Homo naledi, the fossil find that has shaken up the human family tree, could be younger than initially thought, new research has found.
The research, which appeared in the Journal of Human Evolution, suggests that naledi lived around 912,000 years ago, making it closer in time to modern humans than previously thought.
Palaeoanthropologist Mana Dembo of Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, Canada, and her colleagues came to this conclusion from statistical comparisons to data gathered from tooth and skull measurements from 10 other hominid species.
Naledi was revealed to the world in September last year after the remains of 15 individuals were excavated from the Rising Star Cave, in the Cradle of Humankind.
Academics including the leader of the team that excavated the naledi find, Professor Lee Berger, and Professor Francis Thackeray of the Wits Evolutionary Studies Institute, suspect the hominin is 1.8million years old.
As yet, the bones found in the cave have not been dated, although Berger says they are working on getting an age for the fossilsto be revealed later this year.
"The puzzle has been to place naledi into an evolutionary sequence," said Thackeray.
The problem with naledi is that it has a mix of archaic and modern features.
"It has a very human foot, but with a very small brain," Thackeray explained.
The researchers believe that their study has eliminated the possibility that naledi is not a new species and is another human ancestor, Homo erectus, instead.
Berger has questioned the study, saying that there are too many gaps in the fossil record to obtain a good statistical sample.
"As you found with Australopithecus sediba and naledi, there are a lot of things out there that we haven't found. I would be cautious," Berger said.
He stressed that the study only looked at parts of the skull and teeth, rather than other parts of naledi's antomy, like the limbs.
If naledi is found to be only 912000 years old, it would have lived at a time when there was little fossil evidence of hominins and Thackeray believes it would provide a peek into what man's ancestors were doing back then.
