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A 1.4 million - year - quondam fossil jaw belongs to a previously unidentified human relative from southerly Africa , a young cogitation finds .
The nonextant human relative is from the genusParanthropus , whose soubriquet is " nutcracker human race " because of its massive jaws and vast molars . However , the newfoundParanthropusspecies has a more midget jowl and teeth , indicating that the nutcracker moniker might not be so clever after all .
Photos of the jaw of the putative newfound species,Paranthropus capensis.
At the timeParanthropuswas alive , the world had several hominins , or specie on the evolutionary branch more closely relate to humans than to chimps . Our genus , Homo , egress at least2.8 million years ago , while our mintage , Homo sapiens , date stamp back to at least300,000 age ago . So earlyHomospecies overlap withParanthropus . Until now , scientists live of threeParanthropusspecies — P. aethiopicus , P. boiseiandP. robustus — which lived between about 1 million and 2.7 million age ago .
In the unexampled study , research worker test a 1.4 million - twelvemonth - one-time jaw knight SK 15 . The pearl wasoriginally unearthed in 1949 in a cave at a South African site known as Swartkrans , alongside otherParanthropusfossils and a few earlyHomospecimens .
" Swartkrans is thus a primal site to uncover the extent of hominin diversity and understand the potential interaction among various hominin species , " study jumper cable authorClément Zanolli , a paleoanthropologist at the University of Bordeaux in France , told Live Science .
(Image credit: © Clément Zanolli )
ab initio , scientist think SK 15 belong to a never - before - seen species they calledTelanthropus capensis . However , since the 1960s , researchers suggested it actually belonged to the relatively slender early human coinage known asHomo ergaster .
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Zanolli and his colleague perform disco biscuit - ray scans of SK 15 and other fossils so they could create virtual 3-D models of the specimens and well understand their internal and external structures . Unexpectedly , they found that SK 15 was likely notH. ergasterbut a previously unnamed species ofParanthropus .
(Image credit: © Clément Zanolli )
" This is the first time since the seventies that a new species ofParanthropuswas identified , " Zanolli pronounce . The scientists detailed their findings in the March yield of theJournal of Human Evolution .
Although SK 15 ’s external structure resemblesH. ergaster , it looks " a piece weird forHomo , " Zanolli said . For instance , SK 15 is highly buddy-buddy compared with any otherHomojaw . In add-on , SK 15 ’s molar are quite longsighted and rectangular , whereasHomomolars are more rounded , Zanolli tell .
A digital 3D example of SK 15 ’s jaw ( left ) and a reconstruction of the same jaw ( right ) , which " mending " where it was fractured during the fossilization summons .
The molars of Paranthropus capensis ( top ) are small , shorter and have different roots than those of Paranthropus robustus ( bottom ) . But they have similarly work crown .
The researcher examine the interior social system of SK 15 ’s tooth — specifically , the portion of the dentine , the concentrated , dense , bony tissue spring the volume of a tooth , below the enamel in the crown of the teeth . They found that this did not couple any knownHomospecimen , revealing that the fossil was not fromH. ergaster , Zanolli said .
rather , based on the jaw shape and the size and shapes of the Crown and roots of the tooth , SK 15 likely belonged toParanthropus . However , it looked different from any knownParanthropusspecimen — for instance , the jaw and teeth are significantly smaller .
These findings indicate SK 15 does not belong to any of the three recognizedParanthropusspecies . The investigator paint a picture it belongs to a newfound mintage , which they namedP. capensis .
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The findings suggest at least twoParanthropusspecies coexist in southern Africa about 1.4 million years ago — P. robustusandP. capensis .
" They probably had different bionomical niches , " Zanolli said . P. robustuslikely had a highly specialised dieting , " as suggested by the massive jaw and teeth , whileP. capensis , which display small-scale teeth and a less robust mandibula , might have had a more varied diet and potentially exploited unlike food imagination , " Zanolli added .
succeeding inquiry might reveal whetherP. capensiswas an evolutionary dead end or not , but this is difficult to determine at the moment , as the former hominin fossil platter is " scarce for all of Africa , " Zanolli said . There might be species ofParanthropus"that survived much longer than we currently know . "
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