Females from two hominid species that roamed the South African savanna more than 1 million years ago left their families and struck out on their own, while their male counterparts tended the home fires, an international team of researchers said on Wednesday.
The findings, published in the journal Nature, came from an analysis of traces of the isotope strontium that had built up in adult teeth from two extinct groups —Australopithecus africanus and Paranthropus robustus.
Both Paranthropus robustus and Australopithecus africanus were part of a line of close human relatives known as australopithecines that included the Ethiopian fossil Lucy, estimated to be 3.2 million years old and regarded by many as the matriarch of modern humans.
Photo: AFP/ University of Colorado at Boulder/Darryl de Ruiter
To understand how these hominids used the landscape and formed social groups, the team, led by Sandi Copeland of Colorado University Boulder, turned to the ancient dental record.
Using a high-tech analysis known as laser ablation, Copeland’s team zapped the hominid teeth with lasers to measure ratios of strontium, a naturally occurring element found in rocks and soils that is absorbed by plants and animals.
The team tested 19 teeth dating from roughly 2.7 to 1.7 million years ago from both Australopithecus africanus and Paranthropus robustus individuals from the the Sterkfontein and Swartkrans cave systems in South Africa.
The team found more than half of the smaller, female teeth came from outside the local area, but only about 10 percent of the male hominid teeth were from elsewhere.
That suggests that males likely grew up and died in the same area, Copeland said.
She said the pattern in which the females left home in search of a mate is similar to chimpanzees and some groups of modern humans, in which a woman leaves her family to join her husband’s household.
However, it is different from most other primates — including gorillas — where the females stay with the group they are born into and the males move elsewhere.
“In any mammal group, including primates, where individuals live in groups, either the females or males must eventually leave their birth community. One of the important reasons for this is to prevent inbreeding,” Copeland said. “In most mammals, it is usually the males that leave their home community.”
She said the findings were a bit of a surprise.
“We assumed more of the hominids would be from non-local areas since it is generally thought the evolution of bipedalism was due in part to allow individuals to range longer distances,” Copeland said.
Such small home ranges suggest that bipedalism evolved for other reasons, she said.
Gaza is rapidly running out of its limited fuel supply and stocks of food staples might become tight, officials said, after Israel blocked the entry of fuel and goods into the war-shattered territory, citing fighting with Iran. The Israeli military closed all Gaza border crossings on Saturday after announcing airstrikes on Iran carried out jointly with the US. Israeli authorities late on Monday night said that they would reopen the Kerem Shalom crossing from Israel to Gaza yesterday, for “gradual entry of humanitarian aid” into the strip, without saying how much. Israeli authorities previously said the crossings could not be operated safely during
Hungarian authorities temporarily detained seven Ukrainian citizens and seized two armored cars carrying tens of millions of euros in cash across Hungary on suspicion of money laundering, officials said on Friday. The Ukrainians were released on Friday, following their detention on Thursday, but Hungarian officials held onto the cash, prompting Ukraine to accuse Hungary’s Russia-friendly government of illegally seizing the money. “We will not tolerate this state banditism,” Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said. The seven detained Ukrainians were employees of the Ukrainian state-owned Oschadbank, who were traveling in the two armored cars that were carrying the money between Austria and
Kosovar President Vjosa Osmani on Friday after dissolving the Kosovar parliament said a snap election should be held as soon as possible to avoid another prolonged political crisis in the Balkan country at a time of global turmoil. Osmani said it is important for Kosovo to wrap up the upcoming election process and form functional institutions for political stability as the war rages in the Middle East. “Precisely because the geopolitical situation is that complex, it is important to finish this electoral process which is coming up,” she said. “It is very hard now to imagine what will happen next.” Kosovo, which declared
MORE BANS: Australia last year required sites to remove accounts held by under-16s, with a few countries pushing for similar action at an EU level and India considering its own ban Indonesia on Friday said it would ban social media access for children under 16, citing threats from online pornography, cyberbullying, online fraud and Internet addiction. “Accounts belonging to children under 16 on high-risk platforms will start to be deactivated, beginning with YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, X, Bigo Live and Roblox,” Indonesian Minister of Communications and Digital Meutya Hafid said. “The government is stepping in so that parents no longer have to fight alone against the giants of the algorithm. Implementation will begin on March 28, 2026,” she said. The social media ban would be introduced in stages “until all platforms fulfill their
RSS