New species of extinct human 'Homo naledi' found in South African cave New species of extinct human 'Homo naledi' found in South African cave Putin doubts Trump met with Moscow prostitutes Play Video New humanoid species found in South Africa New humanoid species found in South Africa Scientists say newly discovered Homo naledi buried their dead, a practice once believed to be exclusive to Homo sapiens. Up Next Putin doubts Trump met with Moscow prostitutes Play Video Putin doubts Trump met with Moscow ... Putin doubts Trump met with Moscow prostitutes At a news conference in Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin says he doubts US President-elect Donald Trump met with prostitutes in a Moscow hotel room, referring to an unverified dossier published last week. Up Next Avalanche hits hotel in central Italy Play Video Avalanche hits hotel in central Italy Avalanche hits hotel in central Italy Rescue workers struggle to find survivors in an Italian mountain hotel, after tremors triggered an avalanche on the building. Up Next Iranian building collapses after catching fire Play Video Iranian building collapses after catching fire It's unknown how many people have been killed after Tehran's iconic Plasco building caught fire and collapsed.

Up Next Elizabeth Warren slams Betsy DeVos Play Video Elizabeth Warren slams Betsy DeVos Democrats pick apart President-elect's education secretary nominee Betsy DeVos over her lack of experience with financial aid. Up Next Obama 'worried about the Israel-Palestine issue' Play Video Obama 'worried about the Israel-Palestine ... Obama 'worried about the Israel-Palestine issue' President Barack Obama says he remains worried the prospects for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are waning due to growing Israeli settlement of the West Bank, saying the "status quo is unsustainable". Up Next Obama wishes Bushes well, defends free press Play Video Obama wishes Bushes well, defends free ... Obama wishes Bushes well, defends free press In his final news conference, President Barack Obama wishes former President George Bush Snr and Barbara Bush well after news that both were hospitalized before emphasising the need for a free press. Up Next Obama defends commuting Chelsea Manning's sentence Play Video Obama defends commuting Chelsea Manning's ...

Obama defends commuting Chelsea Manning's sentence President Barack Obama defends his decision to commute the sentence of convicted intelligence leaker Chelsea Manning, telling reporters at his final press conference that "justice has been served." More videos New humanoid species found in South Africa Scientists say newly discovered Homo naledi buried their dead, a practice once believed to be exclusive to Homo sapiens. On Thursday an international research team announced they had recovered more than 1500 bones, belonging to at least 15 skeletons. The expedition leader, Lee Berger, from the University of the Witwatersrand, said the bones are from a previously unknown early species of the human genus, Homo. SHARE Remarkable find: fossil fragments of a relative of the human species found in Africa. Photo: National Geographic These long-lost cousins have been named Homo naledi. As yet there is no age for the fossils. "We don't know how old these fossils are," Dr Berger said. Advertisement "But based on its anatomy, H. naledi clearly sits near or at the root of the Homo genus," he said. The fossil treasure trove was uncovered in the belly of a cave system known as Rising Star, part of the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site in South Africa.

SHARE Bones from the newly discovered species of ancient human. Photo: eLife To recover the haul about 60 cavers, including six specialist "underground astronauts", descended into the 30-metre-deep cave. The fossils were recovered in a narrow passage which may suggest the skeletons were deliberately placed there by members of their clan. SHARE Research suggests individuals were, on average, 1.5 metres tall. Photo: AP "Nothing is certain at this early stage, but a lot of the evidence points to the chamber being a potential deliberate body disposal site," said Paul Dirks, an Australian geologist involved in the expedition. He said the features of Homo naledi are similar to other early hominids, combining a human-like face, feet and hands, but with a short, ape-like torso and a very small brain. Research suggests individuals were, on average, 1.5 metres tall. SHARE Link The features of Homo naledi are similar to other early hominids, with human-like face, feet and hands. Photo: eLife "It is a mixture of primitive features and evolved features. It shows there were different species of hominids alive at different times that combined all sorts of different features.

Nature was experimenting," said Professor Dirks of James Cook University. Human evolution researcher Darren Curnoe, who was not involved in the expedition, said the discovery was very exciting and likely added yet another branch to the human evolutionary tree. SHARE Say hello to a long-lost cousin. Photo: AP "The work is very detailed and careful, and convinces me that they have in all likelihood found a new species of the human genus Homo." Dr Curnoe, from the University of NSW, said the number of skeletons from a single cave was remarkable and unprecedented in Africa. "This, combined with the excellent preservation of the bones, makes it a very important discovery," he said. Without a geological age, Dr Curnoe said it was hard to know exactly where the new species fit on the human evolutionary tree. But he suspected it would sit towards the base of the evolutionary branch that gave rise to Homo erectus and later species including our own. "My guess is that it is somewhere between 2 and 1 million years old," he said.

