BURNABY, CANADA—While scientists continue to wait for a geological date for Homo naledi, Mana Dembo of Simon Fraser University and her colleagues estimate that the hominid, which had humanlike hands, feet, and teeth, lived some 912,000 years ago. According to Science News, Dembo and her team compared skull and tooth measurements of Homo naledi to the rate of change of skull and tooth features in hominids with known geological dates. She noted that the ages calculated for other hominids were close to dates obtained through the dating of fossils and sediments, but that in a few cases, the estimates were off by 800,000 years or more. Based upon skeletal similarities to Homo erectus, it had been thought that the newly discovered species, discovered in a remote underground cave in South Africa, lived between 2.5 and 1.5 million years ago. Dembo adds that further analysis of measurements of limb and trunk bones could help clarify how Homo naledi fits into the evolutionary tree. For more on Homo naledi, go to "A New Human Relative."
