Welcome Homo naledi! New Species of Hominid has been Discovered

Bells

Bells

Staff member
Where to begin..

Well, from the beginning of course..

On the 6 October 2013, palaeoanthropologist Lee Berger, posted a message on social media, asking for help. Well, very specific help to help excavate numerous remains found in the depth of a cave, with an entrance and pathway so small, that only small and experienced people could enter and excavate:

Berger, based at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, had just learned of a small underground chamber loaded with early human fossils. He was looking for experienced excavators to collect the delicate remains before they deteriorated further. “The catch is this,” Berger went on. “The person must be skinny and preferably small. They must not be claustrophobic, they must be fit, they should have some caving experience.”​


And what a find they made..

Less than two years after he posted this missive, Berger and his team have pieced together more than 1,500 ancient human bones and teeth from the Rising Star cave system — the biggest cache of such material ever found in Africa. The remains belong to at least 15 individuals of a previously undescribed species that the team has dubbed Homo naledi, and they may mark the oldest known deliberate burial in human history, Berger and his colleagues report in eLife1, 2.​

Meet Homo naledi..

image_3224_1-Homo-naledi.jpg


“The unusual combination of characters that we see in the Homo naledi skulls and skeletons is unlike anything that we have seen in any other early hominin species,” the scientists said. “It shares some features with australopiths (like Sediba, Lucy, Mrs Ples and the Taung Child), some features with Homo, and shows some features that are unique to it, thus it represents something entirely new to science.”

“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,” said Prof Paul Dirks of James Cook University.

[...]

“The hands suggest tool-using capabilities. Surprisingly, Homo naledi has extremely curved fingers, more curved than almost any other species of early hominin, which clearly demonstrates climbing capabilities,” said Dr Tracy Kivell of the University of Kent, UK.

“This contrasts with the feet of the species, which are virtually indistinguishable from those of modern humans,” added Dr William Harcourt-Smith of Lehman College, City University of New York, and the American Museum of Natural History.
​

This finding is spectacular. Not just for the variety, but the sheer size of the haul. And this was a haul and they suspect there are more left in the chamber that have yet to be excavated.

image_3224_5-Homo-naledi.jpg



There is so much still to discover and to learn from what has already been excavated, however. Already, as expected, there is some 'discourse' about whether the remains are all from the same species. But either way, whether they are or not.. Hot damn!

The team intends to publish at least a dozen papers from the workshop in coming months; the two published today are the first. They describe the site and the anatomy of Homo naledi, whose skull encased a small, fist-sized brain much like those of other early members of the genus Homoand of the more ancient australopiths. In other ways, its body is more like those of modern humans, with the lower limbs and feet of a biped and hands that could have gripped tools with precision. The researchers estimate that H. nalediwould have stood just under 1.5 metres tall and weighed between 40 and 55 kilograms.

“It is a very strange combination of features, some that we’ve never seen before and some that we would have never expected to find together,” says Hawks.

The researchers are unclear about how H. naledi is related to other early human species that lived in Africa, such as Homo erectus and Homo habilis. They hope to date calcite deposits in the cave to establish the age of the remains, which could be more than 1 million years old.

The chamber contains no evidence that early humans lived there, and no bones from species other than H. naledi, so Berger believes it might be a deliberate burial, and possibly the oldest known. Currently, the oldest site that seems to represent an early human burial is Sima de los Huesos in the Atapuerca Mountains, Spain, which dates to 430,000 years ago.

Fred Spoor, a palaeontologist at University College London, agrees that the bones represent a previously unknown Homo species, and says that Berger’s team makes a good case that they were deposited intentionally, after considering other alternatives. He is eager to see what other experts make of it.

However, Jeffrey Schwartz, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania, thinks that the material is too varied to represent a single species. “I could show those images to my students and they would say that they’re not the same,” he says. One of the skulls looks more like it comes from an australopithecine, he says, as do certain features of the femurs.

Schwartz and others will soon get the chance to judge the Rising Star remains for themselves. Berger’s team has uploaded data including 3D scans of the remains to the MorphoSourcerepository, and welcomes other researchers to study the material at first hand. Berger did the same with remains of a species called Australopithecus sediba that were discovered at the Malapa site.​


This may very well be a new species. Time will tell. They still need to date it all. Time will tell if this is a mixture of bones from different species or if the deposit contained remains from other species. They are more than confident that there is at least one new species.

This is an exciting day for science!



_________________________________________

Callaway, Ewen. "Crowdsourcing Digs up an Early Human Species."Nature.com. Nature Publishing Group, 10 Sept. 2015. Web. 10 Sept. 2015. <http://bit.ly/1NjWj0X>.

