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The first
Australopithecus fossil, a skull of a child classified as
Au. africanus, was found at
Taung in
South Africa in 1924. Additional fossils found in South Africa established the genus as a hominid, but by the 1960s the focus had turned to
eastern Africa, where many additional fossils of
Australopithecus were found alongside fossils of early members of
Homo (in the form of
H. habilis and
H. erectus). In the 1970s the pioneering work of the French geologist Maurice Taieb opened Ethiopia’s Afar
rift valley to scientific investigation. Taieb discovered the
Hadar, Gona, and Middle Awash fossil fields, as well as several other fossil-rich areas along the
Awash River, which flows through this desert region.
At Hadar, Taieb and American paleoanthropologist
Donald Johanson found abundant fauna, including fossils of
Au. afarensis. This species was also unearthed during the 1970s at the northern Tanzanian site of
Laetoli.
Au. afarensis became widely appreciated as the probable ancestor of later
Australopithecus species. Its biology is well understood, thanks to fossils such as “
Lucy,” which was discovered at Hadar by Johanson in 1974, and the Laetoli footprints, which were discovered by English-born archaeologist and paleoanthropologist
Mary Leakey in 1978.
Compared with later species of
Australopithecus,
Au. afarensis was somewhat more primitive in its skull and teeth. In the prevailing
paradigm of the 1970s, when the first fossils of this species were found, most attention was focused on craniodental (head and teeth) and postcranial (body) features, which were often characterized as chimpanzee-like, compared with younger
Australopithecus fossils. However, since the earliest representatives of
Au. afarensis were dated to approximately 3.75 million years ago, there remained a large gap in time between the last common ancestor that humans shared with chimpanzees (7 million years ago) and the emergence of
Au. afarensis.
The immediate ancestors of
Au. afarensis were found in Kenya in the mid-1990s. These fossils were dated to approximately 4.2 million years ago, were classified in the species
Au. anamensis, and were clearly megadont (possessing large teeth), bipedal, small-brained
precursors of the Hadar and Laetoli hominids.
Au. anamensis and
Au. afarensis have since been recognized as chronospecies—arbitrary segments of a single lineage in
Australopithecus lineage that underwent anatomical evolution over time. This lineage was present across much of Africa by 3.8 million years ago, and it most likely gave rise to
Au. africanus of southern Africa, as well as to
Homo.
Au. anamensisevolved only a little earlier and was so similar in anatomy to
Au. afarensis that it did not reveal very much about the evolutionary origins of
Australopithecus. Beginning in 1992, earlier fossil sites in Ethiopia finally began to yield remains that would
illuminatethe nearly three-million-year interval between the earliest
Australopithecus and the last common ancestor of chimpanzees and humans.
Ardipithecus | History, Features, Habitat, & Facts
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