Inside a Nearly Inaccessible South African Cave,
Scientists Say They Found a Mass Grave of a ‘Bizarre,’ New Human-Like
Species
MAGALIESBURG, South Africa (TheBlaze/AP) — Some scientists
say they’ve discovered a new member of the human family tree,
revealed by a huge trove of bones in a barely accessible,
pitch-dark chamber of a cave in South Africa. Other researchers
though counter that the fossils come from an already known
species.
The creature shows a surprising mix of human-like and more
primitive characteristics – some experts called it “bizarre” and
“weird.”
And the discovery presents some key mysteries: How old are
the bones? And how did they get into that chamber of the cave,
reachable only by a complicated pathway that includes squeezing
through passages as narrow as about 7 1/2 inches (17.8
centimeters)?
This March 2015 photo provided by National Geographic from
their October 2015 issue shows a reconstruction of Homo
naledi’s face by paleoartist John Gurche at his studio in
Trumansburg, N.Y. In an announcement made Thursday, Sept.
10, 2015, scientists say fossils found deep in a South
African cave revealed the new member of the human family
tree. (Mark Thiessen/National Geographic via AP)
The site, about 30 miles northwest of Johannesburg, has
yielded some 1,550 specimens since its discovery in 2013. The
fossils represent at least 15 individuals.
Researchers named the creature Homo naledi (nah-LEH-dee).
That reflects the “Homo” evolutionary group, which includes
modern people and our closest extinct relatives, and the word
for “star” in a local language. The find was made in the Rising
Star cave system.
The creature, which evidently walked upright, represents a
mix of traits. For example, the hands and feet look like Homo,
but the shoulders and the small brain recall Homo’s more
ape-like ancestors, the researchers said.
This photo provided by National Geographic from their
October 2015 issue shows a composite skeleton of Homo naledi
surrounded by some of the hundreds of other fossil elements
recovered from the Rising Star cave in South Africa,
photographed at the Evolutionary Studies Institute of the
University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South
Africa. In an announcement made Thursday, Sept. 10, 2015,
scientists say the fossils revealed the new member of the
human family tree. The expedition team was led by Lee Berger
of the university. (Robert Clark/National Geographic, Lee
Berger/University of the Witwatersrand via AP)
Lee Berger, a professor at the University of the
Witwatersrand in Johannesburg who led the work, said
naledi’s anatomy suggest that it arose at or near the root
of the Homo group, which would make the species some 2.5
million to 2.8 million years old. The discovered bones
themselves may be younger, he said.
The researchers
announced the discovery Thursday in the journal eLife
and at a news conference in the Cradle of Humankind, a site
near the village of Magaliesburg. They said they were unable
to determine an age for the fossils because of unusual
characteristics of the site, but that they are still trying.
Berger said researchers are not claiming that neledi was
a direct ancestor of modern-day people, and experts
unconnected to the project said they believed it was not.
Rick Potts, director of the human origins program at the
Smithsonian Institution’s Natural History Museum, who was
not involved in the discovery, said that without an age,
“there’s no way we can judge the evolutionary significance
of this find.”
If the bones are about as old as the Homo group, that
would argue that naledi is “a snapshot of … the evolutionary
experimentation that was going on right around the origin”
of Homo, he said. If they are significantly younger, it
either shows the naledi retained the primitive body
characteristics much longer than any other known creature,
or that it re-evolved them, he said.
Eric Delson of Lehman College in New York, who also
wasn’t involved with the work, said his guess is that naledi
fits within a known group of early Homo creatures from
around 2 million year ago.
Besides the age of the bones, another mystery is how they
got into the difficult-to-reach area of the cave. The
researchers said they suspect the naledi may have repeatedly
deposited their dead in the room, but alternatively it may
have been a death trap for individuals that found their own
way in.
Since he couldn’t go, Berger sent in his tall, skinny
16-year-old son. “When he came out after 45 minutes, he
stuck his head out. And to tell you how bad I am, I
didn’t say: ‘Are you OK?’ I said: ‘And?’ And he says,
‘Daddy, it’s wonderful.’ ”
Berger got funding from the National
Geographic Society to excavate the site. And he
advertised for research assistants on Facebook — for
skinny scientists who weren’t claustrophobic. Six women
took the job.
They worked in the chamber almost like spacewalkers,
communicating with researchers outside, via cameras and
about 2 miles of fiber optic cable. The team in the
chamber used paintbrushes and toothpicks to gently
unearth fossil bones — there were more than 1,550 of
them, an incredible treasure trove.
“This stuff is like a Sherlock Holmes mystery,” declared
Bernard Wood of George Washington University in Washington,
D.C., who was not involved in the study. Visitors to the
cave must have created artificial light, as with a torch,
Wood said. The people who did cave drawings in Europe had
such technology, but nobody has suspected that mental
ability in creatures with such a small brain as naledi, he
said.
Potts said a deliberate disposal of dead bodies is a
feasible explanation, but he added it’s not clear who did
the disposing. Maybe it was some human relative other than
naledi, he said.
Not everybody agreed that the discovery revealed a new
species. Tim White of the University of California,
Berkeley, called that claim questionable. “From what is
presented here, [the fossils] belong to a primitive Homo
erectus, a species named in the 1800s,” he said in an email.