#paleoanthropology

#paleoanthropology

The Cradle of Humankind is a complex system of limestone caves that has the world's highest concentration of ancient human fossils. It's located about 50 kilometres northwest of Johannesburg, South Africa. When I started working there as a PhD student ten years ago, I never thought that I would be the person making discoveries. I always saw myself as a support person who helped the palaeontologists and archaeologists.

Sixteen years ago a group of anthropologists discovered 3.4-million-year-old fossilized foot bones in Ethiopia. While they suspected the foot belonged to an ancient human that likely lived alongside the species we know as Lucy, Australopithecus afarensis, without a skull or teeth to analyze, they couldn't be sure. What they did know is that unlike Lucy, which walked upright on arched feet like our own, the mystery foot had a grasping toe that was adapted for climbing trees.

For a long time, Paranthropus boisei, a hominid that inhabited the Earth from 2.6 million years ago to 1.3 million years ago, had been considered by experts to be a relative of humans. Its robust jaw, large molars, and powerful chewing muscles evidenced a diet as primitive as it was difficult to process, consisting of tough grasses and reeds that other species perhaps couldn't consume.

A letter to the editor sets the record straight regarding the discovery of Australopithecus, and a proposal to put food on the school curriculum in this week's pick from the Nature archive

Driven out by fire. Greece's wildfires on 13 August, some of the country's worst this year, led thousands of people and their livestock to be evacuated from several regions, including Patras city and the islands of Chios and Zakynthos. Hot, dry and windy conditions caused more than 150 blazes to erupt in a single day. Parts of western Europe have experienced exceptionally high temperatures this summer.

The vertebra presents clear incisions at key anatomical points for disarticulating the head. It is direct evidence that the child was processed like any other prey.