Australopithecus Sediba: the two million year old boy
- The Australian
- April 09, 2010
The skull of Australopithecus sediba, a 2 million-year-old ancestor of
humans / Picture: AFP
Source: AFP
THE skeleton of a young boy who died in a cave 2 million years ago could unlock the secrets of how humanity came to be.
The find in South Africa of the 130cm specimen, which could walk
upright on its two legs like humans and swing in trees with
particularly long arms and strong curved fingers, together with an
adult believed to be his mother, is being hailed by scientists as one
of the most extraordinary discoveries in evolutionary science.The juvenile male died in a deep death-shaft cave along with a sabre-toothed cat, a horse, wild dog, hyena and other animals. Another skeleton found in the cave is believed to be that of his mother.
The boy is believed to have been about nine years old when he died, apparently looking for water in the cave. He was found by a boy about the same age.
Professor Paul Dirks, head of the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Queensland's James Cook University, told The Australian: "We have been incredibly fortunate. We have bumped into one of the best finds ever. It couldn't have been better orchestrated."
The find occurred during a cave-mapping and fossil-searching project designed by Professor Dirks, a geologist and professor Lee Berger, colleagues at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg for seven years until late last year.
Professor Berger, a controversial US paleoanthropologist whose son Matthew spotted the collarbone of the juvenile protruding from the ground in an area known as the Cradle of Humankind, said yesterday: "We have at least two more skeletons emerging - they literally are emerging."
Professor Berger described how his son had run off to an unexplored part of the cave. "After a minute and a half, he said 'Dad, I've found a fossil".
Although DNA has not been reliably identified beyond remains tens of thousands of years old, the scientific team, including experts from universities in Melbourne, Sydney and Townsville, is trying everything possible to recover traces of DNA from the two-million-year-old fossils.
The species, which has a brain about one-third the size of the modern human brain, has been newly named Australopithecus Sediba.
The cave, referred to as a "death shaft", was first spotted by the team in 2008 using Google Earth.
"Google Earth has completely revolutionised finding new sites like this cheaply, because now you can basically look for caves and particular (sedimentary) patterns ... where fossils might occur," said UNSW's Dr Andy Herries.
"You then go to the exact locations and scout them out."
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