Remains of nonextant human relatives are annoyingly rare , leaving many chapter of our own evolution a mystery . However , a limited review of an erstwhile fossil discovered over 40 years ago has busted open an important part of the storey we did n’t previously be intimate .
Paleoanthropologists have take a second look at some ancient human remains discover in the Ethiopian highlands and argue they represent one of the early known fossils ofHomo erectus , a pivotal character in the report of human evolution .
On top of that , the remains indicate that this wildly successful metal money also lived in high - elevation heap , drastically change what we assumed about human development and migration .
The lower jaw of an infant hominin was discovered in 1981 among the upland of Ethiopia at the Melka Kunture complex , a cluster of prehistoric sites at an altitude of over 2,000 meters ( 6,561 feet ) above sea level .
The species of this individual became the subject of het donnish debate , but a young study has support that it belonged toH. erectus , just as some have previously speculated .
The fogy go steady to around 2 million years erstwhile , which isincredibly oldfor this species . They onlyfell into extinctionless than 120,000 years ago , meaning they were on Earth for around 1.9 million years .
All of this illume part of human evolution that was n’t get it on before , namely thatH. erectusdwelled at mellow altitudes . Two million year ago , this human relative had migrated out of the lowland savanna environments of East Africa and into the high - altitude area of the Ethiopian highlands .
The internet site of the discovery , lie with as the Garba IV site , also contains two flair of prehistoric I. F. Stone tools : Oldowan and Acheulean . The tools were line up at different layers of the site that date to different stop , indicatingH. erectuswas first producing Oldowan engineering science and then moved onto Acheulean engineering .
The domination of both these tool - making technologies show thatH. erectushad an impressive potential drop to accommodate its behavior . However , this is not to say that scientist ever assumed this specieswasn’t very wise .
H. erectus , whose name intend " upright man " was one of the early on know members of theHomo(human ) genus . owe to its protracted tenure on Earth , the extinct coinage is considered to be one of the most successful specie of human ever to take the air the planet . They also had a monumental ambit across the planet , with remains of the specie being witness across Africa and much of Eurasia , as far - flung as Western Europe and Southeast Asia .
The novel study is published in the journalScience .
