The portrait of an ancestor of the
grandmother of humans, Lucy, has been obtained by a US-Italian
team of researchers.
The portrait has been drawn thanks to the discovery of the
skull of a hominid that lived 3.8 million years ago.
The discovery rewrites our knowledge of the progenitors of
man, the team said.
It indicates that that species and that of Lucy, who lived
3.2 million years ago, co-existed for about 100,000 years.
Published in Nature magazine, the discovery was outlined in
two studies led by Yohannes Haile-Selassie of the Cleveland
Museum of Natural History.
Also taking part were Antonino Vazzana and Stefano Benazzi of
the University of Bologna.
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