MEXICO: A team of scientists from around the world has revealed the discovery of a missing link in human evolution. It’s a new species of human relative called Homo naledi, and a University of Iowa doctoral student has been directly involved with researching it.
The team made the discovery at the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site northwest of Johannesburg, South Africa in 2013. The find was announced last week by the University of the Witwatersrand, the National Geographic Society and the South African National Research Foundation, and published in the journal eLife.
University of Iowa doctoral student Jill Scott went to the research front line, after an excavation uncovered a cave filled with fossil remains.
“I went to South Africa to be part of the team that did the initial analysis and description of the fossil material which was just published,” said Scott via Skype Monday. “I was part of the team that analyzed the cranial remains.”
Professor Bob Franciscus, an anthropologist at the University of Iowa, said the remains strengthen the theory that our human characteristics didn’t develop all at once.
“Elongated hind limbs, a significant increase in our cranial capacity or our brain size,” said Franciscus. “Our anatomies appeared to come in in fits and starts or bits and pieces over much longer periods of time.”
Scott said H. naledi’s physical characteristics are an odd fusion of old and new.
“This species is really different in that it’s kind of a mosaic of some more ancestral traits with some more modern traits that we wouldn’t have expected to see together,” Scott explained.
An artist’s interpretation of H. naledi’s face graces the October issue of National Geographic, revealing some of its secrets. But researchers say the fossils appear to have been intentionally buried in the cave, a behavior previously thought limited to humans.
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