Lucy, as we know the best-known australopithecine skeleton in our human family tree, has a new relative thanks to the discovery of fossil remains of jaw and teeth found in the extensive plains of the Afar region, in Ethiopia (Africa) that coincide in time with the remains of this. This new species of hominin, named Australopithecus deyiremeda , lived between 3.3 and 3.5 million years ago .
The finding of this contemporary of Lucy, published in the journal Nature , confirms that this new hominin shared territory with Australopithecus afarensis (the species to which Lucy belongs) and not alone as the scientific community has been debating since its discovery in 1974. So much so that the remains found were only about 30 kilometers away from where the Afarensis lived , in Woranso-Mille.
“ The new species provides, for the first time, proof that more than one hominin species overlapped in space and time. It has thicker tooth enamel and a more robust lower jaw than Australopithecus afarensis and Kenyanthropus platytop ”, Yohannes Haile-Selassie, leader of the study, explains to Sinc, which would indicate that its diet would be even more varied than that of A. afarensis .
According to the international team of researchers who carried out the discovery, it is possible that the species of “Lucy” and the new hominid were not the only ones to coexist at the same time : “the fossil evidence from the Woranso study area- Mille clearly show that there were at least two species – if not three – of human ancestors that lived at the same time in an area of geographic proximity, ”says Haile-Selassie.
This third species has not yet been able to be related to any specific remains, but everything indicates that it could correspond to the fossil remains of a hominid foot dated 3.4 million years ago and discovered in the Burtele area in 2012.
The discovery of these new fossils will start a great scientific debate about the origins of the human being, the secrets of which we are closer and closer to unraveling.
