Humans' supposedly ancient relative might not actually be that old. New research has revealed that Homo naledi, a human relative first discovered two years ago in South Africa, may have actually still been roaming the Earth when humans appeared.
Scientists originally thought the fossils of the species they'd uncovered in a South African cave system were as old as 2.5 million years. Now that the sediments the fossils were found in have been dated, that estimate is between 236,000 and 335,000 years. That means Homo naledi and Homo sapiens could have co-existed in Africa some 300,000 years ago. "No one thought that a small-brained, primitive hominin could extend down through time this long and that period is exactly the moment when we thought modern humans were arising here in Africa," said Lee Berger, project leader for Johannesburg's University of the Witwatersrand.
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