Baby jaws with 2 million years clarify the origin of human genre

While the bass jaw is valid Ethiopian of Omo, attributed to Homo Habilis, is “very different to that of today’s human children,” from the South African locality of Kromdraai, attributed to Homo Erectus, “is very close to that of human children today,” he said as he exhibited molds of the two bones.

Due to the young age of the people to which they belonged, it seems unlikely that such characteristic morphological differences will be due to the environment (mode of life or food), as may be the case of adult bones.

“The comparison of both jaws teaches us that, since millions of years ago, it was two totally different species that coexisting somewhere in the African continent” and that Homo Erectus was more “close to us” than Homo Habilis, “the French paleoanthropologist added.

“These new discoveries contribute to a more relativized view of the origins of the Homo genre,” when the first representatives of human lineage separated from other great apes.

This “suggests that the roots of humanity are at the same time older, more diverse and branched from what has been believed so far,” said CNRS in the statement.