- According to a new study published in the journal Nature, in Callao Cave on Luzon Island in the Philippines, scientists have discovered a new branch of the human family tree.
- As per the researchers, at least 50,000 years ago, an extinct human species lived on what is now the island of Luzon. The new human species has been named as Homo luzonensis. It’s possible that Homo luzonensis, as they’re calling the species, stood less than three feet tall. Their remains consist of thirteen remains – teeth, hand and foot bones, as well as part of a femur – that belong to at least three adult and juvenile individuals. They have been recovered in excavations at the cave since 2007.
- Its physical features are a mixture of those found in very ancient human ancestors and in more recent people.
- That could mean primitive human relatives left Africa and made it all the way to South-East Asia, something not previously thought possible.
- Homo luzonensis has some physical similarities to recent humans, but in other features hark back to the australopithecines, upright-walking ape-like creatures that lived in Africa between two and four million years ago, as well as very early members of the genus Homo.
- The finger and toe bones are curved, suggesting climbing was still an important activity for this species.
- The discovery adds growing complexity to the story of human evolution. It was not a simple march forward, as it once seemed. Instead, our lineage assumed an exuberant burst of strange forms along the way.
- Researchers on the Indonesian island of Flores had discovered the bones of an extraordinary humanlike species about 60,000 years old in 2004. The scientists named it Homo floresiensis or Hobbit.
