DT News - MEA - New human ancestor discovered in Ethiopia based on fossil teeth

Dental Tribune International

Thu. 4 June 2015

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WORANSO-MILLE, Ethiopia: Australopithecus deyiremeda is the name of a new fossil hominid species that was discovered in the central region of Afar in Ethiopia, by an international team of scientists. The research team has found several fossil remains, including upper and lower jaws and a collection of teeth, in the sites of Burtele and Wayteleyta in Woranso-Mille. This fossil discovery takes the ongoing debate on early hominid origins and evolution in Africa to a whole new level.

The scientific team, led by Prof. Yohannes Haile-Selassie from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland in the US, found the fossil dental remains in the central region of Afar, about 520 kilometres northeast of the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa. Experts have assigned these 3.3–3.5 million-year-old fossil specimens to the new species Australopithecus deyiremeda. The name comes from ‘día-ihreme-dah’, which means ‘close relative’ in the language spoken by the Afar people.

More than 3 million years ago, A. deyiremeda lived in the plains of the region of Afar where it co-existed with the Australopithecus afarensis, the popular Lucy that was discovered by Donald Johanson, Ives Coppens and Tim White in 1974 in the Ethiopian site of Hadar. A. afarensis is a species that lived in Africa between 2.9 and 3.9 million years ago.

Scientists have long argued that A. afarensis was the only pre-human species that lived in the region of Afar between 3 and 4 million years ago. Some recent fossil discoveries—for example, Australopithecus bahrelghazali, from Chad, and Kenyanthropus platyops, from Kenya—challenged this long-held idea, although a number of researchers were still sceptical about the validity of these species.

“The discovery of A. deyiremeda in the region of Afar proves that A. afarensis co-existed with other human species; it is the first time that fossils provide conclusive evidence for the presence of more than one hominid species during the Mid-Pliocene,” explained Lluís Gibert, researcher in the Department of Geochemistry, Petrology and Geological Prospecting at the Faculty of Geology at the University of Barcelona. Gibert participated in the field research that has been conducted in Woranso-Mille since 2010. He is the one responsible for the chronostratigraphic and sedimentological interpretation of the fossils that were found in the area.

According to Haile-Selassie, “The new species is yet another confirmation that Lucy’s species, Australopithecus afarensis, was not the only potential human ancestor species that roamed in what is now the Afar region of Ethiopia during the Mid-Pliocene. Current fossil evidence from the Woranso-Mille study area clearly shows that there were at least two, if not three, early human species living at the same time and in close geographic proximity.”

Experts affirmed that the new species A. deyiremeda is clearly distinct from A. afarensis in its anterior facial, dental and mandibular morphology. Its thick-enamelled anterior teeth may also indicate that it probably had a different diet that was richer and more varied than A. afarensis, and most probably more similar to the one of the genus Homo. Surprisingly, the new species clearly shows that some morphological features of the jaws and teeth, which are similar to Homo (for example, a relatively robust mandibular body and thick-enamelled teeth) first appeared in the fossil record earlier than previously thought. “The age of the new fossils is very well constrained by the regional geology, radiometric dating, and new paleomagnetic data,” said Beverly Saylor, Associate Professor of Stratigraphy and Sedimentology at Case Western Reserve University.

The discovery of A. deyiremeda has important implications for our understanding of early hominid ecology. It also raises significant questions, such as how multiple early hominids living at the same time and geographic area might have occupied the shared landscape and used the available resources in Afar.

The study, titled “New species from Ethiopia further expands middle Pliocene hominin diversity”, was published online in the Nature journal on 28 May.

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