Scientists say the skeletons of a woman and an 11- or 12-year-old boy could be one of the most important finds of recent times. A discovery by a 9-year-old led to finding the pair, dubbed Australopithecus sediba. In 2008, 9-year-old Matthew Berger, discovered part of their skeletons outside the Malapa cave north of Johannesburg, South Africa. Matthew was accompanying his father, paleoanthropologist Lee R. Berger of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, who had used images from Google Earth to identify caves in the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site that might hold fossil deposits.
The hominid pair may be direct ancestors of humans or they may be from a closely related branch on the human evolutionary tree, South African researchers reported yesterday in the journal Science. Either way, experts agree that the rare discovery of nearly intact skeletons provides a look at evolution during what is considered one of the most significant periods of human development, when hominids were changing from the ape-like genus known as Australopithecus into the more modern forms we now know as Homo. The skeletons are the only complete specimens that fall between the Australopithecus afarensis known as Lucy, dating from 3 million years ago, and the Homo erectus known as Turkana boy, dating from 1.5 million years ago.
In addition to the hominid skeletons, the team found fossilized remains of at least 25 animal species, including antelope, mice, saber-toothed cats, a wildcat, a brown hyena, a wild dog and a horse. They also found at least two other hominid skeletons, another woman and an infant, Berger said in a news conference, but they are not yet reporting on those. All of the skeletons are in excellent shape because their fall into the pit protected them from scavengers and they were all fossilized rapidly.
The team will hold a competition among African children to give the skeleton boy a common name.
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South Africa: 2-Million-Year-Old Fossils Offer Look At Human Evolution During The Hominid Era
