Our Ancestor Homo Erectus Is 200,000 Years Older Than Previously Thought

[Judi Lynn]

A fossil that sat exposed at a cave site for eight years upends human family tree.
By Bridget AlexDecember 15, 2020 12:00 PM

For eight years, a crunched cranium protruded from an excavation pit in South Africa’s Drimolen Cave. Archaeologists ignored the fossil, assuming it to be a baboon, until they swept up pieces that had crumbled free in 2015. Early on, the remains looked more human than monkey.

Jesse Martin and Angeline Leece, researchers at Australia’s La Trobe University, jigsaw-puzzled together more than 150 bone bits, each no bigger than a quarter. Some were so fine that light shone through. Analysis confirmed the fossil wasn’t baboon. Then, in 2018, another skull surfaced at the Drimolen site, and chronometric dating placed both craniums around 2 million years old. The researchers published their big news in Science this April: Based on skull shape, the second cranium belonged to Paranthropus robustus, a Lucy-like relative with jumbo molars. The first came from Homo erectus — a species thought to have originated 200,000 years later in East Africa.

According to textbooks, “we’ve got the wrong fossil in the wrong place at the wrong time,” says Martin, a study co-author. He says the story needs to be updated.

A contemporaneous site 6 miles away yielded another cousin, Australopithecus sediba, in 2010 — meaning at least three lineages of the human family tree occupied South Africa about 2 million years ago.

More:
https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/our-ancestor-homo-erectus-is-200-000-years-older-than-previously-thought