New Human Species Was 'Close Relative' to Lucy, Roamed Earth At the Same Time

Scientists detailed findings that suggest another pre-modern human species lived on the Earth at the same time "Lucy" did.

According to the Washington Post, authors of a study published in the journal Nature examined a jawbone dug up in Ethiopia that placed Australopithecus deyiremeda in the same genus as Lucy, also known as afarensis. They observed the two had some key characteristics that allowed them to live alongside one another.

"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 middle Pliocene," study lead author Yohannes Haile-Selassie, curator of physical anthropology at The Cleveland Museum of Natural History, said in a press release. "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."

The researchers chose the name deyiremeda because it means "close relative" in the Afar language. Deyiremeda's jaw had noticeable differences in its teeth, meaning it likely did not eat the same food afarensis did.

"The age of the new fossils is very well constrained by the regional geology, radiometric dating, and new paleomagnetic data," study co-author Beverly Saylor, of Case Western Reserve University, said in the release.

While pre-modern human species are now known to have overlapped the closer they got to becoming modern humans, the more ancient species were not believed to have done so.

"This new species from Ethiopia takes the ongoing debate on early hominin diversity to another level," Haile-Selassie said. "Some of our colleagues are going to be skeptical about this new species, which is not unusual. However, I think it is time that we look into the earlier phases of our evolution with an open mind and carefully examine the currently available fossil evidence rather than immediately dismissing the fossils that do not fit our long-held hypotheses."