Wits Inaugural Lectures

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Bones of Contention: Shifting Paradigms in Human Evolution with the Skeletons of Australopithecus sediba
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2013) Berger, Lee R.
In summary, at first glance Australopithecus sediba appears to add despairing complexity to our present understanding of the emergence of early Homo by adding yet another species, this time with an unexpected mosaic of primitive and derived characters, to what we thought we knew of the experiments occurring between the last australopiths and the first definitive members of the genus Homo somewhere around 2 million years ago. Homo habilis and Homo rudolfensis both appear to show a trend in encephalization without the frontal complexity seen in Australopithecus sediba, as well as a retention of the general megadentia seen in many late australopiths, as well as, at least in the case of Homo habilis, retention of more primitive australopith aspects in its post-cranial anatomy, surprisingly more primitive in some areas than that observed in sediba.