Marina Elliott, one of six women excavators selected to fit through the cave's 18-centimetre-wide opening, described the fossil retrieval as "some of the most difficult and dangerous conditions ever encountered in the search for human origins". The cave contains many more fossils yet to be recovered. "This chamber has not given up all of its secrets," Berger said. "There are potentially hundreds if not thousands of remains of H. naledi still down there." The fossil discovery and an interpretation of the findings have been reported in the scientific journal eLife. Subscribe to the podcasts via iTunes , RSS or Pocket Casts . Advertisement Newest ancient human relative found in South African cave Sorry, But My Country Is Ugly What lofty and enduring dream could sprout in us when we have become accustomed to squalor, habituated to decrepitude, made our peace with detritus? What hope is there for us when we fetishise Dubai and flaunt our expensive Louis Vuitton handbags, and yet fail to realise that our country has become—is—an endless open toilet, overflowing with septic sludge? Okey Ndibe chronicles his recent visit to Nigeria, which he describes as a "nightmare".

The expectation of unpaid care work within activism – time to stop In a world where nothing is for free, Tiffany Kagure Mugo asks, why are hard-working activists, especially women, still asked to give of their time and talent for next to nothing? It is time that society recognised the value of their labour. Activists in the Trenches: A Profile of Kenya’s Wanjeri Nderu and Ruth Mumbi When poor Kenyans need help, whether because a family member has been raped in one of Nairobi’s sprawling slums or someone they know disappeared after an interaction with the security services, they are unlikely to go to the police or to a non-governmental organisation (NGO). Instead, they seek out an activist like Wanjeri Nderu or Ruth Mumbi as their best hope.

A View from the Ground: State-Civil Society Relations in South Africa Interview An interview with Chumile Sali, an activist with the Social Justice Coalition (SJC), a mass member-based social movement on state-civil society relations in South Africa “Women need options when a man says no to a condom”: An interview with Kenyan HIV activist Jacque Wambui In much of Africa, HIV is no longer the medieval plague it used to be. Which is not to say the virus still doesn’t pose a significant threat to the continent’s future. HIV is a wily fiend and our hard-earned gains can be quickly eroded if complacency slips in. Thankfully, as Kenyan HIV activist Jacqueline Wambui explains to Dr. Diana Wangari in this interview, science is helping keep the virus at bay by giving women greater control in the bedroom than they've traditionally had. ‘There is no such thing as a revolution starting and ending in a couple of months’: an interview with Egyptian activist, Yara Sallam Egyptian human rights advocate, Yara Sallam, stood up to be counted when Egypt's revolution was in full tilt and paid the price for it: fifteen months in prison.

The prison spell did nothing to diminish her resolve and since her release last year, the outspoken activist has shown no signs of backing down from the fight to ensure that the powers that be uphold the human rights of every Egyptian. This Is Africa's Nancy Onyango caught up with Sallam on the sidelines of the recently concluded Association for Women's Rights in Development (AWID) forum in Brazil. She opened up about why some North Africans don't feel "African," her experience behind bars and why she thinks Egypt's revolution is far from over. Unfinished Struggles: An interview with Amina Doherty Amina Doherty is an African-Caribbean feminist and women’s rights advocate. Her work is centered on raising awareness for social justice through movement-building and innovative approaches to philanthropy. Her work takes many forms: art exhibitions, community programmes, cultural events and grant-making initiatives. She is committed to promoting justice and working towards social change through the intersection of art, culture and activism. Nancy Onyango caught up with her on the sidelines of the Black Feminisms Forum (BFF), held in Bahia, Brazil in September 2016 ahead of the 13th Association for Women’s Rights in Development forum.

They talked about what it means to be a feminist, collective self-care and the importance of listening to each other’s struggles. 10 Pictures of Patrice Lumumba Today marks the 56th anniversary of the death of one of Africa’s foremost liberation heroes and anti-colonial leader Patrice Émery Lumumba, murdered in a coup in 1961. As we remember the death of a remarkable African nationalist, we look at some important moments in Lumumba’s life captured on camera. Cartoon: Uncertainty shrouds The Gambia’s impending presidential inauguration In a few days U.S. President Barack Obama will leave office paving way for President-elect Donald Trump, who will be inaugurated on Friday, 20 January 2017. Ghana recently witnessed a smooth transfer of power with the inauguration of President Nana Akufo-Addo. In The Gambia, things are not so quite clear, President Yahya Jammeh who lost last year’s election is supposed to leave office paving way for the victor, President-elect Adama Barrow. The inauguration is scheduled to take place on Thursday, 19 January 2017 when Jammeh’s term officially ends.

The country is on tenterhooks as President Jammeh remains resolute that he will challenge the election result, despite having initially accepted defeat, and pledging to oversee a smooth transfer of power. Remembering Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr: 10 pictures Today is Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in America, a day to celebrate the birthday of one of the world’s most renowned civil rights activist, Martin Luther King, Jr., born on the 15th of January 1929. A Baptist minister, fervent activist, humanitarian, and leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement, Dr. King is best known for his role in the advancement of civil rights using nonviolent civil disobedience. As we celebrate what would have been Dr. King’s 88th birthday, we look at some important moments in Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr’s life captured on camera. Gabon 2017: All set for the Africa Cup of Nations tournament Africa’s biggest soccer showcase, the Africa Cup of Nations is certainly upon us, kicking off tomorrow (Saturday), the 14th of January.

