New Fossil Finds Confirm That Human Ancestors Were Not Alone in East Africa

The big-brained, upright primates of the genusHomo—the group to which we modern-day humans belong—evolved in East Africa around 2.4 million years ago. By half a million years later, Homo erectus, from whom we’re directly descended, was walking the plains near Lake Turkana in what is now Kenya. But anthropologists have increasingly come to believe that Homo erectus wasn’t the only hominid around. Three newly discovered fossils,detailed online this week inNature, confirm that at least two other Homo species lived nearby—providing the strongest evidence yet thatseveral evolutionary lineages split off in the genus’s early days.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2012/08/09/new-fossil-finds-confirm-that-human-ancestors-were-not-alone-in-east-africa/?utm_medium=referral&utm_source=pulsenews