Fossils from South African cave are 3.4 to 3.6m years old and walked the Earth at same time as east African relatives.
The fossils of our earliest ancestors found in South Africa are a million years older than previously thought, meaning they walked the Earth around the same time as their east African relatives like the famous “Lucy”, according to new research.
The Sterkfontein caves at the Cradle of Humankind world heritage site northwest of Johannesburg have yielded more Australopithecus fossils than any other site in the world.Among them was “Mrs Ples”, the most complete skull of an Australopithecus africanus found in South Africa in 1947.
Based on previous measurements, Mrs Ples and other fossils found at a similar depth of the cave were estimated to be between 2.1 and 2.6m years old. But “chronologically that didn’t fit,” said French scientist Laurent Bruxelles, one of the authors of a study published Monday in the PNAS science journal.
Source: The Guardian.
Original paper: Cosmogenic nuclide dating of Australopithecus at Sterkfontein, South Africa.
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