Hosts Gabon will get the ball rolling in the opening match in Libreville tomorrow in a game against debutants The Djurtus of Guinea-Bissau, in a Group A clash. We wish all the 16 teams participating in the tournament the very best. Let the 2017 games begin. Breaking Barriers: Ahmed Hussen appointed first Somali-Canadian Cabinet Minister Lawyer and social activist, Ahmed Hussen (41) of the Liberal Party, who last year became the first Canadian of Somali heritage to be voted into national parliament has recorded yet another remarkable first, being appointed as Canada’s Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship. We celebrate Hussen’s inspirational achievement, a remarkable story of determination, hard-work and hope. Cartoon: Keeping it in the family? Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has promoted his eldest son Maj Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba to become a special presidential adviser in a reshuffle of top military personnel. The appointment has been strongly criticised, seen as a classic case of nepotism, and it has also been viewed with suspicion. Critics argue that Museveni is grooming Maj Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba to succeed him as president in the future.

Could Museveni be preparing his son to take over when the Ugandan leader eventually leaves office? You're looking at the new This Is Africa website. The articles that were published on TIA before March 2014 can still be found on the old website, which is no longer updated. Visit the archive of TIA articles posted between 2010 and 2014: Skull sparks human evolution controversy - CNN.com 1.8 million-year-old fossils are a "snapshot in time," researcher says Fossils call into question the classification of distinct species of ancient human relatives Study authors argue there was one Homo erectus lineage that left Africa for Eurasia Other anthropologists don't buy the argument but say skull is important Fragments of humans' ancient relatives are scattered across the globe. Sometimes a tooth or a few bones are all we have to tell us about an entire species closely related to humans that lived thousands or millions of years ago. So when anyone finds a complete skull of a possible human ancestor, paleoanthropologists rejoice. But with new knowledge comes new controversy over a fossil's place in our species' very fuzzy family tree.

In the eastern European nation of Georgia, a group of researchers has excavated a 1.8 million-year-old skull of an ancient human relative, whose only name right now is Skull 5. They report their findings in the journal Science , and say it belongs to our genus, called Homo. "This is most complete early Homo skull ever found in the world," said lead study author David Lordkipanidze, researcher at the Georgian National Museum in Tbilisi. Skull 5 is the fifth example of a hominid -- a bipedal primate mammal that walked upright -- from this time period found at the site in Dmanisi, Georgia. Stone tools and animal bones have also been recovered from the area. JUST WATCHED MUST WATCH Shaking up evolutionary models 04:42 The variation in physical features among the Dmanisi hominid specimens is comparable to the degree of diversity found in humans today, suggesting that they all belong to one species, Lordkipanidze said. But "if you will put separately all these five skulls and five jaws in different places, maybe people will call it as a different species," he said.

Now it gets more controversial: Lordkipanidze and colleagues also propose that these individuals are members of a single evolving Homo erectus species, examples of which have been found in Africa and Asia. The similarities between the new skull from Georgia and Homo erectus remains from Java, Indonesia, for example, may mean there was genetic "continuity across large geographic distances," the study said. What's more, the researchers suggest that the fossil record of what have been considered different Homo species from this time period -- such as Homo ergaster , Homo rudolfensis and Homo habilis -- could actually be variations on a single species, Homo erectus . That defies the current understanding of how early human relatives should be classified. Because of Skull 5 and the other Dmanisi fossils, scientists are "rethinking what happened in Africa," Lordkipanidze said. The Dmanisi individuals appear to have long legs and short arms, based on the fossils that have been found, said study co-author Marcia Ponce de Leon, of the Anthropological Institute at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, at a press conference. The braincase of Skull 5 is 546 cubic centimeters, which is smaller than expected.

The biggest brain case found at Dmanisi is 75% larger than the smallest one, which is consistent with what is observed in modern humans, said study co-author Christoph Zollikofer of the Anthropological Institute in Zurich. At Dmanisi, researchers believe carnivores and hominids were fighting over animal carcasses. The stone tools appear to have been used in butchering, based on the cut marks on animal bones, Lordkipanidze said. They are comparable to tools that have been found in Africa. "It's a real snapshot in time," Lordkipanidze said of the Dmanisi site. Skull 5, excavated in 2005, was matched to a jaw discovered in 2000. The first example of a hominid fossil at Dmanisi was discovered in 1991. So what species came after Homo erectus in the history of human relatives? Scientists have no idea, Zollikofer said. "It would be nice to say this is the last common ancestor of Neanderthals and us, but we simply don't know," Zollikofer said.

