Feature Archaeology

Notorious Bones

South African finds enter fray over origins of the human genus

SKELETAL SURPRISES  Anatomically, A.  sediba possesses a strange combination of human-like and ape-like features.

Courtesy of L. Berger/Univ. of the Witwatersrand

By Bruce Bower

- More than 2 years ago

Almost 2 million years ago in what’s now South Africa, a boy and a woman fell through a hole in the ground into an underground cave, tumbling about 50 meters to their deaths.