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Scientists reconstructed the fossil of a skull found in Ethiopia, dating back 1.5 million years, and were stunned by what they learned.
Digital reconstruction is an area of technology that allows scientists to make a digital mock to visualise what an artefact may have looked like.
It’s a tool researchers used when reconstructing the face of a hominin fossil from Ethiopia dating back in incredible 1.5 million years – and perhaps even 1.6 million years. And what they found as part of the study surprised them as it looked far more archaic than they had anticipated.
The specimen is known as DAN5 and is the most complete cranium from an Early Pleistocene hominin to be found. It was discovered in the Horn of Africa, leading experts to hypothesise that the first humans to leave the continent may not have looked as modern as first thought.
The specimen consisted of multiple fragments of teeth and face, and also included part of the brain casing. Experts used high-resolution CT scans to create digital 3D models which could then be reconstructed together to show how the face would have once looked.
When this was completed, researchers noted how braincase shared features that are typical with the Homo erectus species. However, the face itself appeared older than that due to characteristic such as large molars and a flat nose bridge – features more common in more archaic hominin.
Dr. Karen Baab, who led the team, explained: “We already knew that the DAN5 fossil had a small brain, but this new reconstruction shows that the face is also more primitive than classic African Homo erectus of the same antiquity.
“One explanation is that the Gona population retained the anatomy of the population that originally migrated out of Africa approximately 300,000 years earlier.”
Because Homo erectus is thought to have been the first hominin species to migrate out of Africa, the new discovery complicates things, as it is the first fossil found within Africa that shares a mixture of traits – others have been found within Eurasia.
It challenges the notion that Homo erectus only began to evolve the classic anatomical characteristics after leaving the African continent.
Study co-author Dr Sarah Freidline said: “Comparing DAN5 to these fossils will not only deepen our understanding of facial variability within Homo erectus but also shed light on how the species adapted and evolved.”
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