Discovery of Australopithecus sediba unveiled

A team led by Professor Lee Berger, a renowned palaeoanthropologist from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg have described and named a new species of hominid, Australopithecus sediba, almost two million years old. It was discovered in the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site, 40 kilometres from Johannesburg, South Africa.

Two papers related to this find, authored by Prof. Lee Berger and Prof. Paul Dirks (former head of the Wits School of Geosciences, and now from James Cooke University) respectively, were published in Science on 9 April 2010.

“Sediba, which means natural spring, fountain or wellspring in Sotho, one of the 11 official languages of South Africa, was deemed an appropriate name for a species that might be the point from which the genus Homo arises,” comments Berger.

“I believe that this is a good candidate for being the transitional species between the southern African ape-man Australopithecus africanus (like the Taung Child and Mrs. Ples) and either Homo habilis or even a direct ancestor of Homo erectus (like Turkana Boy, Java man or Peking man).”

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