Australopithecus afarensis

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Australopithecus afarensis
Replica of Lucy's skeleton in the Natural History Museum, Vienna

Replica of Lucy's skeleton in the Natural History Museum , Vienna

Temporal occurrence
Pliocene
3.8 to 2.9 million years
Locations
Systematics
Human (Hominoidea)
Apes (Hominidae)
Homininae
Hominini
Australopithecus
Australopithecus afarensis
Scientific name
Australopithecus afarensis
Johanson , White & Coppens , 1978

Australopithecus afarensis is a species of the extinct genus Australopithecus . Fossils thatwere assigned to Australopithecus afarensis come from around 3.8 to 2.9 million years old find layers in East Africa , in particular from Hadar ( Ethiopia ) and Laetoli ( Tanzania ).

The relationship to the species of the genus Homo is unclear. However, it is very likely that Australopithecus afarensis arose as a result of anagenesis in a direct line from the older Australopithecus anamensis .

Naming

Australopithecus is an artificial word . The name of the genus is derived from Latin australis ("southern") and Greek πίθηκος, old Gr. pronounced píthēkos ("monkey"). The epithet afarensis refers to the location of numerous fossils in the Ethiopian Afar region ; Australopithecus afarensis therefore means "southern monkey from Afar".

The name Australopithecus afarensis was first mentioned publicly in May 1978 during a six-day Nobel Symposium of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm , which was held as part of the celebrations for the 200th anniversary of the death of Carl von Linné . Donald Johanson, who had been invited to give a lecture, gave a detailed description of the Lucy fossil and the findings known up to that point and announced the first written description of the new species based on the holotype LH 4 . This led to a long-running falling out with Mary Leakey and Richard Leakey , who disagreed with Johanson making such an oral announcement prior to publication in a trade journal. In addition, Mary Leakey considered the lower jaw LH 4 ​​from Laetoli as her scientific property and therefore also criticized the fact that a fossil from Laetoli should become a type specimen of a species named after the Afar region. Out of annoyance, Leakey finally withdrew on August 22, 1978 the consent she had already given to be named as co-author of the first description, which meant that the first description that had already been printed had to be destroyed and a new version of the magazine Kirtlandia had to be printed. In 2015, US paleoanthropologist Ian Tattersall explained the background as follows: “Because the fossils came from two sites that were spatially far apart, Johanson and White wanted to connect them in some way. In order to bring about this symbolic unity, they named the amalgamation Australopithecus afarensis , named after the place where the fossils were most frequently found - but they identified a lower jaw from Laetoli as the holotype, the fossil LH 4. "

Johanson's lecture in Stockholm also provoked a professional controversy about the correct taxonomic naming of the new species. The Nobel Symposium was attended by a New Scientist employee named Hinrichsen, whose report on the new species was published before it was published in Kirtlandia . Since Hinrichsen's text was the first written mention of Australopithecus afarensis , several taxonomists concluded that the correct name of the species in the sense of scientific nomenclature was: " Australopithecus afarensis Johanson (in Hinrichsen), 1978" and not " Australopithecus afarensis Johanson, White and Coppens, 1978 ".

Initial description

Replica of Australopithecus afarensis in the CosmoCaixa Science Museum in Barcelona

The first description of Australopithecus afarensis was published in 1978 by Donald Johanson , Tim White and Yves Coppens . A 3.6 to 3.8 million year old lower jaw (archive number LH 4 ​​= Laetoli Hominid 4 ) was selected as the holotype of Australopithecus afarensis ; this fossil was found in 1974 by Maundu Muluila, a collaborator of Mary Leakey , in Laetoli (Tanzania), but was initially not assigned to a specific species. The first description was supplemented by a reference to two dozen teeth and jaw fragments from sites in Tanzania as well as several hundred fossils from Ethiopia, which also belong to the species.

The finds and their age

All Australopithecus afarensis fossils from Laetoli were recovered from a layer of soil dated to be 3.76 to 3.46 million years old. The Hadar fossils are more recent; they have all been calculated to be 3.4 to 2.92 million years old. Fossils from the Maka site (like Hadar in the Afar Triangle ) are 3.75 to 3.4 million years old. Some researchers doubt whether the fossils from both sites actually belong to the same species. Why the species became extinct is unclear.

From when to when a fossil species existed can usually only be determined approximately. On the one hand, the fossil record is incomplete: there are usually only very few specimen copies for a fossil species. On the other hand, the dating methods indicate a certain age, but with considerable inaccuracy ; this inaccuracy then forms the outer limits for the "from ... to" information for lifetimes. All published age information is therefore provisional, which may also have to be revised after further specimen copies have been found.

