The time interval between three and two million years ago is a critical period in human evolution: two new genres appear, Paranthropus y Homoand a possible ancestor of both disappears, the Australopithecus afarensisthat of the famous “Lucy.”
Knowing the complex network of human evolution in this period of time is an extremely difficult task due to the shortage of fossil remains, but today a new study provides relevant data: between 2.6 and 2.8 million years ago, the Australopithecus And the first specimens of the genre Homo They coexisted in the same place as East Africa.
The finding was possible after the discovery of new fossils (13 teeth) excavated in the Ledi-Geraru site, in the Afar, Ethiopia region, where the University of Arizona directs since 2002 the Ledi-Geraru research project.
This site was already famous for its previous findings among which are the first Olduvayense stone tools on the planet, about 2.6 million years ago, and the fossil of Homo older found to date, a jaw of 2.8 million years.
In this same region, in 1974, a team of paleontologists formed by the American Donald Johanson and the French Yves Copoens and Maurice Taieb, found the remains of “Lucy”, the first Australopithecus afarensis Discovered in the story that was baptized as The Beatles song that sounded on the radio that summer, “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds.”
Lucy’s remains, which was about twenty years old when he died, are between 3.5 and 3.2 million years old.
Now, in an article published in Nature magazine, the team points out that the thirteen teeth are from Australopithecus (about 2.63 million years old) and Homo (From 2.78 and 2.59 million years ago), which shows that more than 2.5 million years ago both lineages coexisted in the Afar region.
But that’s not all, the study specifies that these remains belong to a new species of Australopithecus that due to the insufficient amount of fossils found, it has not been possible to name.
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The team is sure that due to their morphology the remains differ from the genre Australopithecus Garhi already those of A.which demonstrates two things, that the fossil hominid record is more diverse than what was known so far, and that there is still no evidence that Lucy’s species is more recent of 2.95 million years ago.
In addition, the finding of these teeth of Homo In sediments of between 2.6 and 2.8 million years old, “they confirm the age of our lineage,” says Brian Villmoare, researcher at the Department of Anthropology at the University of Nevada, in Las Vegas, and main author of the study.
“This new research shows that the image that many have in our minds of a ape, through a Neanderthal, until we reach the modern human being, is not correct: evolution does not work that way,” explains the paleoecologist and emeritus professor of the Faculty of Human Evolution of the Arizona State University, Kaye Reed.
“Here we have two species of hominids that are together. And human evolution is not linear, it is a leafy tree, there are life ways that are extinguished,” insists the co-director of the Ledi-Geraru site.
The Afar region could be key to understanding the coexistence of Australopithecus and Homos
Finding fossils and dating the landscape not only helps scientists understand species, but also helps them recreate the environment of millions of years ago.
The now wastelands of Ledi-GERARU where fossils were found radically with the landscape that these hominids crossed between 2.6 and 2.8 million years ago, when the rivers flowed through a landscape of leafy vegetation towards shallow lakes that expanded and contracted over time.
Currently the Reed team is examining the dental enamel to find out what these species ate and try to reveal what their existence was like, if they fought for resources or shared them, and who their ancestors were.
“When an exciting discovery occurs, if you are paleontologist, you always know that you need more information,” says Reed, but for that more fossils are needed. “That is why it is important to train people in this field and go to look for their own deposits and find places where we have not yet found fossils,” he adds.
Finding new fossils “will help us tell the story of what happened to our ancestors a long time ago, but as we are the survivors, we know that it happened to us,” concludes Reed.
With EFE information
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