The first known hands fossils from a disappeared human relative were discovered in Kenya, revealing an unexpected dexterity and a gorilla -like handle. Hand bones that were found in conjunction with skull and teeth fossils make investigators believe that these early people could use stone tools.
The Paranthropus Boisei was previously identified only by exclusive skull and large teeth with clay up to four times larger than living people, so the researchers did not know what the rest of the body looks like or how hominin was interacting with its environment. However, they have theoretics about the huge chewing muscles that would have been its jaw, and his eating habits that earned a Moniker nuts.
The extremely well -preserved handbags consist of long thumb, straight fingers and mobile pink finger that would have allowed the species to form a powerful adhesion, much like modern people can perceive the hammer. However, other properties, such as the broad shape of the finger bones, are still very reminiscent of gorilla results.
It is estimated that a partial skeleton found in Koobi Fore, on the territory of Lake Turkana on the eastern land, is just over 1.52 million years. The dental and skull fossils were in line with a previously investigated specimen of Mr Boisei, and his hands and feet appeared exclusive among the previously investigated hominins – the term associated with all species arising after the genetic divorced from the big monkeys 6 million years ago.
“This is the first time we can confidently associate paranthropus Boisei with specific hands and foot bones,” said Carrie Mongle, Paleoanthropologist and Associate Professor at Stony Brook Stony Brook. The Mongle is the main study of the fossils published on Wednesday in Nature magazine.
The hand was “quite unexpected,” says Tracy Kvell, Max Planck Institute of Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany, Max Planck Institute of Evolution of Anthropology.
“It is clearly the (a) human ancestor’s hand, but also has qualities that are extremely similar to gorilla, which is surprising,” Kibell said by email.
“No other hominin we know about has a hand morphology that is so similar to gorilla, which greatly broadens our attitude to what is ‘possible’ in human evolutionary hand-use history,” she added.
Paleoanthropologists Carrie Mongle (left) and Meave Leakey, Louis Leakey and Mary Leakey daughter who found the first P. BoiseiIs it Discuss the new P. Boisei Hand Fossil at the research station of the Turkana Basin Institute in Imreret, Kenya. – Louise Leakey
The main question
Mr. Boisei lived in East Africa from $ 1.3 million. Up to $ 2.6 million Years, together with at least three more hominin types: Homo habilis, homo Rudolfensis and homo erectus.
Some researchers had a hypothesis that only the species of the genus of the Homo genus had the opportunity to produce stone tools, although the latest discoveries have damaged this assumption. Stone artifacts, deprived of Kenya, 2.9 million years ago.
Hominines include types of homo tribe such as our own homo sapiens; More recently, species such as Neanderthals, which disappeared 40,000 years ago; early homo species such as homo erectus; And more related species such as Australopithecus Afarensis, represented by the famous Lucy skeleton in Ethiopia, which is 3.2 million years old.
Mongle said Mr Boisei’s hand proportions would have allowed stone tools to be manipulated, as with other homo species living in Africa at that time. “This document is cautious in stating that parantropus made and used tools, but they say that the hands in anatomy are essentially nothing that would prevent the way,” Ryan McRAe told the Smithsonian National History Museum of National History. In the letter.
“In addition to a smoking gun from stone tools found in a fossilized hand, or stone tools found in place only in hominin species, we can never know exactly what is and not to produce these tools, but this document is a huge step in the Paranthropus the Tools Maker hypothesis.
Later, people like Neanderthals and Homo sapiens had a different wrist anatomy, and Mr Boisei, along with his contemporaries, could probably not have accurately squeezed their fingers, the study noted.
Hand fossils also show that Mr Boisei shared a grab with gorillas that would allow and remove strict edible plants by removing the hands of indigestion by hand, and a study.
While powerful hands indicate that it would have been a suitable climber, hominin’s legs had arches that allowed us to move effectively.
This means that he was undoubtedly adapted to walking vertically on two legs, Mongle said.
“The authors of the combined arm and foot morphology say that this species was probably not a gazebo (climbing in trees), but any rapprochement with gorillas in the hand is most likely to be due to how they used their hands to treat solid food.
The KooBi Fore website has given many fossils, including traces. – Louise Leakey
Findings of multimedia fossil
Fossil was found during excavations in 2019-2021. Team led by co -author Louise Leakey. In the 1960s, her grandparents, famous paleoanthropologists Louis Leakey and Mary Leakey, found the first P. Boisei’s skull now in Tanzania, giving her a nickname Nutcracker Man. However, the tags worn by the types of teeth show that instead of chewing hard food, such as nuts, it chewed and ground hard food, such as tubers and roots, to survive.
The latest fossils came from a sandy sludge layer just above the extraordinary traces of hominin, published last year.
Pressed into soft dirt, traces were assigned to Mr Boisei and Homo Erectus, so the investigators believed that both species had crossed the paths and could live as neighbors, not competitors in the same habitat.
Mongle said both species would have occupied different ecological niches, but based on what is known about hominin’s face, teeth, jaws and now, Boise probably ate specialized plant food such as herbs.
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