Green Flier
Fresh look at human evolution
Baptised Australopithecus sediba, the partially fossilized specimens -- an adult female and a juvenile male -- were found in 2008 in a cavern 40 kilometres (24 miles) from Johannesburg
"They, ladies and gentlemen, are potentially a Rosetta stone into the past," Lee Berger, a paleo-anthropologist at the University of Witwatersrand, told a press conference at the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site. "They represent a completely new and unexpected species of human ancestor to science. Something we did not think was there." The 1.9-million-year-old hominids are in "extraordinary condition", would have known each other, and were possibly related. The adult female was aged in her late 20s or early 30s and the boy between 11 and 13, he said. "What we have found are arguably the most complete early hominid skeletons ever discovered. Each individual is far more complete than the famous Lucy fossil from Ethiopia." The hominids walked upright and share a number of traits with the first known species of homo sapiens, having long arms like apes but short and powerful hands, according to a paper to be published in the journal Science.
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