Australopithecus deyiremeda

Australopithecus deyiremeda is an extinct hominin which lived about 3.4 million years ago in northern Ethiopia.Haile-Selassie Y. et al 2015. New species from Ethiopia further expands Middle Pliocene hominin diversity. Nature 521 (7553): 483. Spoor F. 2015. Palaeoanthropology: the middle Pliocene gets crowded. Nature 521 (7553): 432. doi:10.1038/521432a.  

A. deyiremeda was perhaps one of four different species of early humans that were all alive at the same time. It lived around the same time and place as several previously discovered specimens of Australopithecus afarensis. They include the well-known Lucy. 

Analysis of fossil teeth suggest that A. deyiremeda had a different diet from A. afarensis. Some scientists believe that A. deyiremeda fossils really belonged to A. afarensis individuals, and are not a unique species at all. Others disagree.Haile-Selassie, Yohannes; Gibert, Luis; Melillo, Stephanie M.; Ryan, Timothy M.; Alene, Mulugeta; Deino, Alan; Levin, Naomi E.; Scott, Gary; Saylor, Beverly Z. (2015). "New species from Ethiopia further expands Middle Pliocene hominin diversity" (PDF). Nature. 521 (7553): 483–488. Bibcode:2015Natur.521..483H. doi:10.1038/nature14448. PMID 26017448. S2CID 4455029.

 Name 
The word Australopithecus means "southern ape" in Latin. The word deyiremeda means "close relative" in the Afar language of Ethiopia.

 Discovery site 
The discovery was in the Afar Region of Ethiopia about  (520 kilometers) northeast of the capital Addis Ababa and  north of Hadar, Ethiopia (“Lucy’s” site).

Within the study area where the fossils were found, paleoanthropologists have found more than 120 early hominin fossil specimens, all around 3.4 to 3.8 million years old.

 Identification 
Ethiopian paleoanthropologist Yohannes Haile-Selassie and his team first proposed A. deyiremeda as a species in 2015. He told the BBC that in order to identify A. deyiremeda as a species:We had to look at the detailed anatomy and morphology of the teeth and the upper and lower jaws, and we found major differences. This new species has very robust jaws. In addition, we see this new species had smaller teeth. The canine [tooth] is really small – smaller than all known hominins we have found in the past.

 Description 
A. deyiremeda was bipedal. However, it probably also spent time in the trees, based on its foot anatomy.

Analysis of fossil teeth suggests that this species had a plant-based diet similar to Ardipithecus ramidus and Australopithecus anamensis.

 Related pages 

 Human evolution
 Australopithecus
 Paleoanthropology

 References 

Category:Australopithecines