• DOI:10.1038/nature00879
• Corpus ID: 1316969

A new hominid from the Upper Miocene of Chad, Central Africa

@article{Brunet2002ANH,
  title={A new hominid from the Upper Miocene of Chad, Central Africa},
  author={Michel Brunet and Franck Guy and David R. Pilbeam and Hassan Taisso Mackaye and Andossa Likius and Djimdoumalbaye Ahounta and Alain Beauvilain and C{\'e}cile Blondel and Herv{\'e} Bocherens and Jean-Renaud Boisserie and Louis de Bonis and Yves Coppens and Jean Dejax and Christiane Denys and Philippe Duringer and V{\'e}ra Eisenmann and Gongdib{\'e} Fanone and Pierre Fronty and Denis Geraads and Thomas Lehmann and Fabrice Lihoreau and Antoine Louchart and Adoum H. Mahamat and Gildas Merceron and Guy Mouchelin and Olga Otero and Pablo Pel{\'a}ez Campomanes and Marcia Ponce de Le{\'o}n and Jean Claude Rage and Michel Sapanet and Mathieu Schuster and Jean Sudre and Pascal Tassy and Xavier Valentin and Patrick Vignaud and Laurent Viriot and Antoine Zazzo and Christoph P. E. Zollikofer},
  journal={Nature},
  year={2002},
  volume={418},
  pages={145-151}
}

• M. Brunet, F. Guy, +35 authors C. Zollikofer
• Published 11 July 2002
• Environmental Science, Geography
• Nature

The search for the earliest fossil evidence of the human lineage has been concentrated in East Africa. Here we report the discovery of six hominid specimens from Chad, central Africa, 2,500 km from the East African Rift Valley. The fossils include a nearly complete cranium and fragmentary lower jaws. The associated fauna suggest the fossils are between 6 and 7 million years old. The fossils display a unique mosaic of primitive and derived characters, and constitute a new genus and species of hominid. The distance from the Rift Valley, and the great antiquity of the fossils, suggest that the earliest members of the hominid clade were more widely distributed than has been thought, and that the divergence between the human and chimpanzee lineages was earlier than indicated by most molecular studies.