News Anthropology

Fossil Skull Diversifies Family Tree

By Bruce Bower

- More than 2 years ago

Anthropologists have long held that the earliest members of the human evolutionary family consisted of a group of closely related species known as australopithecines. A 3.5-million-year-old skull unearthed in Kenya now suggests that the australopithecines had a set of evolutionary companions.

Newly discovered skull of Kenyanthropus platyops (left) flanks a skull of Homo rudolfensis, which may be reassigned to the genus Kenyanthropus.