Scientists from the Cleveland Museum of Natural History have discovered the fossil remains of an early hominid in Ethiopia.
The finding sheds new light on what is possibly our earliest ancestry. “This individual was fully bipedal and had the ability to walk almost like modern humans,” commented Dr. Yohannes Haile-Selassie, curator and head of physical anthropology at the museum.
The partial skeleton, which was excavated over five years, belongs to the same species as the famous “Lucy,” Australopithecus afarensis, but appears to be 40,000 years older. The specimen was nicknamed “Kadanuumuu,” or “big man” because of its large size—which is 5 to 5 1/2 feet tall, while “Lucy” stood at about 3 1/2 feet.
According to Dr. Haile-Selassie, “We can now confidently say that ‘Lucy’ and her relatives were almost as proficient as we are walking on two legs, and that the elongation of our legs came earlier in our evolution than previously thought.”