The Dmanisi fossils are a great find, say anthropology researchers not involved with the excavation. But they're not sold on the idea that this is the same Homo erectus from both Africa and Asia -- or that individual Homo species from this time period are really all one species. "The specimen is wonderful and an important contribution to the hominin record in a temporal period where there are woefully too few fossils," said Lee Berger, paleoanthropologist at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, in an e-mail. But the suggestion that these fossils prove an evolving lineage of Homo erectus in Asia and Africa, Berger said, is "taking the available evidence too far." Berger led the team that discovered Australopithecus sediba , a possible human ancestor that lived around 2 million years ago in South Africa. He criticized the authors of the new study for not comparing the fossils at Dmanisi to A. sediba or to more recent fossils found in East Africa. Ancient fossils question human family tree Lordkipanidze said he and colleagues consider A. sediba to be earlier and more primitive than the Dmanisi hominids, and that there's "no doubt" the Georgian fossils belong to the Homo genus.

But the selectivity of fossils compared to them in this study may have artificially biased the results toward the researchers' hypotheses, Berger said. Ian Tattersall, curator emeritus at the American Museum of Natural History's anthropology division, said in an e-mail that there's "no way this extraordinarily important specimen is Homo erectus," if the skull fragment discovered in Trinil , Java, Indonesia, defines the features of the Homo erectus group. The New York museum's Hall of Human Origins takes visitors on a tour through human evolutionary history, showing distinct Homo species reflected in major fossil finds such as Turkana Boy (Homo ergaster) and Peking man (Homo erectus). The Dmanisi discovery may find a place there too, but it's probably not going to result in relabeling other species, Tattersall said. "Right now I certainly wouldn't change the Hall -- except to add the specimen, which really is significant," he said. There is an area of about 50,000 square meters at Dmanisi still to be excavated, so Skull 5 may have even more company. This Face Changes the Human Story. But How? Naledi Fossils News This Face Changes the Human Story.

But How? Scientists have discovered a new species of human ancestor deep in a South African cave, adding a baffling new branch to the family tree. View Images While primitive in some respects, the face, skull, and teeth show enough modern features to justify H. naledi's placement in the genus Homo. Artist Gurche spent some 700 hours reconstructing the head from bone scans, using bear fur for hair. Photograph by Mark Thiessen, National Geographic A trove of bones hidden deep within a South African cave represents a new species of human ancestor, scientists announced Thursday in the journal eLife . Homo naledi, as they call it, appears very primitive in some respects—it had a tiny brain, for instance, and apelike shoulders for climbing. But in other ways it looks remarkably like modern humans. When did it live? Where does it fit in the human family tree? And how did its bones get into the deepest hidden chamber of the cave—could such a primitive creature have been disposing of its dead intentionally? This is the story of one of the greatest fossil discoveries of the past half century, and of what it might mean for our understanding of human evolution.

Chance Favors the Slender Caver Two years ago, a pair of recreational cavers entered a cave called Rising Star, some 30 miles northwest of Johannesburg. Rising Star has been a popular draw for cavers since the 1960s, and its filigree of channels and caverns is well mapped. Steven Tucker and Rick Hunter were hoping to find some less trodden passage. In the back of their minds was another mission. In the first half of the 20th century, this region of South Africa produced so many fossils of our early ancestors that it later became known as the Cradle of Humankind. Though the heyday of fossil hunting there was long past, the cavers knew that a scientist in Johannesburg was looking for bones. The odds of happening upon something were remote. But you never know. View Images Sunlight falls through the entrance of Rising Star cave, near Johannesburg. A remote chamber has yielded hundreds of fossil bones—so far. Says anthropologist Marina Elliott, seated, “We have literally just scratched the surface.” Watch the Show The NOVA/National Geographic Special, “Dawn of Humanity,” premiered Sept. 16, 2015, at 9 p.m.

ET/8 p.m. CT on PBS in the United States and is streaming online now. Deep in the cave, Tucker and Hunter worked their way through a constriction called Superman’s Crawl —because most people can fit through only by holding one arm tightly against the body and extending the other above the head, like the Man of Steel in flight. Crossing a large chamber, they climbed a jagged wall of rock called the Dragon’s Back. At the top they found themselves in a pretty little cavity decorated with stalactites. Hunter got out his video camera, and to remove himself from the frame, Tucker eased himself into a fissure in the cave floor. His foot found a finger of rock, then another below it, then—empty space. Dropping down, he found himself in a narrow, vertical chute, in some places less than eight inches wide. He called to Hunter to follow him. Both men have hyper-slender frames, all bone and wiry muscle. Had their torsos been just a little bigger, they would not have fit in the chute, and what is arguably the most astonishing human fossil discovery in half a century—and undoubtedly the most perplexing—would not have occurred. Full Series This Face Changes the Human Story. But How?

