As scientists have announced the finding of hominid, known as Homo Naledi, to have lived in the same era with a modern human, questions about human evolution become more complex, as Homo Naledi lived in Africa less than a million years ago.
Following the recent findings of Homo Naledi, the eLife journal has published a series of articles on Homo Naledi topics on Friday, May 5. The articles were based on the findings that the ancient human being was younger than previously estimated.
Based on the analysis from a team of International scientists to date the fossils found in South Africa, Homo Naledi lived alongside human being. They wandered the grassland in South Africa, around the modern day Johannesburg between 335,000 and 236,000 years ago.
Homo Naledi is a hominid species with a very small brain, about the size of an orange, a third of a size of modern human being. The species stood 5 feet (150 cm) tall and weighing about 100 pounds or 45 kilograms. The teeth and skull of Homo Naledi are similar to those of early human being, but their shoulders are similar to apes.
The scientists, led by the Professor Lee Berger of the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg were surprised with the findings. They were predicting that Homo Naledi was actually older than the result of the finding. This opens a new mystery of human evolution, and scientists believed there are other species than Homo Naledi that lived alongside human.
"If there was one other species out there that shared the world with 'modern humans' in Africa, it is very likely there are others," Professor Berger told CNN regarding the other species than Homo Naledi. "We just need to find them."
The findings of Homo Naledi to live in the same era as early human beings baffled scientists. This opens a new mystery in human evolution as reported below:
