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Australian researchers have discovered a two-million-year-old skull in South Africa that sheds new light on human evolution.
The fossil was a male Paranthropus robustus, a species that existed alongside our early human ancestors as a “cousin species”.
Academics from the Archeology Department at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia, led the excavation and reconstruction of the rare large-toothed skull at the main Drimolen quarry north of Johannesburg, South Africa.
Researchers described the fossil – discovered in 2018 on South African Father’s Day (June 20) – as thrilling.
Dr Angeline Leece told the BBC: “Most of the fossil record is just a single tooth here and there, so having something like that is very rare, very lucky.
She added that Paranthropus robustus appeared around the same time as our direct ancestor Homo erectus, and the skull was found near the child fossil that the team discovered at the same site in 2015.
Dr Leece said: “These two very different species, Homo erectus with their relatively large brains and small teeth, and Paranthropus robustus with their relatively large teeth and small brains, represent divergent evolutionary experiences,” said Dr Leece. .
“Through time, Paranthropus robustus probably evolved to generate and withstand higher forces produced when biting and chewing foods that were difficult or mechanically difficult to process with their jaws and teeth – like tubers.
“Future research will help clarify whether environmental changes have placed populations under food stress and how this has impacted human evolution.”
La Trobe’s doctoral candidate Jesse Martin said the findings were published today in Nature Ecology and Evolution and may lead to a better understanding of our human ancestors.
Mr Martin said working with the fossil pieces was like “working with cardboard” and he used plastic straws to remove the remaining bits of dirt.
He added that the discovery of the skull presented a rare example of “microevolution” within the human lineage showing that Paranthropus robustus gradually evolved its iconic chewing adaptations, perhaps over hundreds of thousands of years, in response to environmental change.
It is generally believed that two other hominids (human-like species) existed alongside Paranthropus robustus at that time in Africa, they are Man standing and Homo heidelbergensis
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