After Lucy, a Mystery Lee Berger , the paleoanthropologist who had asked cavers to keep an eye out for fossils, is a big-boned American with a high forehead, a flushed face, and cheeks that flare out broadly when he smiles, which is a lot of the time. His unquenchable optimism has proved essential to his professional life. By the early 1990s, when Berger got a job at the University of the Witwatersrand (“Wits”) and had begun to hunt for fossils, the spotlight in human evolution had long since shifted to the Great Rift Valley of East Africa. Most researchers regarded South Africa as an interesting sidebar to the story of human evolution but not the main plot. Berger was determined to prove them wrong. But for almost 20 years, the relatively insignificant finds he made seemed only to underscore how little South Africa had left to offer. What he most wanted to find were fossils that could shed light on the primary outstanding mystery in human evolution: the origin of our genus, Homo, between two million and three million years ago.

On the far side of that divide are the apelike australopithecines, epitomized by Australopithecus afarensis and its most famous representative, Lucy, a skeleton discovered in Ethiopia in 1974. On the near side is Homo erectus, a tool-wielding, fire-making, globe-trotting species with a big brain and body proportions much like ours. Within that murky million-year gap, a bipedal animal was transformed into a nascent human being, a creature not just adapted to its environment but able to apply its mind to master it. How did that revolution happen? The fossil record is frustratingly ambiguous. Slightly older than H. erectus is a species called Homo habilis, or “handy man”—so named by Louis Leakey and his colleagues in 1964 because they believed it responsible for the stone tools they were finding at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania. In the 1970s teams led by Louis’s son Richard found more H. habilis specimens in Kenya, and ever since, the species has provided a shaky base for the human family tree, keeping it rooted in East Africa. Before H.

habilis the human story goes dark, with just a few fossil fragments of Homo too sketchy to warrant a species name. As one scientist put it, they would easily fit in a shoe box, and you’d still have room for the shoes. Berger has long argued that H. habilis was too primitive to deserve its privileged position at the root of our genus. Some other scientists agree that it really should be called Australopithecus. But Berger has been nearly alone in arguing that South Africa was the place to look for the true earliest Homo. And for years the unchecked exuberance with which he promoted his relatively minor finds tended only to alienate some of his professional colleagues. Berger had the ambition and personality to become a famous player in his field, like Richard Leakey or Donald Johanson, who found the Lucy skeleton. Berger is a tireless fund-raiser and a master at enthralling a public audience. But he didn’t have the bones. Then, in 2008, he made a truly important discovery.

While searching in a place later called Malapa, some ten miles from Rising Star, he and his nine-year-old son, Matthew, found some hominin fossils poking out of hunks of dolomite. Over the next year Berger’s team painstakingly chipped two nearly complete skeletons out of the rock. Dated to about two million years ago, they were the first major finds from South Africa published in decades. (An even more complete skeleton found earlier has yet to be described.) In most respects they were very primitive, but there were some oddly modern traits too. Related Content Look for the October issue on newsstands September 29, 2015. Berger decided the skeletons were a new species of australopithecine, which he named Australopithecus sediba. But he also claimed they were “the Rosetta stone” to the origins of Homo. Though the doyens of paleoanthropology credited him with a “jaw-dropping” find, most dismissed his interpretation of it. A. sediba was too young, too weird, and not in the right place to be ancestral to Homo: It wasn’t one of us. In another sense, neither was Berger.

Since then, prominent researchers have published papers on early Homo that didn’t even mention him or his find. Berger shook off the rejection and got back to work—there were additional skeletons from Malapa to occupy him, still encased in limestone blocks in his lab. Then one night, Pedro Boshoff, a caver and geologist Berger had hired to look for fossils, knocked on his door. With him was Steven Tucker. Berger took one look at the pictures they showed him from Rising Star and realized that Malapa was going to have to take a backseat. Skinny Individuals Wanted After contorting themselves 40 feet down the narrow chute in the Rising Star cave, Tucker and Rick Hunter had dropped into another pretty chamber, with a cascade of white flowstones in one corner. A passageway led into a larger cavity, about 30 feet long and only a few feet wide, its walls and ceiling a bewilderment of calcite gnarls and jutting flowstone fingers. But it was what was on the floor that drew the two men’s attention. There were bones everywhere. The cavers first thought they must be modern.

They weren’t stone heavy, like most fossils, nor were they encased in stone—they were just lying about on the surface, as if someone had tossed them in. They noticed a piece of a lower jaw, with teeth intact; it looked human. Deep in theDark Zone The bones were found in a chamber named Dinaledi (chamber of stars), accessible only through a narrow chute, almost a hundred yards from the cave entrance. How they got there is a mystery. The most plausible answer so far: Bodies were dropped in from above. Hundreds of fossils have been recovered, most excavated from a pit a mere yard square. More fossils surely await. Cross section of cave today Jason Treat, NGM Staff; NGM MapsSOURCE: Lee Berger, WITS Berger could see from the photos that the bones did not belong to a modern human being. Certain features, especially those of the jawbone and teeth, were far too primitive. The photos showed more bones waiting to be found; Berger could make out the outline of a partly buried cranium. It seemed likely that the remains represented much of a complete skeleton. He was dumbfounded.

