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100 years of Australopithecus

  • ️Wed Feb 05 2025

Research

  • Evidence for stone-tool-assisted consumption of animal tissues before 3.39 million years ago at Dikika, Ethiopia

    The earliest direct evidence for stone tools is between 2.6 and 2.5 million years old and comes from Gona, Ethiopia. These authors report bones from Dikika, Ethiopia, dated to around 3.4 million years ago and marked with cuts indicative of the use of stone tools to remove flesh and extract bone marrow. This is the earliest known evidence of stone tool use, and might be attributed to the activities of Australopithecus afarensis.

    • Shannon P. McPherron
    • Zeresenay Alemseged
    • Hamdallah A. Béarat

  • New fossils from Koobi Fora in northern Kenya confirm taxonomic diversity in early Homo

    Three newly discovered hominin fossils—a well-preserved face of a late juvenile, a nearly complete mandible and a mandibular fragment—aged between 1.78 and 1.95 million years old, confirm the presence of two contemporary species of early Homo, in addition to H. erectus, in the early Pleistocene of eastern Africa.

    • Meave G. Leakey
    • Fred Spoor
    • Louise N. Leakey

  • 3.3-million-year-old stone tools from Lomekwi 3, West Turkana, Kenya

    Tool making has been considered to be an attribute of the genus Homo; this paper reports 3.3-million-year-old stone tools and the early timing of these tools provides evidence that the making and use of stone tools by hominins occurred before the evolution of our own genus.

    • Sonia Harmand
    • Jason E. Lewis
    • Hélène Roche

    Article20 May 2015 Nature

  • The foot of Homo naledi

    Hominin fossils reveal high diversity in the types of terrestrial bipedalism. Here, the authors show that the foot of Homo naledifrom South Africa is predominantly human-like in morphology and inferred function and is well adapted for striding bipedalism.

    • W. E. H. Harcourt-Smith
    • Z. Throckmorton
    • J. M. DeSilva

  • The hand of Homo naledi

    It is unclear to what extent early hominins were adapted to arboreal climbing. Here, the authors show that the nearly complete hand of H. naledifrom South Africa has markedly curved digits and otherwise human-like wrist and palm, which indicates the retention of a significant degree of climbing.

    • Tracy L. Kivell
    • Andrew S. Deane
    • Steven E. Churchill

  • New species from Ethiopia further expands Middle Pliocene hominin diversity

    A new hominin species, Australopithecus deyiremeda, which lived between 3.5 and 3.3 million years ago, at around the same time as species such as Au. afarensis (‘Lucy’), is discovered in Ethiopia; its morphology suggests that some dental features traditionally associated with later genera such as Paranthropus and Homo emerged earlier than previously thought.

    • Yohannes Haile-Selassie
    • Luis Gibert
    • Beverly Z. Saylor

    Article27 May 2015 Nature

  • The palaeoecological context of the Oldowan–Acheulean in southern Africa

    Multi-proxy data from Wonderwerk Cave reveal that both C3 and C4 grasses and prolonged wetlands formed major components of Early Pleistocene hominin palaeoenvironments in southern Africa, with regional trends distinct from contemporary ones in eastern Africa.

    • Michaela Ecker
    • James S. Brink
    • Julia A. Lee-Thorp

  • A 3.8-million-year-old hominin cranium from Woranso-Mille, Ethiopia

    Two related studies describe a newly discovered cranium of Australopithecus anamensis, the environment in which this hominin would have lived approximately 3.8 million years ago and how it is related to Australopithecus afarensis.

    • Yohannes Haile-Selassie
    • Stephanie M. Melillo
    • Timothy M. Ryan

    Article28 Aug 2019 Nature

  • How Australopithecus provided insight into human evolution

    In 1925, a Nature paper reported an African fossil of a previously unknown genus called Australopithecus. This finding revolutionized ideas about early human evolution after human ancestors and apes split on the evolutionary tree.

    • Dean Falk

    News & Views29 Oct 2019 Nature

  • Connecting palaeoscientists in eastern Africa and the wider world

    Since its inception, the East African Association for Palaeoanthropology and Palaeontology has brought together scholars and researchers who conduct research in palaeoanthropology, archaeology and palaeontology, creating a balanced forum for the study of human heritage in Africa.

    • Zeresenay Alemseged
    • Jackson Njau
    • Emmanuel Ndiema

  • The position of Australopithecus sediba within fossil hominin hand use diversity

    Analysis of metacarpal trabecular and cortical bone reveals hand use diversity, including power and precision grips, among early hominins, and shows that Australopithecus sediba combined great ape-like arboreal grasping power with human-like manipulation ability.

    • Christopher J. Dunmore
    • Matthew M. Skinner
    • Tracy L. Kivell

  • Earliest known human burial in Africa

    The earliest known human burial in Africa, that of a young child, is dated to around 78,000 years ago.

    • María Martinón-Torres
    • Francesco d’Errico
    • Michael D. Petraglia

  • ArticleOpen Access1 Dec 2021 Nature

  • Age of the oldest known Homo sapiens from eastern Africa

    Geochemical analyses correlating the stratum that overlies the sediments containing the Omo fossils with material from a volcanic eruption suggest that these fossils (the oldest known modern human fossils in eastern Africa) are over 200,000 years old.

    • Céline M. Vidal
    • Christine S. Lane
    • Clive Oppenheimer

    ArticleOpen Access12 Jan 2022 Nature

  • Kamoya Kimeu

    Expert field palaeontologist who made many key discoveries about early human evolution in East Africa.

    • Louise N. Leakey
    • Robert A. Foley

  • Arched footprints preserve the motions of fossil hominin feet

    Combining modelling of living human participants and chimpanzees with analysis of fossil hominin trackways, the authors distinguish between the earliest evidence of modern human-like bipedal kinematics and earlier hominin precursors.

    • Kevin G. Hatala
    • Stephen M. Gatesy
    • Peter L. Falkingham

  • Spatial sampling bias influences our understanding of early hominin evolution in eastern Africa

    The Eastern African Rift System (EARS) is a key location for the hominin fossil record, but the fact that it samples a narrow section of the continent has long been known. The authors tackle this known (but largely unaddressed) bias by sampling the distribution and morphospace of extant mammals in the rift, showing that the eastern branch of the EARS fails to capture the full range of diversity and morphology. This approach could be helpful to place confidence intervals on extinct habitat reconstructions, controlling for spatial bias.

    • W. Andrew Barr
    • Bernard Wood