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| Lee Berger and the Homo naledi's skull |
Joseph de Ca'th Lon is visiting the Rising Star Cave in South Africa. Today, he wants to talk about Homo naledi an amazing homo species.
Homo naledi is an extinct species of hominin, which anthropologists first described in 2015 and have assigned to the genus Homo. In 2013, fossil skeletons were found in South Africa's Gauteng province, in the Rising Star Cave system, part of the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site about 50 kilometres northwest of Johannesburg.
Homo naledi is an extinct species of hominin, which anthropologists first described in 2015 and have assigned to the genus Homo. In 2013, fossil skeletons were found in South Africa's Gauteng province, in the Rising Star Cave system, part of the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site about 50 kilometres northwest of Johannesburg.
As of 10 September 2015, fossils of at least fifteen individuals, amounting to more than 1550 specimens, have been excavated from the cave. Newer findings, remains of at least three individuals: two adults and a child, in a second chamber, known as Lesedi, light in the Sotho-Tswana languages, were reported by Hawks et alii in 2017.
More information: Newscientist
The species is characterised by a body mass and stature similar to small-bodied human populations, a smaller endocranial volume similar to Australopithecus, and a skull shape similar to early Homo species. The skeletal anatomy presents ancestral features known from australopithecines with more recent features associated with later hominins. Prior to dating, initial judgement based on anatomy favoured an age of roughly two million years old. Dirks et alii in 2017, using a variety of dating techniques obtained a much younger age range of between 335,000 and 236,000 years ago.
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| Joseph de Ca'th Lon in the Rising Star Cave |
The fossils were discovered by recreational cavers Rick Hunter and Steven Tucker in 2013. Homo naledi was formally described in September 2015 by a 47-member international team of authors led by American-born South African paleoanthropologist Lee Berger of the University of the Witwatersrand, who proposed the bones represent a new Homo species. Other experts contend more analyses are needed to support this classification. There are some indications that the individuals may have been deliberately placed in the cave near the time of their death.
The word naledi means star in the Sotho-Tswana languages. It, and the corresponding name Dinaledi Chamber, chamber of stars, were chosen to reference the Rising Star cave system where the fossils were found.
More information: National Geographic
It just shows that you can never stop looking.
Just because something has been studied for years doesn't mean that
it can't still tell us new things.
Lee Berger
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