NEW YORK (AP) – A fossil find adds another twig to the human evolutionary tree, giving further evidence that the well-known “Lucy” species had company in what is now Ethiopia, a new study says.
A lower jaw, plus jaw fragments and teeth, dated at 3.3 million to 3.5 million years old, were found in the Afar region of northern Ethiopia four years ago.
That shows a second human ancestor lived in about the same area and time frame as Lucy’s species, researchers said. But not everyone agrees.
In a paper released Wednesday by the journal Nature, the researchers announce the new find and assign it to a species they dubbed Australopithecus deyiremeda (aw-strah-low-PIH’-thuh-kus day-eh-REH’-meh-dah). In the Afar language the second name means “close relative,” referring to its apparent relationship to later members of the evolutionary tree.
But nobody knows just how it’s related to our own branch of the family tree, said Yohannes Haile-Selassie of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, who led the discovery team.