In the early hominin fossil record, the number of mostly complete skeletons, including his two from Malapa, could be counted on one hand. And now this. But what was this? How old was it? And how did it get into that cave? View Images Marina Elliott explores a side chamber with paleontologist Ashley Kruger. Elliott was one of six scientists on the expedition with the skill and physique to reach the Dinaledi chamber. Lee Berger, on screen, follows progress from the surface. PHOTOGRAPH BY ELLIOT ROSS Most pressing of all: how to get it out again, and quickly, before some other amateurs found their way into that chamber. (It was clear from the arrangement of the bones that someone had already been there, perhaps decades before.) Tucker and Hunter lacked the skills needed to excavate the fossils, and no scientist Berger knew—certainly not himself—had the physique to squeeze through that chute. So Berger put the word out on Facebook: Skinny individuals wanted, with scientific credentials and caving experience; must be “willing to work in cramped quarters.” Within a week and a half he’d heard from nearly 60 applicants. He chose the six most qualified; all were young women.

Berger called them his “underground astronauts.” With funding from National Geographic (Berger is also a National Geographic explorer-in-residence ), he gathered some 60 scientists and set up an aboveground command center , a science tent, and a small village of sleeping and support tents. Local cavers helped thread two miles of communication and power cables down into the fossil chamber. Whatever was happening there could now be viewed with cameras by Berger and his team in the command center. Marina Elliott, then a graduate student at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, was the first scientist down the chute. Related Content Receive More Updates on the Latest Scientific Discoveries “Looking down into it, I wasn’t sure I’d be OK,” Elliott recalled. “It was like looking into a shark’s mouth. There were fingers and tongues and teeth of rock.” Elliott and two colleagues, Becca Peixotto and Hannah Morris, inched their way to the “landing zone” at the bottom, then crouched into the fossil chamber. Working in two-hour shifts with another three-woman crew, they plotted and bagged more than 400 fossils on the surface, then started carefully removing soil around the half-buried skull.

There were other bones beneath and around it, densely packed. Over the next several days, while the women probed a square-yard patch around the skull, the other scientists huddled around the video feed in the command center above in a state of near-constant excitement. Berger, dressed in field khakis and a Rising Star Expedition cap, would occasionally repair to the science tent to puzzle over the accumulating bones —until a collective howl of astonishment from the command center brought him rushing back to witness another discovery. It was a glorious time. View Images Top: With other team members, Berger, Elliott, and Kruger (foreground, from left) view the first images from the fossil chamber. Steve Tucker (far right) co-discovered the site. K. Lindsay Hunter and Alia Gurtov (back left) helped excavate the bones. Bottom: Monitors in the command center follow excavation in the cave by Elliott and Becca Peixotto (in foreground). PHOTOGRAPHS BY RACHELLE KEELING The bones were superbly preserved, and from the duplication of body parts, it soon became clear that there was not one skeleton in the cave, but two, then three, then five ...

then so many it was hard to keep a clear count. Berger had allotted three weeks for the excavation. By the end of that time, the excavators had removed some 1,200 bones, more than from any other human ancestor site in Africa—and they still hadn’t exhausted the material in just the one square yard around the skull. It took another several days digging in March 2014 before its sediments ran dry, about six inches down. There were some 1,550 specimens in all, representing at least 15 individuals. Skulls. Jaws. Ribs. Dozens of teeth. A nearly complete foot. A hand, virtually every bone intact, arranged as in life. Minuscule bones of the inner ear. Elderly adults. Juveniles. Infants, identified by their thimble-size vertebrae. Parts of the skeletons looked astonishingly modern. But others were just as astonishingly primitive—in some cases, even more apelike than the australopithecines. “We’ve found a most remarkable creature,” Berger said. His grin went nearly to his ears. But What Is It?

In paleoanthropology, specimens are traditionally held close to the vest until they can be carefully analyzed and the results published, with full access to them granted only to the discoverer’s closest collaborators. By this protocol, answering the central mystery of the Rising Star find—What is it?—could take years, even decades. Berger wanted the work done and published by the end of the year. In his view everyone in the field should have access to important new information as quickly as possible. And maybe he liked the idea of announcing his find, which might be a new candidate for earliest Homo, in 2014— exactly 50 years after Louis Leakey published his discovery of the reigning first member of our genus, Homo habilis. In any case there was only one way to get the analysis done quickly: Put a lot of eyes on the bones. Along with the 20-odd senior scientists who had helped him evaluate the Malapa skeletons, Berger invited more than 30 young scientists, some with the ink still wet on their Ph.D.’s, to Johannesburg from some 15 countries, for a blitzkrieg fossil fest lasting six weeks.

