A 2.8-million-year-old jawbone from Ethiopia may represent the earliest fossil from the genus Homo yet discovered — pushing back the known origins of humankind by nearly 500,000 years.
The fossil (pictured), analysed by Brian Villmoare at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, William Kimbel at Arizona State University in Tempe and their colleagues, has key features of Homo, such as the parabolic shape of the jaw. But it also has more primitive traits, such as the jaw's overall size, that are seen in Australopithecus afarensis, a human ancestor that lived around 3 to 4 million years ago.
The fossil could belong to an ancestral Homo species, the authors say, filling a gap in the human fossil record.
Science http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.aaa1343 (2015)
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Oldest Homo fossil found. Nature 519, 132 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/519132c
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/519132c