About 90 percent of the Australopithecus afarensis finds come from Hadar. Other sites are White Sands, Belohdelie and Fejej in Ethiopia, Koobi Fora and Allia Bay in Kenya and Koro Tor in Chad . Australopithecus afarensis is the oldest species of hominini, from which a sufficient number of fossils from different individuals have survived, so that physique and body weight can be estimated relatively reliably.

In tribal history, Australopithecus afarensis was repeatedly placed in the vicinity of the line of development to the genus Homo . A study by Yoel Rak published in 2007 on an afarensis lower jaw showed a greater similarity to Paranthropus robustus than to the early homo species due to the special shape of the ascending lower jaw branch ( Ramus mandibulae ) .

Lucy

Lucy is the best known fossil of Australopithecus afarensis . It was discovered by Donald Johanson in Hadar on November 24, 1974 and named after the Beatles song " Lucy in the sky with diamonds ", which was played on the tape several times on the day it was discovered in the research camp. The skeleton was ascribed to a female individual on the basis of considerations about the size ratio of the sexes ( sex dimorphism ) in australopithecines ; but this interpretation is controversial.

Lucy was dated to an age of 3.2 million years and registered under the archive number AL 288-1 (AL = "Afar Locality"). During her lifetime she was about 105 cm tall, weighed about 27 kg and died (as can be seen from the condition of her teeth) as a young adult.

For years, Lucy was considered the best preserved skeleton of an early representative of the hominini : 47 of the 207 bones were found, including the femur and shin , parts of the pelvis , spine , several ribs , the skull and both humerus bones ; the bones of the hands and feet are almost completely absent. The skeleton structure shows adaptations to the upright gait .

"First Family"

As the "first family", Donald Johanson described an unusually extensive find of fossils that was discovered in Hadar in November 1975: the remains of nine adults, three adolescents and five children. Like Lucy's, their age has been dated 3.2 million years.

DIK 1-1

The fossil with archive number DIK 1-1 was discovered in 2000 in the Ethiopian region of Dikika and comes from an approximately three-year-old female, whose age is given as 3.3 million years due to the nature of the soil. It is also called Selam ("peace") by its discoverer.

DIK 1-1 is currently considered the most complete fossil of Australopithecus afarensis . The remaining foot and leg bones as well as the right shoulder blade show that a young Australopithecus could walk on two legs, i.e. upright, and - comparable to modern chimpanzees - maneuver well in the branches of the trees.

anatomy

Australopithecus afarensis was "somewhat larger than a chimpanzee that was already walking on its hind legs, even if it was still very awkward". The pelvis and legs had human-like characteristics, while the head and upper body were described as "ape-like".

The height of the male individuals was estimated at about 1.50 m and their weight at 40 to 50 kg, for female individuals a height of around 1.10 m and a weight of 28 to 34 kg was reconstructed. However, whether the sexual dimorphism was actually so pronounced is controversial, since, for example, the strength of the thigh bones shows a fairly wide variation .

In 2016, an examination of Lucy's skeleton found that the significantly greater strength of the arm bones compared to the leg bones suggests that Lucy regularly put more stress on her arms than the leg bones. This was explained by the fact that Lucy climbed trees more often than walked the ground.

Head and torso

Due to the relatively numerous finds of afarensis fossils from different excavation sites, experts - in contrast to other Australopithecus species - have for some time "agreed that this is an independent, early hominin form that is characterized by a series of original skulls. and tooth characteristics is marked against other australopithecine taxa ”. According to Winfried Henke , these original, phylogenetically old features also include the low cranial capacity "which is in the range of variation of Pan " and the pronounced prognathy of the facial skeleton, i.e. the upper jaw protrudes in front of the lower jaw , which is a shape of the snout similar to that of orangutans and causes an overall ape-like face shape. Furthermore, in the upper jaw “there is usually a diastema , but the chewing of the upper canine is already homininous.” The skull has no forehead . The brain volume can only be estimated approximately due to the few skulls that can be reconstructed with sufficient reliability; accordingly, the average value is 446 cubic centimeters, the range of variation ranges from just over 300 to 530 cubic centimeters for the largest skull AL 444-2 to date, a find by Yoel Rak in Hadar.

From a reconstruction of the brain prints on the inside of the fossil skull finds DIK 1-1 and AL 333 it was concluded that Australopithecus afarensis had a monkey-like brain, but that the brain growth lasted significantly longer after birth compared to, for example, chimpanzees, so that the young animals during depended on parental care during a relatively long childhood.

