Sentences with phrase «naledi brain»

Not exact matches

The frontal brain grooves on a H. naledi endocast, like those in modern humans, lie farther back than the grooves seen in the chimp MRI scan, Hurst contends.

H. naledi, a small - brained species with many humanlike skeletal features, inhabited southern Africa close to 300,000 years ago (SN: 6/10/17, p. 6).

Despite having a brain only slightly larger than a chimpanzee's, H. naledi displays key humanlike neural features, two anthropologists reported April 20 at the annual meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists.

That estimate came as a surprise: H. naledi's orange - sized brain and curved fingers resemble those of Homo species from around 2 million years ago.

Occasional interbreeding of H. naledi with larger - brained Homo species, perhaps including H. sapiens, may have assisted the smaller - brained species» survival, the researchers speculated.

«Ancient ancestor of humans with tiny brain discovered: Homo naledi raises intriguing questions about our evolutionary past.»

The new fossils of Homo naledi reinforce a picture of a small - brained, small - bodied creature, which makes the dates reported in a paper in eLife all the more startling: 236,000 to 335,000 years ago.

Earlier this year, he and his colleagues confirmed that an unusually small - brained human — Homo naledi — found in the Dinaledi chamber of South Africa's Rising Star cave was alive between 236,000 and 335,000 years ago.

The most recently discovered human species, Homo naledi, had a brain about the size of an orange, but it nevertheless possessed enough of a mind to perform ritual burials of its dead.

«The tool - using features of the H. naledi hand, in combination with its small brain size, has interesting implications for what cognitive requirements might be needed to make and use tools, and, depending on the age of these fossils, who might have made the stone tools that we find in South Africa,» Tracy Kivell at the University of Kent in England, lead author of one of the two H. naledi papers, said in a statement.

If H. naledi lived 2 million or even 900,000 years ago, as some researchers have suggested (SN: 8/6/16, p. 12), humanlike brains with a language - related area would be shocking.

These hominids, whose remains date to between about 100,000 and 60,000 years ago (SN: 4/30/16, p. 7), had chimp - sized brains, short statures and, like H. naledi, some skull features resembling early Homo species.

It's unclear how H. naledi survived in Africa alongside larger - brained Homo species, perhaps even H. sapiens.

Although H. naledi's cranium is shaped like that of H. erectus, its brain size is that of an earlier australopith, and tiny for its 5 - foot - tall body.

GO FOR BROCA A virtual cast of Homo naledi's brain surface contains clues to the presence of a region (pointed to by red arrow) that may correspond to Broca's area in present - day people.

Homo naledi posterior endocasts and their significance for understanding brain reorganization.

H. naledi's brain also possessed folds of tissue that largely covered a surface section where the grooves converged.

After hearing Hurst and Holloway's presentations, Falk expressed doubt that H. naledi's brain was as humanlike as they concluded.

Dean Falk at Florida State University in Tallahassee is especially excited by the fact that Berger's team has produced a cast of Homo naledi «s small brain.

The study suggests that Homo naledi most closely resembles Homo erectus with its small brain and body size.

Berger and his team conclude that Homo naledi's curved fingers, shoulder, trunk and hips are, like its brain, more primitive.