Southern Africa may have hosted a hominid transition 2 million years ago
Members of three different hominid lines clustered at the bottom of Africa around 2 million years ago, signaling an evolutionary swing propelled by the spread of a highly successful, humanlike species, new fossil discoveries suggest. It’s unclear, though, if the three ancient populations inhabited the region at precisely the same time. Excavations at Drimolen, a set of caves in South Africa, uncovered two fossil braincases, one from Homo erectus and the other from Paranthropus robustus, say paleoanthropologist Andy Herries of La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia, and his colleagues. Both finds date to between 2.04 million and 1.95 million years ago, the scientists report in the April 3 Science. The H. erectus fossil comes from a child who displayed a long, low braincase typical of adults from that species. The P. robustus braincase is that of an adult. Researchers previously determined that two Australopithecus species, A. africanus and A. sediba (SN: 7/25/13), inhabited nearby parts of South Africa approximately 2 million years ago. Taken together, these discoveries indicate...