Researchers announced the naming Homo Boensis, a new species of human ancestor.
Scientists believe that the species was present in Africa around 500,000 years ago during the Middle Pleistocene era. It was also the direct ancestor to modern humans. Bodoensis is named after a skull discovered in Bodo Dar, Ethiopia's Awash River Valley.
Scientists believe that the epoch was significant because it was when anatomically modern humans, Homo sapiens appeared in Africa and the Neanderthals in Europe, also known as Homo neanderthalensis.
Some paleoanthropologists call this the "muddle in the middle" period because it is difficult to understand human evolution during that age.
Dr Mirjana Roksandic of the University of Winnipeg, Canada, is the lead author of the study. She said that it was impossible to talk about human evolution during this period due to a lack of appropriate terminology that recognizes human geographical variation.
Homo Bodoensis lived during the Middle Pleistocene. Photograph: Ettore Mazza
The new classification will include Homo bodoensis, which will refer to the majority of Middle Pleistocene peoples from Africa and south-east Europe. Many from the former continent will be reclassified into Neanderthals.
Christopher Bae, a professor of anthropology at University of Hawaii at Manoa, was one of the coauthors of the study. He stated that the introduction of Homo bodoensis was intended to cut the Gordian knot, allowing us communicate clearly about this crucial period in human evolution.
Roksandic concluded that Naming a new species was a major deal because the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature prohibits name changes under certain rules.
This one is sure to last a long time. A new taxon name can only be used by other researchers.
These findings were published in Evolutionary Anthropology Issues News and Reviews.
The Guardian reported in August that archaeologists discovered ancient DNA in the remains a woman who died 7200 years ago in Indonesia. This discovery challenged everything we knew about early human migration.
The remains of a teenage boy named Bess were found in the Leang Panninge cave, on the Indonesian island Sulawesi. In 2015, the first excavations began.
This discovery was published in Nature. It is believed that it is the first time that ancient human DNA has ever been found in Wallacea, a vast chain of atolls and islands in the ocean between Australia and mainland Asia.
The petrous portion of Besss' temporal bone that houses the inner ear, was used to extract the DNA. Researchers claimed that intact DNA is a rare finding.
