, describes 13 fossilized teeth belonging to both a primitive homo and a kind of Australopitheque so far unknown. The morphological analyzes having already indicated during past research that Homo had dental characteristics close to ours, while the Australopithecus kept more primitive features.
Goodbye to the linear story of human evolution
This coexistence calls into question the often taught linear narrative of human evolution. “The image that many have in mind, that of a progression of the monkey to Neanderthal and then to modern man, is false. Evolution h […] Read more