The structure of the bones in the area of ​​the shoulder joints, the funnel-shaped chest and the ribs as well as the elbow joints is "rather panin" (chimpanzee-like) and refers to a " suspensory " (hanging on the arms) way of locomotion on trees. This is also indicated by "the relatively long arms and the curved finger and toe bones". A reconstruction of the finger bones showed that Australopithecus afarensis had a rather short thumb that did not allow a pronounced precision grip ; the metacarpal bones were interpreted as "intermediate" between gorillas and humans.

The detailed analysis of the right shoulder blade of DIK 1-1 also showed that this individual still often wandered with arms stretched upwards over the head. The vertebral bodies , however, were described as more human-like.

Walking upright

Reconstruction of Lucy's pelvis

The basin of Australopithecus afarensis shows "the strongest morphological changes in connection with the erection and the bipedal mode of locomotion." Initially, the first two hominine fossils discovered in Hadar, AL 129-1a and AL, were used to search specifically for evidence of the upright gait 129-1b : a knee joint consisting of the related fragments of a femur and a tibia . From these fragments recovered in 1973 it could be deduced beyond any doubt that their owner had walked upright; at that time it was the oldest evidence of the hominini walking upright.

The upright gait of Australopithecus afarensis is also evidenced by fossil footprints that an employee of Mary Leakey found in the volcanic ash of Laetoli in Tanzania , which has become rock . Shortly after the eruption of the Sadiman volcano 3.6 million years ago, several individuals of Australopithecus afarensis walked over the damp ash, which hardened shortly afterwards and preserved its tracks . The plausibility of the attribution of these footprints to Australopithecus afarensis was confirmed as part of the Dikika Research Project by the Ethiopian paleoanthropologist Zeresenay Alemseged , who examined the fossil DIK 1-1 and also attributed it to the ability to walk upright.

According to a study published in 2005, Laetoli's footprints show that Australopithecus afarensis moved completely upright at a speed of 0.6 to 1.3  m / s . The calculation was carried out using the dimensions of Lucy and the tracks using model simulation. In 2010, a biomechanical experiment also provided evidence that the fossilized footprints have preserved an imprint profile that largely resembles that of modern humans: When walking upright, the imprint depth of the toes and heels are approximately the same; in chimpanzee-like walking, the toes press deeper into the ground than the heel. According to this, a  human-like upright gait - in terms of movement sequences and energy efficiency - had developed long before the genus Homo emerged .

In contrast to DIK 1-1 and Lucy, who is just over a meter tall , the 3.58 million year old skeleton KSD-VP-1/1 from the Woranso-Mille site ( Afar-), scientifically described by Yohannes Haile-Selassie in 2010 Triangle , Ethiopia) for a fully grown individual, possibly nearly two meters tall. Among other things, parts of the shoulder blade , the pelvis and significant parts of the tubular bones of the upper and lower legs including their end pieces in the knee joint area have been preserved . From this find it could also be deduced that the ability to walk upright in Australopithecus afarensis was very advanced (“highly evolved”). However, the reconstruction of body size is controversial.

The oldest fossil evidence of a foot comparable in function to humans is a fully preserved, 3.2 million year old metatarsal bone of Australopithecus afarensis (archive number AL 333-160), the characteristics of which recognize the presence of both a longitudinal arch and a transverse arch to let. According to the interpretation of this find, the transition from a grip foot optimized for climbing in branches to an arch that acts as a "shock absorber" when walking upright was already well advanced.

Habitat and food

Loose trees, a body of water that fell dry at times, grassland: the habitat of Australopithecus looked similar to here on the edge of the Sahel zone in present-day Mali .

In Hadar were related to Australopithecus afarensis , including primitive baboons (the remains of numerous fossil species recovered Parapaio ) spot hyenas ( Percrocuta ), hyenas ( Chasmoporthetes ), saber-toothed cats ( Megantereon and Homotherium ) , mice ( Saidomys ) short-necked giraffes ( Sivatherium ) and Relatives of today's wildebeest ( Damalops ) and the antelopes ( Praedamalis ); only a few pure forest dwellers were discovered. The species composition is therefore “typical for mosaic landscapes with grass areas, wooded areas as well as closed stands of bushes and trees on watercourses and in mountain valleys.” At the time of Australopithecus afarensis - at an altitude of 2400 meters - the region of Hadar was significantly cooler than in Laetoli probably also forests.