"Homo Naledi: New Species of Human Ancestor Discovered." Breaking Science News SciNewscom. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Sept. 2015. <http://bit.ly/1ig1yUe>.
 
It's interesting, but it's hard to form any conclusions based on excited press reports. Things might be over-hyped at the moment.

Is this really a new species of hominid? Or is it an early variant form of Homo erectus?

Do these creatures fit into our own evolutionary lineage or were they a dead end?

Maybe the most interesting aspect of this to me personally is that these bones were found deep in a difficult to access cave. The hominids pretty clearly weren't living in there. The bodies seem to have been placed there intentionally, perhaps as part of some kind of burial ritual that sought to return them to the earth or something. That suggests that they had religious beliefs of some sort. But would we expect that kind of ideation in hominids whose brains were only 1/3 modern human size?
 
Yazata said:
Maybe the most interesting aspect of this to me personally is that these bones were found deep in a difficult to access cave. The hominids pretty clearly weren't living in there. The bodies seem to have been placed there intentionally, perhaps as part of some kind of burial ritual that sought to return them to the earth or something. That suggests that they had religious beliefs of some sort. But would we expect that kind of ideation in hominids whose brains were only 1/3 modern human size?
Click to expand...

Yes, that is very interesting. Nova just released their online documentary today.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/evolution/dawn-of-humanity.html

Unless the cave has changed drastically over time, or there was another opening, I can’t see anyone hauling a dead body down there. If it was a buriel ground, perhaps they let the bodies decay first, carrying only the bones down.
 
Great stuff. Thanx.
The fun thing about archaeology is never knowing that the next dig will produce.
 
Yazata said:
It's interesting, but it's hard to form any conclusions based on excited press reports. Things might be over-hyped at the moment.

Is this really a new species of hominid? Or is it an early variant form of Homo erectus?
Click to expand...
That's the exciting part. No idea!

What intrigues me is the differences within the haul itself.

“The unusual combination of characters that we see in the Homo naledi skulls and skeletons is unlike anything that we have seen in any other early hominin species,” the scientists said. “It shares some features with australopiths (like Sediba, Lucy, Mrs Ples and the Taung Child), some features with Homo, and shows some features that are unique to it, thus it represents something entirely new to science.”

“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,” said Prof Paul Dirks of James Cook University.

“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.”

“Overall, Homo naledi looks like one of the most primitive members of our genus, but it also has some surprisingly human – like features, enough to warrant placing it in the genus Homo,” Dr Hawks said.

“The species had a tiny brain, about the size of an average orange (about 500 cubic cm), perched atop a very slender body.”

Homo naledi stood approximately 5 feet (1.5 m) tall and weighed about 45 kg. Its teeth are described as similar to those of the earliest-known members of our genus, such as Homo habilis, as are most features of the skull. The shoulders, however, are more similar to those of apes.

“The hands suggest tool-using capabilities. Surprisingly, Homo naledi has extremely curved fingers, more curved than almost any other species of early hominin, which clearly demonstrates climbing capabilities,” said Dr Tracy Kivell of the University of Kent, UK.

“This contrasts with the feet of the species, which are virtually indistinguishable from those of modern humans,” added Dr William Harcourt-Smith of Lehman College, City University of New York, and the American Museum of Natural History.

Its feet, combined with its long legs, suggest that the species was well-suited for long-distance walking.

“The combination of anatomical features in Homo naledi distinguishes it from any previously known species,” Dr Berger said.​


From an archaeological perspective, this is extraordinary.

Curved fingers that indicate for climbing, but long legs and feet that are like modern humans, along with curved shoulders and torso attributed to an ape, but with a human like face. Are they all from the same species? I do not know. Some are doubting it. Some are saying they are. Time will tell.

Most are confident that there is a new species in that haul, however. Whether it is what they are describing remains to be seen.

I notice another thread about this exists in Biology and Genetics and perhaps Aqueous Id might be focusing more on the genetic history of what is to come with this discovery. Which is also hellishly interesting.

Either way though, this is a tremendous find. Even if it isn't a new species and harks back to Homo habilis, for example, or even Australopithecus, from an anthropological point of view, if they were burying their dead.. Well.. It will be hard to know or tell without dating it.

However, Berger and his team did say that it is also possible that the bones got there another way, and perhaps they may have wondered in there and gotten lost.

No other animals were found in the subterranean chamber except a hapless owl and a few rodents. As a result, the team rules out the idea that animals dragged the human remains into the cave. Instead, they suggest that other humans, perhaps modern humans, deposited the bodies there—as in a crypt. But the team can’t rule out alternate explanations—for example, that a group of H. naledi found their way into the cave but got lost or trapped.

