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About 3.2 million years ago , our ancestor " Lucy " roll what is now Ethiopia .
The discovery of her fossil skeleton 50 years ago transformed our intellect of human evolution . But it release out her species , Australopithecus afarensis , was n’t alone .
A sculpture of “Lucy”, a 3.2 million-year-oldAustralopithecus afarensishominin, along with a baby and other group members on display at the Houston Museum of Natural Science in 2007.
In fact , as many as four other variety of proto - man roamed the continent during Lucy ’s time . But who were Lucy ’s neighbors , and did they ever interact with her variety ?
For almost a million yr , A. afarensislived throughout East Africa , and paleoanthropologists have find numerous fossil of this species ranging from north cardinal Ethiopia to northern Tanzania — a couplet of 1,460 miles ( 2,350 klick ) , or close to the distance from Boston to Miami .
" It was a highly successful coinage that was well-situated in slews of dissimilar habitats,“Donald Johanson , a paleoanthropologist at Arizona State University who , along with his graduate bookman Tom Gray , discovered Lucy ’s fossils in 1974 , separate Live Science .
The “Burtele foot” found at the site of Woranso-Mille in Ethiopia is from an unknown hominin species.
For X after Lucy ’s discovery , paleoanthropologists assumedA. afarensiswas the only hominin that lived in this region during the middle Pliocene epoch ( 3 million to 4 million years ago ) . But the uncovering of a fragmental jawbone in the Bahr el Ghazal realm of Chad in 1995 dramatically changed the film of hominin diversity .
At 3.5 million years old , this fossil of a mintage that would be namedAustralopithecus bahrelghazaliwas the first indication that other hominins lived around Lucy ’s meter , Yohannes Haile - Selassie , manager of Arizona State University ’s Institute of Human Origins , and colleague write in a study put out in the journalPNASin 2016 .
Lucy ’s sort may not have interacted with these australopithecines , who were more than 1,500 miles ( more than 2,400 kilometre ) away . But at the site ofWoranso - Mille , just 30 mi ( 48 km ) N of where Lucy was found at the site of Hadar in Ethiopia , Haile - Selassie and colleague foundA. afarensisfossils along with other , anatomically distinct fossils from the same time period .
Hominin family tree showing relationships among extinct species.
These fossils belonged to a new australopithecine species : Australopithecus deyiremeda , which was dated to between 3.5 million and 3.3 million years ago . A. deyiremedahad markedly dissimilar teeth than Lucy ’s specie , suggest they had unlike diet , but paleoanthropologists do not currently harmonize on whether it is a dissimilar species from Lucy .
Woranso - Mille also yielded a fond foot date to between 3.4 million and 3.3 million years ago , and its apposable swelled toe suggests this someone was well conform for climbing thanA. afarensis , a specie that habitually walked on two legs . Although this individual was clear not a extremity ofA. afarensis , the " Burtele foot " has not yet been assigned to a metal money .
And at the Lomekwi site on the savings bank of Lake Turkana in Kenya , Meave Leakey , director of Plio - Pleistocene research at the Turkana Basin Institute in Kenya , and colleagues discovered another middle Pliocene hominin . The investigator list itKenyanthropus platyops , Greek for " matte face " . Dated to between 3.3 million and 3.2 million years ago , K. platyopsoverlapped in meter with Lucy but lived over 620 miles ( 1,000 km ) away .
K. platyops ' brainiac was similar in size to that ofA. afarensis , and the specie lived in a grassy , lake - edge environment , much like Lucy did . Whilesome researchersthinkK. platyopsmight be a Kenya - specific version ofA. afarensis , others , including Haile - Selassie , remember its upper teeth are dissimilar enough to call it a separate genus and species .
" A closer look at the currently uncommitted fossil grounds from Ethiopia , Kenya , and Chad bespeak thatAustralopithecus afarensiswas not the only hominin species during the middle Pliocene , and that there were other species clear distinct from it by their locomotor adaptation and dieting , " Haile - Selassie and colleagueswrote .
This growing collection of fossil from dissimilar hominin species raises an authoritative question that paleoanthropologists are trying to suffice : Did these different species meet , or even checkmate with each other ?
Almost all primates are societal creatures , living in groups and collaborate to forage for food . And some nonhuman hierarch , such as tamarins , marmosets and thigh-slapper monkeys , match across specie .
A. afarensiswas as social as other order Primates , and Lucy may have inhabit in a radical of15 to 20males and females . A preservedtrail of footprintsfrom three australopithecine walking together at the site of Laetoli in Tanzania is further evidence that Lucy and her form were societal tool .
But there is presently little hard grounds that australopithecine pair across metal money , Rebecca Ackermann , a biologic anthropologist at the University of Cape Town in South Africa , told Live Science in an e-mail .
That said , " there is structural grounds consistent with crossing inA. afarensis , " particularly in the mutant in their tooth , " Ackermann noted . But these difference can not be once and for all tied to interbreeding by current DNA techniques because australopithecine dodo are too old to harbor usable DNA .
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Instead , we may be able to infer whether they ever interbred by looking at ancient proteins , which are coded for by DNA , she said . By looking at protein in tooth enamel , Ackermann and fellow clarified how individuals from the hominin speciesParanthropus robustus , which exist in South Africa 2 million years ago , were pertain .
Despite the immense phone number ofA. afarensisfossils discovered over the past half century , paleoanthropologists still have a lot of oeuvre ahead of them to fully realize the human race Lucy inhabit .
" How these hominins were connect to one another , how they interacted , how they fill ecological niche on the landscape painting , and the degree of crossbreeding that may have happened are loose and of import questions,“Jeremy DeSilva , a biological anthropologist at Dartmouth College , told Live Science .
