A team led by renowned paleoanthropologist Meave Leakey has discovered new fossils that they say suggests that our apelike ancestors shared their habitat with other hominid species.?
This undated handout photo provided by National Geographic and Nature shows Meave Leakey as she carefully excavates the new face KNM-ER 62000 near Koobi Fora, northern Kenya. Leakey hails from a famous family of paleoanthropologists who say that the newly found fossils confirm their controversial theory that the human family tree may have sprouted some long-lost branches going back nearly two million years.
Fred Spoor/National Geographic/Nature/AP
EnlargeOur?family?tree?may have?sprouted?some?long-lost?branches?going?back?nearly?2?million?years. A famous?paleontology?family?has?found?fossils?that they?think?confirm?their?theory?that there are?two?additional?pre-human?species?besides?the?one?that?eventually?led?to?modern?humans.
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A team?led?by Meave Leakey, daughter-in-law of famed scientist Louis Leakey,?found?facial bones from?one?creature and jawbones from?two?others in Kenya. That?led?the researchers to conclude that man's early ancestor had plenty of human-like company from other?species.
These would not be Homo erectus, believed to be our direct ancestor. They would be more like very distant cousins, who when you go?back?even longer in time, shared an ancient common ancestor,?one?scientist said.
But other experts in?human?evolution are not convinced by what they say is a leap to large conclusions based?on?limited evidence. It is the continuation of a long-running squabble in anthropology about the earliest members of our own genus, or class, called Homo ?an increasingly messy?family?history. And much of it stems from a controversial discovery that the Leakeys made 40?years?ago.
In their new findings, the Leakey team says that none of their newest?fossil?discoveries match erectus, so they had to be from another flat-faced relatively large?species?with big teeth.
The new specimens have "a really distinct profile" and thus they are "something very different," said Meave Leakey, describing the study published online Wednesday in Nature.
What these new bones did match was an old?fossil?that Meave and her husband Richard helped find in 1972 that was baffling. That skull, called 1470, just did not fit with Homo erectus, the Leakeys contended. They said it was too flat-faced with a non-jutting jaw. They initially said it was well more than 2.5?million?years?old in a dating mistake that was later seized upon by creationists as evidence against evolution because it indicated how scientists can make dating mistakes. It turned out to be2?million?years?old.
For the past 40?years, the scientific question has been whether 1470 was a freak mutation of erectus or something new. For many?years, the Leakeys have maintained that the male skull known as 1470 showed that there were more than?one?speciesof ancient hominids, but other scientists said it wasn't enough proof.
The Leakeys' new discoveries are more evidence that this earlier "enigmatic face" was a separate?species, said study co-author Fred Spoor of the Max Planck Institute in Germany. The new bones were?found?between 2007 and 2009 about six miles (10 kilometers) away from the old site?near?the fossil-rich Lake Turkana region, Leakey said.
So that would make?two?species?? erectus and the?one?represented by 1470.
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