BERLIN Early hominids may have lived and 2.8 million years ago, ie, 400,000 years earlier than previously thought, according to research by an international team of experts who publishes the journal Science .
The key is to some bone fragments-the left side of an inferior jaw discovered in 2013 in Ethiopia. The shape of the jaw and teeth suggest that this is a representative of the genus Homo and not an ancestor of the famous ‘Lucy’.
The skeleton of ‘Lucy’, found in 1974 also in Ethiopia, dating back 3.2 million years ago and belongs to the extinct genus Australopithecus. Probably the genus Homo evolved from a representative thereof, as current theories.
To date, fossils of Homo oldest were dated 2.3 or 2.4 million years ago, says a team led by William Kimbel, Arizona State University (Tempe) in Science. With the help of X-ray technology, new remains were dated to between 2.75 and 2.8 million years.
“The new discovery is one more proof of evolution,” said Faysal Bibi, who participated in the analysis Naturkundemuseum Berlin. According says expert human traits were earlier than previously thought, although investigations are still at a puzzle.
“Now we know one more piece, but still not have the whole story,” said Bibi. Scientists still do not know what he looked like this ancestor of man now knows his jaw. But like ‘Lucy’, and walked on two legs and lived in a meadow with bushes and small forests. DPA
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