Study: Ethiopian fossils indicate new branch of human evolutionary tree

A fossil find adds another twig to the human evolutionary tree, giving further evidence that the well-known Lucy species had hominin company in what is now Ethiopia, according to a new study.

A lower jaw, plus jaw fragments and teeth, dated at 3.3 million to 3.5 million years old, were found in the Afar region of northern Ethiopia four years ago.

That shows a second human ancestor lived in about the same area and time frame as Lucy's species, researchers said. But not everyone agrees.

In a paper released Wednesday by the journal Nature, the researchers announced the find, assigning it to a species they dubbed Australopithecus deyiremeda. In the Afar language, the second name means "close relative," referring to its apparent relationship to later members of the evolutionary tree.

But nobody knows just how it's related to modern humans' branch of the family tree, said Yohannes Haile-Selassie of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, who led the discovery team.

Our branch, which includes Homo sapiens and our closest extinct relatives, arose from the evolutionary grouping that now includes the new creature as well as Lucy's species, Australopithecus afarensis. The new find — and the possibility of more to come — complicates the question of which species led to our branch, he said.

Fossilized foot bones found in 2009 near the new discovery site indicated the presence of a second species. But those bones were not assigned to any species, and it's not clear whether they belong to the newly identified species, Haile-Selassie said. If they don't, that would indicate yet another species from the same time and region as Lucy's species.

Bernard Wood of George Washington University, who didn't participate in the new work, said the discovery provides "compelling evidence" that a second creature lived in the vicinity of Australopithecus afarensis at the same time. The next question, he said, is how they shared the landscape.

"These fossils certainly create an agenda for a lot of interesting research that's going to be done in the next decade," he said.

As evidence that the new fossils are from a previously unknown species, the researchers cite specific anatomical differences with fossils from known species.

But Tim White, an expert in human evolution at the University of California at Berkeley, was unimpressed. He said he thinks the fossils come from Lucy's species.

"Anatomical variation within a biological species is normal," he said in an email. "That's why so many announcements of this sort are quickly overturned."

The Associated Press