Newest Member of the Homo Family: Australopithecus deyiremeda

They combine both Human and apelike features...

This no doubt in the world of evolution suggests that they were an early ancestor of Homo sapiens ie the human generation which has existed for only but 200, 000 years approximately.

Researchers have confirmed that a new hominin ancestor lived in Ethiopia between 3.3 and 3.5 million years ago, at the same time as the 'Lucy' species, Australopithecus afarensis.

"The new species is yet another confirmation that Lucy's species, Australopithecus afarensis, was not the only potential human ancestor species that roamed in what is now the Afar region of Ethiopia during the middle Pliocene," lead author, Yohannes Haile-Selassie, from the Cleveland Museum of Natural History in the US, said in a press release.

"Current fossil evidence from the Woranso-Mille study area clearly shows that there were at least two, if not three, early human species living at the same time and in close geographic proximity." The new species was identified from a series of teeth and jaw bones that were discovered in 2011 in the central Afar region of Ethiopia, just 35 kilometres from the remains of 'Lucy', one of the most complete hominin skeletons ever discovered.

The lower jaws were also far more robust then jawline of A. afarensis, leading the researchers to classify the remains as a new species, which they've called Australopithecus deyiremada - deyiremada is taken from words that mean "Close relative" in the language of the Afar people.

The team then looked at the sediment on the remains, and used radiometric dating and palaeomagnetic data to work out when the new species lived.

150527134040 1 900x600Yohannes Haile-Selassie/Cleveland Museum of Natural History "This new species from Ethiopia takes the ongoing debate on early hominin diversity to another level," said Haile-Selassie.

"Some of our colleagues are going to be skeptical about this new species, which is not unusual. However, I think it is time that we look into the earlier phases of our evolution with an open mind and carefully examine the currently available fossil evidence rather than immediately dismissing the fossils that do not fit our long-held hypotheses." The challenge now is convincing the skeptics that A. deyiremada is indeed a separate species to Lucy - something that's pretty difficult given that we don't know much about how our ancestors looked or behaved.

sources: source 1, source 2