Homo naledi - BIO0O0

‘Homo naledi, your recently discovered human relative’

By Lisa Hendry

National History Museum

Published
11 April 2019

This article is about a new species that was found in 2013 in a South African cave on a site that is about 40 kilometres from Johannesburg.  A palaeoanthropologist named Lee Berger assembled his team to come with and excavate bones down in the cave, they managed to recover more than 1,500 fossils of bones belonging to at least 15 individuals, ranging from elderly back down to infants. These species displayed a lot of unique combinations of non-human and human traits throughout the skeleton. Prof Stringer says explains that ‘ some of the Homo naledi’s features, such as its hands, wrist and feet, are very similar to those of modern human and Neanderthals. Although there were some more primitive, some species have small brains and the shape of their upper torso was more robust and more ape-like. There was also some discovering that their finger bones were more curved and that their hip joint was most closely reassembled to australopithecines and Homo habilis. The teeth got small at the front but towards the back of the mouth, it increased in size, which they also had light jawbones. Naledi’s anatomy suggests that they walked on two legs but they also had the ability to climb and hang off trees ape-like.