Ecce Homo Naledi

Acting on a tip from spelunkers two years ago, scientists in South Africa discovered what the cavers had only dimly glimpsed through a crack in a limestone wall deep in the Rising Star cave: lots and lots of old bones. The remains covered the earthen floor beyond the narrow opening. This was, the scientists concluded, a large, dark chamber for the dead of a previously unidentified species of the early human lineage – Homo naledi. The new hominin species was announced on Thursday by an international team of more than 60 scientists led by Lee R. Berger, an American paleoanthropologist who is a professor of human evolution studies at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. The species name, H. naledi, refers to the cave where the bones lay undisturbed for so long; “naledi” means “star” in the local Sesotho language. [Read more].

• John Noble Wilford, Homo Naledi, New Species in Human Lineage, Is Found in South African Cave, The New York Times, September 10, 2015

Pieces of a skeleton of Homo naledi, a newly discovered human species. Photo Credit: John Hawks/University of Wisconsin-Madison, via European Pressphoto Agency.