To some older scientists who weren’t involved, putting young people on the front line just to rush the papers into print seemed rash. But for the young people in question, it was “a paleofantasy come true,” said Lucas Delezene, a newly appointed professor at the University of Arkansas. “In grad school you dream of a pile of fossils no one has seen before, and you get to figure it out.” The workshop took place in a newly constructed vault at Wits, a windowless room lined with glass-paneled shelves bearing fossils and casts. The analytical teams were divided by body part. The cranial specialists huddled in one corner around a large square table that was covered with skull and jaw fragments and the casts of other well-known fossil skulls. Smaller tables were devoted to hands, feet, long bones, and so on. The air was cool, the atmosphere hushed. Young scientists fiddled with bones and calipers. Berger and his close advisers circulated among them, conferring in low voices. Delezene’s own fossil pile contained 190 teeth—a critical part of any analysis, since teeth alone are often enough to identify a species.

But these teeth weren’t like anything the scientists in the “tooth booth” had ever seen. Some features were astonishingly humanlike—the molar crowns were small, for instance, with five cusps like ours. But the premolar roots were weirdly primitive. “We’re not sure what to make of these,” Delezene said. “It’s crazy.” View Images The braincase of this composite male skull of H. naledi measures a mere 560 cubic centimeters in volume—less than half that of the modern human skull behind it. ART BY STEFAN FICHTEL. SOURCES: LEE BERGER AND PETER SCHMID, WITS; JOHN HAWKS, UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON View Images Assembled from 3-D scans of individual fossils, a life-size rendering of H. naledi's hand displays curved fingers, a clue that the species had retained an ability to climb in trees and on rocks. The thumb, wrist, and palm bones all look remarkably modern. ART BY STEFAN FICHTEL.

SOURCES: LEE BERGER AND PETER SCHMID, WITS; JOHN HAWKS, UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON The same schizoid pattern was popping up at the other tables. A fully modern hand sported wackily curved fingers, fit for a creature climbing trees. The shoulders were apish too, and the widely flaring blades of the pelvis were as primitive as Lucy’s—but the bottom of the same pelvis looked like a modern human’s. The leg bones started out shaped like an australopithecine’s but gathered modernity as they descended toward the ground. The feet were virtually indistinguishable from our own. “You could almost draw a line through the hips—primitive above, modern below,” said Steve Churchill, a paleontologist from Duke University. “If you’d found the foot by itself, you’d think some Bushman had died.” But then there was the head. Four partial skulls had been found—two were likely male, two female. In their general morphology they clearly looked advanced enough to be called Homo. But the braincases were tiny—a mere 560 cubic centimeters for the males and 465 for the females, far less than H.

erectus’s average of 900 cubic centimeters, and well under half the size of our own. A large brain is the sine qua non of humanness, the hallmark of a species that has evolved to live by its wits. These were not human beings. These were pinheads, with some humanlike body parts. The Sum of Its Parts A composite skeleton reveals H. naledi’s overall body plan. Its shoulders, hips, and torso hark back to earlier ancestors, while its lower body shows more humanlike adaptations. The skull and teeth show a mix of traits. Skeleton: Stefan FichtelSOURCES: Lee Berger and Peter Schmid, University of the Witwatersrand (WITS), South Africa; John Hawks, University of Wisconsin-Madison “Weird as hell,” paleoanthropologist Fred Grine of the State University of New York at Stony Brook later said. “Tiny little brains stuck on these bodies that weren’t tiny.” The adult males were around five feet tall and a hundred pounds, the females a little shorter and lighter.

“The message we’re getting is of an animal right on the cusp of the transition from Australopithecus to Homo,” Berger said as the workshop began to wind down in early June. “Everything that is touching the world in a critical way is like us. The other parts retain bits of their primitive past.” A Place in Time Mixed soil sediments in the cave where H. naledi was found make it difficult to date the bones. High-tech dating methods could provide an age. Three possibilities are considered here—any of which would throw a curve into current thinking on human evolution. How old is Homo naledi? 1. A recent cousin If H. naledi is less than a million years old, then our ancestors shared the African landscape with a small-brained form of Homo much more recently than thought. 2. Early Homo H. naledi’s anatomy—transitional between australopithecines and Homo—is most compatible with an age of some two to two and a half million years. 3. Nudging Out Lucy Though it’s highly unlikely, if H. naledi is extremely old it could call into question the idea that Lucy’s species, A. afarensis, was on our direct evolutionary lineage.

JASON TREAT, NGM STAFFSOURCE: LEE BERGER, WITS; JOHN HAWKS, UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON In some ways the new hominin from Rising Star was even closer to modern humans than Homo erectus is. To Berger and his team, it clearly belonged in the Homo genus, but it was unlike any other member. They had no choice but to name a new species. They called it Homo naledi (pronounced na-LED-ee), tipping a hat to the cave where the bones had been found: In the local Sotho language, naledi means “star.” How Did It Get There? Back in November, as Marina Elliott and her mates were uncovering that startling trove of bones, they were almost as surprised by what they weren’t finding. “It was day three or four, and we still hadn’t found any fauna,” Elliott said. On the first day a few little bird bones had been found on the surface, but otherwise there was nothing but hominin bones. That made for a mystery as perplexing as that of H. naledi’s identity: How did the remains get into such an absurdly remote chamber?