Despite the wealth of data, the initial analysis invites more questions than it answers, Stringer writes, including “Where does 
H. naledi fit in the scheme of human evolution?” Determining the age of the bones or cave would help answer that, but caves are notoriously difficult to date, and the bones may be too old for radiocarbon dating.

Still, “it is absolutely essential that the remains be dated,” says paleoanthropologist Curtis Marean of Arizona State University, Tempe. “For example, if they date to the last 300,000 years, then it is plausible that early modern humans killed them and stashed them in the cave as part of a ritual.” A date would also illuminate whether the fossils represent an ancient population or an isolated relic that persisted until fairly recently, says paleoanthropologist Bernard Wood of George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

Berger says now that his team has described the fossils, they can focus on dating them, trying to extract DNA, and extending his exercise in paleodemocracy by recruiting still more young researchers to the effort. “The Rising Star expedition isn’t a media stunt,” Berger says. “I felt it was the first time in history to bring the entire world into a place where we discovered a hominid fossil.”
​

Science have a slightly more detailed map of the cave system itself:

si-cavemap.jpg


That Crawl space.. I can see why he asked for small and petite cavers..

Berger did publish the study and report and it is accessible to one and all, available here.

It would be interesting to know or see if they go back in there and what else may be in there.

______________________________________________________


Gibbons, Ann. "New Human Species Discovered." ScienceMag, n.d. Web. 11 Sept. 2015. <http://bit.ly/1KGZnWl>.

Berger, Lee R. "Homo Naledi, a New Species of the Genus Homo from the Dinaledi Chamber, South Africa." ELife. N.p., 10 Sept. 2015. Web. 11 Sept. 2015. <http://bit.ly/1NrhfEU>.
 
What an intriguing mystery. How could it be that a species of Homo that ancient could have ritualistic behaviors like that, not to mention the only way they could have navigated that cave would have been to use a flaming torch of some sort, which is amazing. The idea that a more modern species of Homo killed them and put them in the cave is even stranger in some ways. What a find and what a story!
 
Reading the reports, some do suggest there may be another entrance to the cave they have not discovered yet, which would make sense. They are fairly certain the remains were not washed there, because of the lack of other debris like rocks, for example, among the bones. It is also possible that the geology of the cave, in that it may have been bigger and more spacious, instead of the warren of little crawlspace passages when originally used or frequented by these hominids. I did read somewhere that the bones were excavated to varying depths, so they believe this disagrees with the notion that they may have wandered in there and gotten lost and died in there.

Either way, this is a right royal mystery and frankly, what needs to happen now is the dating. If it was a burial site, it may mean that humans and neanderthals were not the only species to practice burial practices. Who knows. That's the exciting part though. The anticipation of more information about this.

I expect there will be a lot of to and fro with this one. Whatever it is, it is an amazing find. The sheer volume of bones is breathtaking.
 
The missing link is found, and Darwin's theory of Evolution is borne out yet again, but this time in high definition, sensurround, and a soon to be released gene map. Sooner or later, one of these excavations is bound to uncover the real deal, even if religious leadership insists the museum doors remain locked to their congregations on all missing link exhibits.

Does anyone really need protection from the equivalent of religious desensitization? Why is that, exactly? Because their loved ones have passed on? A much better excuse than that is needed to justify such censorship. You don't want your children to grow up to be bigots like you, do you really? Because that's not a very good idea.

Yazata said:
That suggests that they had religious beliefs of some sort. But would we expect that kind of ideation in hominids whose brains were only 1/3 modern human size?
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Yes, the religious version of the afterlife is evidently full of lesser animals, dogs, lemurs, and human ancestors like Naledi swinging from the ascendant angels of the ancient trees they once descended. The Earth is a great deal older than YEC folk as an article of faith believe it to be. DNA is common to all life on Earth, and humanity was evidently not created by a deity in less time than it takes to say "Genesis", much less debate it for millennia in the Talmud, which is the culture it came from. It was intended to teach people to read. It is no replacement for a science textbook. There is no ultimate truth contained in any part of it, expressed or implied. It was written in the symbols that are the tools of finite minds. An infinite mind has no need of these.

Perhaps it would be wiser to worry less about the eternity of your inevitable demise and try and make this a more pleasant place to stay while we all need to cohabit this fragile planet together. Chimpanzees and our lower distant cousins as well. Too much work? Tough. Any deity opposed to us knowing the truth about how we were created is simply not one that is worth many regrets, now, or in the afterlife. (paraphrased from a quote by Arthur C. Clarke).
 
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Archaeology/anthropology is constantly beset by the pitfalls of the projection of our cultural norms and social mores into the past.

What we do not know is just as important as what we do know.
We do not know when naledi lived.
We do not know the configuration of the cave when naledi lived.
We do not know why the bones are there nor how they got there.
The team ain't even excavated the entire site,

Speculation is essential to that branch of science.
That being said:
Assigning "ritual" to unknown behaviors is tricky on a good day and damned foolish the rest of the time.
 
