In the long line of the predecessors of the human race, the australopithecines discovered in South Africa were a bit of a band apart.
These small, primitive bipeds, able to walk upright easily but still comfortable in trees, looked a lot like their East African cousins, the
Australopitecus afarensis
, the most famous of which is Lucy.
But they were supposed to have lived more than 1 million years later, 2.1 to 2.6 million years ago.
A huge time lag which, oddly, made them contemporaneous with
Homo habilis
and
Homo rudolfensis
, the first known representatives of the genus Homo discovered in East Africa.
Another major problem: how to explain the last dating at the very remote age of 3.67 million years of Little Foot, the most complete Australopithecus skeleton ever found, in South Africa?
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Yves Coppens, fossils and men
The idea of a very young age for South African australopithecines (
A. africanus
) is taking a beating with a study published this…
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