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Australopithecus Sediba
http://www.history.com/news/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/a-sediba-skeletons.jpgSince the mid-1990s, Lee Berger of the University of Witwatersrand had been plumbing fossil-rich cave deposits in South Africa for hominin bones. One day in 2008, his 9-year-old son Matthew stumbled across the ancient remains of a juvenile male with a distinctive combination of primitive and human-like features. Berger’s team later found the skeleton of an adult female and other individuals with similar traits nearby; they may have died after falling into a deep cave. New research suggests the fossils, which are thought to belong to a newly discovered species dubbed Australopithecus sediba, are roughly 1.98 million years old. (Credit: National Geographic/University of Witwatersrand)
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Small But Human-Like Brain
http://www.history.com/news/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/a-sediba-brain.jpgResearchers used high-resolution scanning technology to make a virtual cast of what the juvenile male’s brain may have looked like before decomposing. They discovered that Australopithecus sediba’s brain was smaller than that of Australopithecus afarensis, which lived a million years earlier, and was closer in size to a chimpanzee’s than a human’s. (Credit: Brett Eloff/Courtesy of Lee Berger and the University of Witwatersrand)
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Advanced Frontal Lobe
http://www.history.com/news/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/a-sediba-brain-reconstruction.jpgThough small, Australopithecus sediba’s brain was more human-like in shape than that of earlier hominins, particularly in the frontal lobe region, which plays an important role in abstract reasoning and cognition, the researchers found. This challenges the prevailing view that brain size increased gradually during the transition from Australopithecus to Homo; instead, neural reorganization that paved the way for human-like thinking may have happened before brains enlarged. (Credit: ESRF/KJ Carlson/Lee Berger and the University of Witwatersrand)
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Hands That Might Have Made Tools
http://www.history.com/news/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/a-sediba-hand.jpgThe female Australopithecus sediba skeleton included one of the most complete early hominin hand specimens ever found. Researchers detected a mixture of ape-like grasping muscles, which indicate Australopithecus sediba spent a lot of time climbing trees, and human-like features used for precise gripping and dexterity. Australopithecus sediba may have been capable of fashioning and using simple tools—and was possibly better at it than the later Homo habilis, the scientists found. (Credit: Peter Schmid/Lee Berger and the University of Witwatersrand)
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Human-Like Pelvis
http://www.history.com/news/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/a-sediba-pelvis.jpgThe short, broad pelvis of the female Australopithecus sediba skeleton is more human-like than that of earlier hominins, researchers discovered. Since Autralopithecus sediba has a small cranium, this casts doubt on the theory that the modern human pelvis evolved to facilitate the birth of babies with large brains. (Credit: Peter Schmid/Lee Berger and the University of Witwatersrand)
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Feet Built for Climbing and Unique Upright Walking
http://www.history.com/news/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/a-sediba-ankle.jpgThe morphology of Australopithecus sediba’s feet imply that the species walked upright when it wasn’t scaling trees, researchers said. But despite its human-like ankle joint (above), Australopithecus sediba had a strikingly primitive heel and shin. This could mean that it practiced a unique form of bipedalism that would have distinguished its gait from that of other hominins. (Credit: KJ Carlson/Lee Berger and the University of Witwatersrand)
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