Message #261865

[Dekator]

Going forward

Berger and his team conclude, as they did at the discovery of Australopithecus sediba in 2008, that there are clearly other key transitional forms of hominins that may yet be discovered and added to the fossil record.  H. naledi is joining an expanding mosaic of hominin species on an ancient African landscape.

“If we learned about a completely new form of hominin only because a couple of cavers were skinny enough to fit through a crack in a well-explored South African cave, we really don’t have a clue what else might be out there,” National Geographic Executive Editor for Science Jamie Shreeve writes about the discovery in National Geographic magazine.

And much remains to be discovered in the Rising Star cave. “This chamber has not given up all of its secrets,” Berger said. “There are potentially hundreds if not thousands of remains of H. naledi still down there.”

Read the detailed study reports in eLife.

*Lee Berger of the Evolutionary Studies Institute, University of the Witwatersrand (Wits University), led the international team of scientists under the joint sponsorship of Wits, the National Geographic Society, and the South African Department of Science and Technology/National Research Foundation,