Australopithecus sediba: A New Species of Homo-Like Australopith from South Africa

Despite a rich African Plio-Pleistocene hominin fossil record, the ancestry of Homo and its relation to earlier australopithecines remain unresolved. Here we report on two partial skeletons with an age of 1.95 to 1.78 million years. The fossils were encased in cave deposits at the Malapa site in South Africa. The skeletons were found close together and are directly associated with craniodental remains. Together they represent a new species of Australopithecus that is probably descended from Australopithecus africanus. Combined craniodental and postcranial evidence demonstrates that this new species shares more derived features with early Homo than any other australopith species and thus might help reveal the ancestor of that genus. The origin of the genus Homo is widelydebated, with several candidate ancestorsbeing proposed in the genus Australopith-ecus (1–3) or perhaps Kenyanthropus (4). The earliest occurrence of fossils attributed to Homo (H. aff.H. habilis) at 2.33 million years ago (Ma) in Ethiopia (5) makes it temporally antecedent to all other known species of the genus Homo. Within early Homo, the hypodigms and phylo