Meet Your Exotic, Extinct Close Relative

By Bernard Anthony Wood, Alexis Williams

For a million years our likely ancestors in eastern Africa lived alongside creatures so peculiar that scientists today still struggle to make sense of them.

Anthropology Evolution Archaeology

This Article From Issue

November-December 2020

Volume 108, Number 6

Page 348

DOI: 10.1511/2020.108.6.348

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Have you ever wondered whether your own family history is more interesting and exotic than you think? Might you have a long-lost relative who was a circus performer, a pirate, or a gold prospector? If we pose this question in terms of the collective evolutionary history of Homo sapiens, the answer is a resounding yes.

*Paranthropus boise* which lived in East Africa from about 2.3 million to 1.3 million years ago, is closely related to some of the earliest members of the genus *Homo* but is not a direct ancestor of modern humans. This reconstruction, by Elisabeth Daynes of the Daynes Studio in Paris, is based on the first fossil to be identified as *P. boisei*, a skull found by Mary Leakey at Olduvai Gorge in 1959.

**Elisabeth Daynes/Science Photo Library/Science Source**

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