Latest Australopithecus africanus Stories

COLLEGE STATION, Texas, June 27, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ --Australopithecus sediba, believed to be an early relative of modern-day humans, enjoyed a diet of leaves, fruits, nuts, and bark, which meant they probably lived in a more wooded environment than is generally thought, a surprising find published in the current issue of Nature magazine by an international team of researchers that includes a Texas A&M University anthropologist. (Logo:...

  CT scans of fossil skull fragments may help researchers settle a long-standing debate about the evolution of Africa's Australopithecus, a key ancestor of modern humans that died out some 1.4 million years ago. The study, to be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, explains how CT scans shed new light on a classic evolutionary puzzle by providing crucial information about the internal anatomy of the face. For decades scientists have disagreed about the...

Scientists at the University of Liverpool discovered ancient footprints that show human-like features of the feet and gait existed two million years earlier than previously thought. Earlier studies suggested that the characteristics of the human foot, such as the ability to walk upright, emerged in early Homo, which was about 1.9 million years ago. However, the Liverpool researchers have shown that footprints of a human ancestor dating back 3.7 million years ago show features of the foot with...

An analysis of two ancient hominid species that roamed southern Africa more than a million years ago suggests that females left their childhood homes while males stayed at home, an international team of researchers said on Wednesday.The scientists studied teeth from a group of extinct Australopithecus africanus and Paranthropus robustus individuals from two adjacent cave systems, and found that more than half of the female teeth were from outside the local area.By comparison, just 10 percent...

Scientists find link between tectonically active landscapes and ancient sitesOur earliest ancestors preferred to settle in locations that have something in common with cities such as San Francisco, Naples and Istanbul "“ they are often on active tectonic faults in areas that have an earthquake risk or volcanoes, or both. An international team of scientists has established a link between the shape of the landscape and the habitats preferred by our earliest ancestors. The research, by...

Fossil find sheds light on the transition to Homo genus from earlier hominidsTwo partial skeletons unearthed from a cave in South Africa belong to a previously unclassified species of hominid that is now shedding new light on the evolution of our own species, Homo sapiens, researchers say. The newly documented species, called Australopithecus sediba, was an upright walker that shared many physical traits with the earliest known Homo species"”and its introduction into the fossil record might...

In an unusual intersection of materials science and anthropology, researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and The George Washington University (GWU) have applied materials-science-based mathematical models to help shed light on the dietary habits of some of mankind's prehistoric relatives. Their work forms part of a newly published, multidisciplinary analysis* of the early hominid Australopithecus africanus by anthropologists at the State University of New...

The facial structure of an ancient relative of modern humans may have evolved to allow them to eat large, hard nuts and seeds as part of a survival strategy, according to a new study by an international team of researchers that includes Florida State University's Dennis E. Slice.The findings, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, challenge a long-standing hypothesis that the distinctive facial skeleton of Australopithecus africanus, a human relative who...

A U.S. researcher says the facial structure of our early human ancestors appear to have evolved to allow them to eat large, hard nuts to survive. Dennis Slice of Florida State University said the findings, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, challenge the hypothesis that the facial skeleton of Australopithecus africanus was developed for feeding on small objects. The face of the early human relative, who lived in Africa more than 2 million years ago, had...

Computer simulation shows early humans had jaws to eat diet of hard seeds and nutsYour mother always told you not to use your teeth as tools to open something hard, and she was right. Human skulls have small faces and teeth and are not well-equipped to bite down forcefully on hard objects. Not so of our earliest ancestors, say scientists. New research published in the February 2009 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reveals nut-cracking abilities in our...