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A two-million-year-old skull of a distant, big-toothed human cousin has been found during an Australian archaeological dig deep in a South African cave system.
The find is the first known and best-preserved example of the small-brained hominid known as Paranthropus robustus, according to researchers at the University of La Trobe.
The nearly complete male skull, found in the Drimolen cave system near Johannesburg in 2018, could lead to a new understanding of human microevolution.
Paranthropus robustus roamed the earth around the same time as our direct ancestor Homo erectus, said paleoanthropologist Angeline Leece, referring to hominins, a small brain member of the human family tree.
“But 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,” she says.
“While we were the lineage that ultimately triumphed two million years ago, the fossil record suggests that Paranthropus robustus was much more common than Homo erectus in the landscape.”
Until recently, scientists believed that Paranthropus robustus existed in social structures similar to gorillas, with large dominant males living in a group of small Paranthropus robustus females.
This rare male fossil is closer to the size of female specimens previously found at the site, providing the first high-resolution evidence of microevolution in early hominid species.
The researchers say the discovery could lead to a revised system for classifying and understanding the paleobiology of human ancestors – an important development for their field.
Archaeologist Andy Herries said the skull, which has been painstakingly reconstructed from hundreds of pieces of bone, represents the start of a very successful line of Paranthropus robustus that has existed in South Africa for a million years.
“Like all other creatures on earth, to be successful, our ancestors adapted and evolved based on the landscape and environment around them,” he said.
“We believe these changes took place at a time when South Africa was drying up, leading to the extinction of a number of contemporary mammal species. It is likely that climate change produced environmental stressors that led to evolution within Paranthropus robustus.
The results of the new discovery in the Cradle of Humankind in South Africa were published Tuesday in Nature Ecology and Evolution.
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