The possibility of a new hominin species in East Africa, 2.5 million years ago

The Ledi-Geraru site in Ethiopia provides new clues about the past of the human lineage, at a critical period in its evolution, two to three million years ago. This is where the first fossils of the genera Homo and Paranthropus appear, while the australopithecines, the genus to which the famous Lucy belonged, disappear. On the surface of the globe, the regions that allow us to study this million years are rare, too rare, even in Ethiopia, a country that claims to be the "cradle of humanity."

Since the discovery of the Ledi-Geraru site in the Afar region in 2002, an international research team has visited the site almost every year. The scientists comb a desert once covered with lush vegetation and watering holes, hoping to find a fossil brought to the surface by ground movement and erosion. As they report in a study published August 13 in Nature , this is how they unearthed the first hominin tooth—a term used to refer to representatives of the human lineage since its separation from that of chimpanzees.

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