Bells said:
Reading the reports, some do suggest there may be another entrance to the cave they have not discovered yet, which would make sense. They are fairly certain the remains were not washed there, because of the lack of other debris like rocks, for example, among the bones. It is also possible that the geology of the cave, in that it may have been bigger and more spacious, instead of the warren of little crawlspace passages when originally used or frequented by these hominids. I did read somewhere that the bones were excavated to varying depths, so they believe this disagrees with the notion that they may have wandered in there and gotten lost and died in there.

Either way, this is a right royal mystery and frankly, what needs to happen now is the dating. If it was a burial site, it may mean that humans and neanderthals were not the only species to practice burial practices. Who knows. That's the exciting part though. The anticipation of more information about this.

I expect there will be a lot of to and fro with this one. Whatever it is, it is an amazing find. The sheer volume of bones is breathtaking.
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I was struck by the nature of the existing entrance to the chamber, which is like a vagina. We come out of a vagina and in death, return to something like one, a womb in the Earth. It makes sense to me that ancient people could have thought of it this way.
 
Daecon said:
Thank goodness there's an amateur to point out stuff that the professionals somehow amazingly never noticed.
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Bear with me. If so enclined, one could be concerned about the general status of the hominin fossil archive. I'm also starting to question, why e.g. paranthropines should be human relatives at all with that ridge down the top of the skull. Why wouldn't that rather suggest them being gorilla relatives? Extant sapiens and its immediate Homo relatives don't have such a feature, amongst the extant hominoids, only gorillas do, and quite prominently. I can't see, that it would be parsimonous to argue them being humans before gorillas, since that would require additional assumptions.

paranthropus-boisei-300-460-0.jpg
58144319.jpg


On top of it, people tell me, that there are some 1,000 fossil specimens currently attributed to the Homo family. And the fossil specimens listed as potential members of Pan and Gorilla families are said to be counted on one hand. Where are the chimp and gorilla ancestors in the current archive? This doesn't seem to be brought up at all by paleoanthropologists. Why are we so massively over represented? Unless at least some specimens have been mislabeled in the current archive because of human psychology. Because there's a lot of prestige in finding hominins, and virtually none in finding paninins and gorillinins. The press certainly wouldn't give a rat's. I'm getting real concerned about inadvertent wishful thinking by the fossil hunters, also because of precedent.

I'm not saying it's definitely the case, I'm just voicing a concern. Somebody has to, even if it's wrong.
 
Why can't there be much more variation in hominid bones than in other primates?

It works for dogs.
 
Daecon said:
Why can't there be much more variation in hominin(?) bones than in other primates?
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Why would there be? It's possible, yes, but what would support the notion? The whole basis of phylogeny, saying that this or that fossil is related to whatnot, is to compare similar skeletal features between extant forms and fossils at various ages. I don't wish to be unreasonable to the actual experts with much better access to the fragments than me, but I can't help but question why every single known African hominoid fossil, currently listed as part of the Homo family, couldn't just as well be part of the Pan or Gorilla families, since they're virtually unknown in the current listing, and we can observe features on at least some of these fossils being more similar to traits on extant chimps or gorillas rather than humans.

I just want to exclude the possibility of these fossils being miscategorized because paleoanthropologists, by virtue of the name of the field, can't really come home with nothing but human bones. "That there is a fossil chimp, you say? Why are you wasting our funding, Johanson?" I don't want science suddenly waking up to that, not again. We're already rotten at studying ourselves without succumbing to collective hysteria.
 
CEngelbrecht said:
Where are the chimp and gorilla ancestors in the current archive?
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Gorillas and chimpanzees were and are rain forest animals. Rain forest soil tends to be more acidic, which would have dissolved a lot of the bones and fossils over time. Human ancestor bones have tended to have been found in dryer areas, where the soil was not as acidic, which allowed the bones to be preserved and fossilised.
 
Bells said:
Gorillas and chimpanzees were and are rain forest animals. Rain forest soil tends to be more acidic, which would have dissolved a lot of the bones and fossils over time. Human ancestor bones have tended to have been found in dryer areas, where the soil was not as acidic, which allowed the bones to be preserved and fossilised.
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Not the full story either. The known hominoid fossils, and most other fossils as well, are almost exclusively excavated from then wet sediments, e.g. lake silts, which allows for anaerobic conservation before anything else. Also, I wouldn't say that "dryer" African habitats differ in acidic content from that of African woodlands, e.g. permanent grasslands are usually well under pH 7. Other than that, I agree that differences in general habitats between hominins and related hominoid families is another likely explanation as to why hominins should be so vastly overpresented.
 
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