For a long time only indirect findings were available on the ingestion of Australopithecus afarensis , derived from the externally recognizable condition of the teeth. The canines and molars of the fossils ascribed to Australopithecus afarensis are smaller and less worn than those of Australopithecus africanus , from which it was concluded that the diet was less hard-fiber than that of A. africanus . However, it is noticeable that the incisors are often “badly worn. According to this, the front teeth in particular were used to chop up food [...]. Microscopic examination shows that teeth were broken off during his lifetime, presumably by biting nuts and other small hard objects. When examined closely, the edges of the incisors show streaks from front to back. A. afarensis possibly pulled parts of the plant through between the teeth. ”In 2013, an isotope analysis of the teeth of 20 finds from Hadar and Dikika showed that Australopithecus afarensis - in contrast to Australopithecus anamensis , which mainly fed on softer C 3 plants - one consumed a high proportion of grasses and other C 4 plants .

In the same era as Australopithecus afarensis , a previously unnamed species lived in the Afar region, which was also assigned to the hominini in 2012 and which has so far only been documented by the Burtele foot recovered in the Woranso-Mille excavation area in Ethiopia . Furthermore, the fragments of several pine trees were assigned to the species Australopithecus deyiremeda, which they established .

Research history

Hypothesis on the evolution of the australopithecines , as represented by Friedemann Schrenk , for example, based on the current finds .

First finds

First discovery of a fossil of Australopithecus afarensis was Ludwig Kohl-Larsen . In 1938/39 he had already visited Tanzania (then Tanganyika ) in search of the “prehistoric man”, which later became known as Laetoli , and there in 1939 a small upper jaw fragment with two front jaw teeth (Garusi 1, also: Garusi Hominid 1 or Garusi fragment ) and a 3rd maxillary molar (Garusi 2) discovered, but without assigning a new taxon . Later, in the Kohl-Larsen collection of the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen - today part of the collection of the Museum of the University of Tübingen (MUT) - a canine tooth was identified as hominin (Garusi 4). However, he had already recognized the old age of the upper jaw fragment, which was buried in a sandstone block in the Garusi Valley. In a written communication in 1940, Wolfgang Abel denied its resemblance to the much younger "Africanthropus" skull found by Hans Weinert (which is now attributed to Homo erectus ) and placed the find in the vicinity of the fossils discovered by Robert Broom in South Africa shortly before "Australopithecus Transvaalensis" (today Australopithecus africanus ). Abel had previously examined the Taung child's skull and was aware of the differences between various australopithecine finds. First described in detail in 1948 by Edwin Hennig as "Praeanthropus" and in 1950 by Hans Weinert as "Meganthropus africanus", the Garusi find was also placed in close relation to Australopithecus africanus by other paleoanthropologists from the early 1950s , but without the Garusi fragment to assign holotype status to a new species. The importance of the Garusi upper jaw, despite the lack of a species description, lay mainly in the knowledge that, according to this find, australopithecines could not be restricted to South Africa, since it was the first find of this hominini group in East Africa in terms of research history .

Possible tool use

In a study published in 2010, individuals of the species Australopithecus afarensis were attributed to be the oldest known representatives of the hominini who - as evidenced by parallel notches on two animal bones from the Dikika site , which were interpreted as cutting marks - used stone tools . However, this interpretation is controversial; crocodile teeth can cause deceptively similar scratches.

See also

literature

  • Donald Johanson, Yves Coppens: A preliminary anatomical diagnosis of the first Plio / Pleistocene hominid discoveries in the central Afar, Ethiopia. In: Americal Journal of Physical Anthropology. Volume 45, No. 2, 1976, pp. 217-233, doi: 10.1002 / ajpa.1330450209
  • Donald Johanson, Tim D. White, Yves Coppens: A New Species of the Genus Australopithecus (Primates: Hominidae) from the Pliocene of Eastern Africa. In: Kirtlandia. Volume 28, 1978, pp. 1-14, full text (PDF) .
  • Donald Johanson, Tim D. White: A systematic assessment of early African hominids. In: Science . Volume 203, No. 4378, 1979, pp. 321-330, doi: 10.1126 / science.104384
  • Jack T. Stern Jr. and Randall L. Susman: The locomotor anatomy of Australopithecus afarensis. In: American Journal of Physical Anthropology. Volume 60, No. 3, 1983, pp. 279-317, doi: 10.1002 / ajpa.1330600302
  • C. Owen Lovejoy : Evolution of Human Walking. In: Scientific American. Volume 259, No. 5, 1988, pp. 118–125, full text (PDF)

