From Steve Blyth
I look forward to the dating of the Homo naledi fossils discovered in South Africa (12 September, p 8). I hope, too, that surviving DNA fragments may yield data on lineages. I wonder whether the fossils may be of more than one hominin species, with cross-breeding – as seems to have happened between Neanderthals and our other ancestors. Could hominin evolution have been powered in part by hybrid vigour? If so our genealogy may come to resemble a network more than a tree – creating yet more headaches for palaeontologists.
Roade, Northamptonshire, UK
