The fossils of our earliest precursors found in South Africa are 1,000,000 years older than recently suspected, meaning they strolled the Earth at a similar time as their East African family members, like the popular “Lucy”, as per new exploration.
The Sterkfontein caves at the Cradle of Humankind world legacy site southwest of Johannesburg have yielded more Australopithecus fossils than any other site on the planet.
Among them was “Mrs Ples”, the most complete skull of an Australopithecus africanus tracked down in South Africa in 1947.
In view of past estimations, Mrs. Ples and different fossils found at a comparable profundity of the cavern were assessed to be somewhere in the range of 2.1 and 2.6 million years of age.
Yet, “sequentially that didn’t fit,” said French researcher Laurent Bruxelles, one of the creators of a review distributed Monday in the PNAS science diary.
“Over millions of years, at barely 4,000 kilometers (2,500 miles) apart, these species had plenty of time to migrate, reproduce with each other… therefore we can basically imagine a common evolution across Africa,” the researchers write.
Bruxelles
“It was odd to see some Australopithecus going on for so long,” the geologist told AFP.
Homo habilis, the ancestor of the Homo species that includes Homo sapiens, was at the time roaming the area.
Yet, there were no indications of Homo habilis in the profundity of the cavern where Mrs. Ples was found.
‘Peers’
Likewise, causing qualms about Mrs. Ples’ age was a late examination showing that the nearly complete skeleton of an Australopithecus known as “Little Foot” was 3.67 million years of age.
Mrs. Ples and Little Foot appeared to be separated by only a few sedimentary layers, making such a large age gap appear impossible.
Since the fossils are too old and delicate to test, researchers examine the silt close to where they were found.
The past dates misjudged the age of the fossils since they estimated calcite flowstone mineral stores, which were more youthful than the remainder of that cavern area, the review said.
The Sterkfontein buckles southwest of Johannesburg have yielded more Australopithecus fossils than any other site on the planet.
For the most recent review, the scientists utilized a method called cosmogenic nuclide dating, which took a gander at levels of uncommon isotopes made while rocks containing quartz were hit by fast particles that showed up from space.
The review’s lead creator, Darryl Granger, of Purdue University in the US, said the radioactive rot dates when the stones were covered in the cavern when they fell in the entry along with the fossils.
The analysts observed that Mrs. Ples and different fossils close to her were somewhere in the range of 3.4 and 3.7 million years of age.
This implies that individuals from Australopithecus africanus like Mrs Ples were “peers” of East Africa’s Australopithecus afarensis, including 3.2-million-year-old Lucy, who was tracked down in Ethiopia, said Dominic Stratford, head of examination at the caverns and one of the study’s creators.
Our genealogy is “more like a hedge”
It could also change how we might interpret our tribal history.
Stratford said the South African Australopithecus had recently been thought to be “too youthful” to ever be the precursor of the Homo sapiens species. That implied that Lucy’s home of East Africa was believed to be the more probable spot where the Homo genus advanced.
Yet, the new exploration shows that the South African Australopithecus had very nearly 1,000,000 years to advance into our Homo precursor.
Or, on the other hand, they might have dealt with it together.
“Throughout a time span of millions of years, at just 4,000 kilometers (2,500 miles) away, these species had a lot of chances to travel, to interact with one another, so we can generally envision a typical development across Africa,” Bruxelles said.
The exploration showed that the historical backdrop of primates was “more intricate than direct development,” he added.
Our genealogy is, as a matter of fact, “more like a shrub, to utilize the expressions of our late companion Yves Coppens,” Bruxelles expressed, alluding to the French scientist credited with co-finding Lucy. Coppens passed away a week ago.
“He had long grasped the dish African nature of development,” Bruxelles said.
More information: Cosmogenic nuclide dating of at Sterkfontein, South Africa, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2022). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2123516119.
