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Palaeoanthropology

Facing up to complexity

Nature volume 488, pages 162–163 (2012)Cite this article

The anatomy of three new fossils, including a face, lends support to the hypothesis that there were at least two parallel lineages early in the evolutionary history of our own genus, Homo. See Letter p.201

The task of palaeoanthropologists is to reconstruct the evolutionary history of the period between our species, Homo sapiens, and the ancestral species we share exclusively with chimpanzees and bonobos. There must have been a ladder-like sequence of species connecting us with that common ancestor; but it is unclear whether our section of the 'tree of life' is restricted to this ancestor–descendant sequence, or whether it includes other, now extinct, lineages. Might there have been multiple lineages early in the history of our own genus, Homo? In this issue, Meave Leakey et al.1 (page 201) describe fossils recovered from Koobi Fora in northern Kenya that provide compelling evidence for at least two Homo lineages as early as 2 million years ago.

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Figure 1: Branching to humans.

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  1. Department of Anthropology, Bernard Wood is in the Center for the Advanced Study of Hominid Paleobiology, George Washington University, Washington DC 20052, USA.,

    Bernard Wood

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  1. Bernard Wood
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Correspondence to Bernard Wood.

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Wood, B. Facing up to complexity. Nature 488, 162–163 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/488162a

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