More discoveries on Homo Naledi
Remains from the Lesedi Chamber were initially discovered in 2013.
The Rising Star Cave system has revealed yet more important discoveries about the richest fossil hominin site in Africa. The research team working in this system has announced two major discoveries related to the fossil hominin species, Homo naledi. It has been over a year since the initial discovery revealed a new hominin species named Homo naledi.
Speaking at the Cradle of Humankind earlier this week, Wits paleoanthropologist Professor Lee Berger, who led the team, said they discovered Homo naledi was alive sometime between 335 000 and 236 000 years ago. This places this population of primitive small-brained hominins at a time and place that is likely alongside Homo sapiens.This meant that Homo naledi may have survived for as long as two million years alongside other species of hominins in Africa.
The dates were determined through six independent methods by at least 19 scientists from laboratories and institutions across the world including South Africa and Australia.
Another discovery, of a second chamber with abundant Homo naledi fossils, was also made. In it, one of the most complete skeletons of a hominin ever discovered, as well as the remains of at least one child and another adult, were found.
The discovery of a second chamber has led the team to argue that there is more support for the hypothesis that Homo naledi deliberately disposed of its dead in these remote, hard-to-reach caverns.
Remains from the Lesedi Chamber were initially discovered in 2013, however it took about three years to find fuller sets of fossils to work with.
The fossil remains have primitive features that are shared with some of the earliest known fossil members of our genus, such as Homo rudolfensis and Homo habilis, species that lived nearly two million years ago. On the other hand, however, it also shares some features with modern humans. After the description of the new species in 2015, experts predicted that the fossils should be about the same age as these other primitive species. Instead, the fossils from the Dinaledi Chamber are barely more than one-tenth that age.
In a research paper, led by Berger, entitled Homo naledi and Pleistocene hominin evolution in subequatorial Africa, the team discussed the importance of finding such a primitive species at such a time and place. They noted that the discovery will have a significant impact on our interpretation of archaeological assemblages and understanding which species made them.
“We can no longer assume that we know which species made which tools, or even assume that it was modern humans that were the innovators of some of these critical technological and behavioural breakthroughs in the archaeological record of Africa,” said Berger. “If there is one other species out there that shared the world with ‘modern humans’ in Africa, it is very likely there are others. We just need to find them.”
Interesting facts:
The team used a combination of optically stimulated luminescence for dating the sediments with Uranium-Thorium dating and palaeomagnetic analysis of flowstones to establish how the sediments relate to the geological timescale in the Dinaledi Chamber.
Direct dating of the teeth of Homo naledi, using Uranium series dating (U-series) and electron spin resonance dating (ESR), provided the final age range.
Few geologists have ever entered the Dinaledi Chamber, due to the tight 18cm-wide constraints of the entrance chute.
The new discovery and research was done by a large team of researchers from the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) (South Africa), James Cook University (Australia), the University of Wisconsin (Madison, United States), and more than 30 additional international institutions.
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