New Hominid Shares Traits With Homo Species: Fossil Find Sheds Light on the Transition to Homo Genus from Earlier Hominids

Two partial skeletons that were unearthed from a cave in South Africa belong to a previously unclassified species of hominids that is now shedding a 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 answer some key questions about what it means to be human. The fossils are between 1.95 and 1.78 million years old. Australopithecus species as well as the ancient environment in which it lived and died. The emerging picture is one of a hominid with a bone structure similar to the earliest Homo species, but who said it was more as an Australopithecus, like the famed "Lucy," would have. These new fossils, however, represent a hominid that appeared approximately one million years later than Lucy, and their features imply that the transition from earlier hominids to the Homo genus occurred in very slow stages, with various Homo-like species emerging first.