A 3.5-million-year-old skull unearthed in a gully in Kenya may force
scientists to re-examine the evolution of modern humans.
The skull, and additional pieces of jaws and teeth, have been classified as
part of a previously unknown hominid species dubbed “flat-faced human from
Kenya”, Kenyanthropus platyops. Only one other hominid species, Australopithecus
afarensis, dates from a similar age— 3 to 4 million years ago.
That discovery made A. afarensis—and its most famous member, the fossil
Lucy—the sole candidate as ancestors of modern humans. “It seemed as if
our lineage had to run through Lucy,” says Frank Brown, a…
