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Rare 3.8-million-year-old skull recasts origins of iconic ‘Lucy’ fossil

Ancient cranium discovered in Ethiopia suggests early hominin evolutionary tree is messier than we thought.
  1. Colin Barras
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An ancient face is shedding new light on our earliest ancestors. Archaeologists have discovered a 3.8-million-year-old hominin skull in Ethiopia — a rare and remarkably complete specimen that could change what we know about the origins of one of humanity’s most famous ancestors, Lucy.

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doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-02573-w

Read the related News & Views article: ‘Elusive cranium of early hominin found’

References

  1. Haile-Selassie, Y., Melillo, S. M., Vazzana, A., Benazzi, S. & Ryan, T. M. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1513-8 (2019).

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