Web links

Commons : Australopithecus afarensis  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wiktionary: Australopithecus afarensis  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Gary J. Sawyer, Viktor Deak: The long way to people. Life pictures from 7 million years of evolution. Spektrum Akademischer Verlag, Heidelberg, 2008, p. 39
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  3. ↑ Donald Johanson, Maitland Edey: Lucy. The beginnings of mankind. Piper, Munich 1982 (quoted here from the new edition: Piper, 1992, p. 358)
  4. ^ Roger Lewin: Bones of Contention. Controversies in the Search for Human Origins. Touchstone, New York 1988, pp. 276 and 285, ISBN 0-671-66837-4
  5. ^ Ian Tattersall : The Strange Case of the Rickety Cossack - and Other Cautionary Tales from Human Evolution. Palgrave Macmillan, New York 2015, p. 129, ISBN 978-1-137-27889-0
  6. ^ W. Eric Meikle, Sue Taylor Parker: Naming our Ancestors. An Anthology of Hominid Taxonomy. Waveland Press, Prospect Heights (Illinois) 1994, p. 126, ISBN 0-88133-799-4
  7. ↑ Donald Johanson , Tim White and Yves Coppens : A New Species of the Genus Australopithecus (Primates: Hominidae) from the Pliocene of Eastern Africa. In: Kirtlandia. Volume 28, 1978, pp. 1–14, full text (PDF)
  8. ^ Gary J. Sawyer, Viktor Deak: The Long Way to Man , p. 44
  9. ^ A b Donald Johanson : Lucy and her children. 2nd updated and expanded edition, Elsevier Verlag, Munich 2000, p. 133, ISBN 978-3-8274-1670-4
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    Anthropology: Lucy is no longer our mother! On: diepresse.com of April 10, 2007
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  17. ^ Fiorenzo Facchini : The Origins of Humanity. Konrad Theiss Verlag, Stuttgart 2006, p. 76, ISBN 978-3806219913
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  19. ↑ Donald Johanson, Lucy and Her Children , p. 73
  20. ^ Philip L. Reno and C. Owen Lovejoy , From Lucy to Kadanuumuu: balanced analyzes of Australopithecus afarensis assemblages confirm only moderate skeletal dimorphism. In: PeerJ. 3: e925, 2015, doi: 10.7717 / peerj.925
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  24. ^ Philipp Gunz, Simon Neubauer, Dean Falk et al .: Australopithecus afarensis endocasts suggest ape-like brain organization and prolonged brain growth. In: Science Advances. Volume 6, No. 14, 2020, eaaz4729, doi: 10.1126 / sciadv.aaz4729 .
    Lucy had an ape-like brain. On: mpg.de from April 1, 2020.
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  30. ↑ Donald Johanson, Lucy and Her Children , p. 140
  31. ^ William I. Sellers: Stride lengths, speed and energy costs in walking of Australopithecus afarensis: using evolutionary robotics to predict locomotion of early human ancestors. In: Journal of the Royal Society Interface. Volume 2, No. 5, 2005, pp. 431–441, doi: 10.1098 / rsif.2005.0060 Lustwandeln
    bei Lucy und Co. On: Wissenschaft.de, July 20, 2005
  32. ↑ David A. Raichlen et al .: Laetoli footprints preserve earliest direct evidence of human-like bipedal biomechanics. In: PLOS ONE. Volume 5, No. 3: e9769. 2010; doi: 10.1371 / journal.pone.0009769
    Vormensch with crossed cross. On: Wissenschaft.de from March 20, 2010:
  33. ^ Yohannes Haile-Selassie et al .: An early Australopithecus afarensis postcranium from Woranso-Mille, Ethiopia. In: PNAS. Volume 107, No. 27, 2010, pp. 12121–12126, doi: 10.1073 / pnas.1004527107
    A picture of the skeleton can be found on the Nature website : Rex Dalton: Africa's next top hominid. Ancient human relative could walk upright. doi: 10.1038 / news.2010.305
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  40. ↑ In the original text the river Garussi is mentioned, which indicates a sharp "s", which was later lost in the English transliteration.
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  46. ↑ Phillip Tobias : Australopithecus, Homo habilis, Tool-Using and Tool-Making. In: The South African Archaeological Bulletin. Volume 20, No. 80, 1965, pp. 167–192 (on the history of research especially p. 169)
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    Lucy's Kin Carved Up a Meaty Meal, Scientists Say. On: nytimes.com of August 11, 2010 (with images of the incisions interpreted as cutting traces)
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  49. ↑ Yonatan Sahle, Sireen El Zaatari and Tim White : Hominid butchers and biting crocodiles in the African Pliocene-Pleistocene. In: PNAS . Volume 114, No. 50, 2017, pp. 13164-13169, doi: 10.1073 / pnas.1716317114