![]() ![]() afarensis are quite different, Haile-Selassie said. The new fossil, however, adds evidence to the notion that early hominins were a diverse bunch. (Image credit: Photograph(s) by Dale Omori, courtesy of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.) A crowded fieldīecause there are very few fossils of hominins, from 3.6 million to 3.9 million years ago, identifying and comparing species can lead to controversial conclusions, Haile-Selassie said. ![]() The more delicate faces of the genus Homo probably evolved as human ancestors moved to more-open grassland habitats and started incorporating meat into their diets, thereby fueling bigger brains and lessening the need to chew, Haile-Selassie said. ![]() The big bones of australopithecines probably evolved to help these human ancestors chew rough foods, study co-author Stephanie Melillo, a paleoanthropologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, said at the news conference. That's far different from the relatively flat faces of modern humans and other species of the genus Homo, which first evolved around 2.8 million years ago. The canine teeth were smaller than those of earlier hominids but larger than those of A. The hominin's face was not quite as massive or as rugged as Lucy's, but it was still robust, the researchers reported today (Aug. The skull shares features with Australopithecus africanus, an extinct species found in southern Africa, she said. The fossil not only reveals more about changes in Australopithecus through time, she told Live Science, but may help illuminate geographical connections among species. "This specimen fills in an important gap in our knowledge of the cranial anatomy of Australopithecus during this period," said Amélie Beaudet, a paleoanthropologist at the University of the Witwatersrand, in South Africa, who was not involved in the new research. They suspect the individual was a male, based on the size of the bones. anamensis fossil, dubbed "MRD" as an abbreviation of its specimen classification, at 3.8 million years. By dating minerals and volcanic tuffs in the region, Saylor and her colleagues confidently pegged the age of the A. The shores would have been forested, she added, but the surrounding area was arid scrubland. The hominin "probably was living along the river and the shores of this lake," she said. (Image credit: Photograph courtesy of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.) Yohannes Haile-Selassie, who discovered the fossil "MRD" cranium in Ethiopia, poses with it in the field. ![]()
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