New Species On Human Family Tree Discovered In Ancient Mass Grave
Mark Thiessen/National Geographic A reconstruction of Homo naledi’s head by paleoartist John Gurche, who spent some 700 hours recreating the head from bone scans. The find was announced by the University of the Witwatersrand, the National Geographic Society and the South African National Research Foundation and published in the journal eLife. In September of 2013, two cave explorers, on a routine exploration in South Africa happened upon a collection of fossils that would soon question our current understanding of humans’ ancestral history. While probing a narrow fracture system in the Rising Star Cave System in the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site, they found the entrance into a dark cave now known as Dinaledi Chamber. Inside, they discovered a series of fossils, which anthropologists have now identified as a species of hominin...