Clearly the individuals weren’t living in the cave; there were no stone tools or remains of meals to suggest such occupation. Conceivably a group of H. naledi could have wandered into the cave one time and somehow got trapped—but the distribution of the bones seemed to indicate that they had been deposited over a long time, perhaps centuries. If carnivores had dragged hominin prey into the cave, they would have left tooth marks on the bones, and there weren’t any. And finally, if the bones had been washed into the cave by flowing water, it would have carried stones and other rubble there too. But there is no rubble—only fine sediment that had weathered off the walls of the cave or sifted through tiny cracks. “When you have eliminated the impossible,” Sherlock Holmes once reminded his friend Watson, “whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” Having exhausted all other explanations, Berger and his team were stuck with the improbable conclusion that bodies of H. naledi were deliberately put there, by other H. naledi. Until now only Homo sapiens, and possibly some archaic humans such as the Neanderthals, are known to have treated their dead in such a ritualized manner.

The researchers don’t argue that these much more primitive hominins navigated Superman’s Crawl and the harrowing shark-mouth chute while dragging corpses behind them—that would go beyond improbable to incredible. Maybe back then Superman’s Crawl was wide enough to be walkable, and maybe the hominins simply dropped their burden into the chute without climbing down themselves. Over time the growing pile of bones might have slowly tumbled into the neighboring chamber. Deliberate disposal of bodies would still have required the hominins to find their way to the top of the chute through pitch-black darkness and back again, which almost surely would have required light—torches, or fires lit at intervals. The notion of such a small-brained creature exhibiting such complex behavior seems so unlikely that many other researchers have simply refused to credit it. At some earlier time, they argue, there must have been an entrance to the cave that afforded more direct access to the fossil chamber—one that probably allowed the bones to wash in. “There has to be another entrance,” Richard Leakey said after he’d paid a visit to Johannesburg to see the fossils. “Lee just hasn’t found it yet.” View Images An H.

naledi group disposes of one of their own in Rising Star cave in this artist’s depiction. Though such advanced behavior is unknown in other primitive hominins, “there appears to be no other option for why the bones are there,” says lead scientist Lee Berger. ART BY JON FOSTER. SOURCE: LEE BERGER, WITS But water would inevitably have washed rubble, plant material, and other debris into the fossil chamber along with the bones, and they simply aren’t there. “There isn’t a lot of subjectivity here,” said Eric Roberts, a geologist from James Cook University in Australia, svelte enough to have examined the chamber himself. “The sediments don’t lie.” Disposal of the dead brings closure for the living, confers respect on the departed, or abets their transition to the next life. Such sentiments are a hallmark of humanity. But H. naledi, Berger emphatically stresses, was not human—which makes the behavior all the more intriguing. A New Kind of Ancestor H. naledi was much closer in appearence to Homo species such as H. erectus than to australopithecines, such as Lucy.

But it possesses enough traits shared with no other member of our genus that it warrants a new species name. "Lucy" Adult Male 4 ft 10 in; 100-110 lbs Art: John GurcheSources: Lee Berger, University of the Witwatersrand (WITS), South Africa; John Hawks, University of Wisconsin-Madison “It’s an animal that appears to have had the cognitive ability to recognize its separation from nature,” he said. How Old Is It? The mysteries of what H. naledi is, and how its bones got into the cave, are inextricably knotted with the question of how old those bones are—and for the moment no one knows. In East Africa, fossils can be accurately dated when they are found above or below layers of volcanic ash, whose age can be measured from the clocklike decay of radioactive elements in the ash. At Malapa, Berger had gotten lucky: The A. sediba bones lay between two flowstones—thin layers of calcite deposited by running water—that could also be dated radiometrically. But the bones in the Rising Star chamber were just lying on the cave floor or buried in shallow, mixed sediments.

When they got into the cave is an even more intractable problem to solve than how. Most of the workshop scientists fretted over how their analysis would be received without a date attached. (As it turned out, the lack of a date would prove to be one impediment to a quick publication of the scientific papers describing the finds.) But Berger wasn’t bothered one bit. If H. naledi eventually proved to be as old as its morphology suggested, then he had quite possibly found the root of the Homo family tree. But if the new species turned out to be much younger, the repercussions could be equally profound. It could mean that while our own species was evolving, a separate, small-brained, more primitive-looking Homo was loose on the landscape, as recently as anyone dared to contemplate. A hundred thousand years ago? Fifty thousand? Ten thousand? As the exhilarating workshop came to an end with that fundamental question still unresolved, Berger was sanguine as always. “No matter what the age, it will have tremendous impact,” he said, shrugging. Berger’s Triumph A few weeks later, in August of last year, he traveled to East Africa. To mark the occasion of Louis Leakey's description of H.

habilis, Richard Leakey had summoned the leading thinkers on early human evolution to a symposium at the Turkana Basin Institute, the research center he (along with the State University of New York at Stony Brook) had established near the western shore of Lake Turkana in Kenya. You May Also Like...

Question: Homo naledi, an early form of human life, was discovered in which African country?
Answer: South Africa