Duke University anthropologist Steven Churchill is part of
an international team that has described Australopithecus sediba, a new species
of hominin, in the Sept. 8, 2011, edition of Science.
Found together in a former cave and water source just north
of Johannesburg, South Africa, these two specimens of sediba have been dated at
1.977 million years ago. They have features of both the more ancient Australopithecus
lineage, like Lucy, and the more modern Homo lineage, which includes us.
Churchill has replica casts of these two remarkably complete
skeletons which indicate they ate a better diet and probably made use of stone
tools, though their brains are still relatively small. They walked upright, but
were still adept at tree-climbing.
One of the specimens is a 13-year-old male and the other is
an adult female. The find, at a site called Malapa in the Cradle of Humankind
World Heritage Site in South Africa, also included an
infant, a toddler and another adult believed to be sediba as well, but those
specimens have not yet been analyzed for publication, Churchill said.
LEARN MORE:
Los Angeles Times http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-australopithecus-fossils-20110909,0,7812788.story
Ars Technica Blog http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/09/origin-story-new-papers-claim-a-sediba-as-human-ancestor.ars
Scientific American Blogs http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/anthropology-in-practice/2011/09/09/pieces-of-the-human-evolutionary-puzzle-who-was-australopithecus-sediba/