The Son of Adam Rediscovered - Abel, the Australopithecine

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• published: 05 May 2016
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Want to know more about Human Evolution? Subscribe to Cennathis: http://tiny.cc/subscribetocennathis Welcome to Eventlog, the place to find the events, people and fossils that shaped the world of Palaeoanthropology. This is the second Fossil Shout out of the series. Today’s fossil is codenamed KT12/H1. This partial jaw was lifted from a gravel desert surface, along what was once the shores of Lake Megachad, Koro Toro, Chad, north Africa. It was found at 08:45 am, local time on the 23rd of January 1995 by a French-Chadian team of fossil prospectors, led by Michel Brunet, French Palaeoanthropologist. The fossil was found in the vicinity of layers which were dated to between 3 and 3.5 million years of age. The teeth of KT12/H1 were isotopically analysed producing results that suggested this hominin ate mainly C4 sedges with associated root tubers. Sedges such as Cyperus which still grow around the shores of a much smaller Lake Chad today, may have been on this hominins menu, over 3 million years ago. So, how does this fossil relate to the other hominins of it’s time. The French team simply concluded that the new species is more derived than Praeanthropus afarensis. Praeanthropus was first proposed in 1955 as a new genus by Musaffer Senyurek, Turkish Palaeoanthropologist to classify the Laetoli Maxilla found by Ludwig Kohl-Larsen, physician, Nazi Party member and amateur palaeontologist in 1939. It was not until 1978, that afarensis was introduced by Donald Johanson, American Palaeoanthropology. The Laetoli maxilla is considered an Australopithecus afarensis and is thus the earliest-found afarensis fossil, many decades before A.L. 288-1. Though the derived features of KT12/H1 were what spurred a new species name, today, the majority of palaeoanthropologists are quite happy to consider the fossil a member of Australopithecus afarensis, though 2,500 km from Ethiopia, the heartland of that species. The animals that lived in eastern Africa and Koro Toro were of the same variety and so this showed faunal exchanges had taken place between those two areas and by extension lends credence to KT 12/H1 being Au. afarensis. Keep up to date on the latest Human Evolutionary research: Reframed Origins Podcast: http://tiny.cc/itunesoriginsreframed Facebook: http://tiny.cc/cennathisonfb Twitter: http://tiny.cc/cennathisontwitter Google+: https://www.google.com/+Cennathis Wordpress: http://cennathis.com/ Tumblr: https://cennathis.tumblr.com/ Academia.edu: https://ucl.academia.edu/CharlesTGClarke SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/cennathis