Ancient human-like fossils in South Africa may be more than a million years older than previously thought, which raises the odds that the species they came from gave rise to humans, a new study finds.
The new date could rewrite a few key stages in the history of human evolution. That's because the finding suggests these fossils belong to a species that may predate the iconic 3.2-million-year-old "Lucy" fossil. Lucy's species was long thought to potentially have been the prime contender for the direct ancestor of humans.
Homo sapiens is the only surviving member of the human lineage, the genus Homo. Previous research suggested that the leading candidate for the precursors of Homo may be the genus Australopithecus, which lived about 4.1 million to 2.9 million years ago.
