Australopithecus garhi

The best-known member of Australopithecus is Au. afarensis, a species represented by more than 400 fossil specimens from virtually every region of the hominin skeleton. Dated to between about 3.8 and 2.9 mya, 90 percent of the fossils assigned to Au. afarensis derive…

5-million-year-old remains of Australopithecus garhi. Animal bones found there show cut marks—some of the earliest evidence of stone tool use in the record of human evolution.

…contemporaneous with craniodental remains of A. garhi. The femur is elongated relative to the humerus, as in H. sapiens, but, unlike the human forearm, that of the fossil specimen is relatively long. Thus, by 2.5 mya at least one hominin species had developed the long femurs of striding bipeds, though…

Later in the Pliocene, Au. garhi was active on broad, grassy plains bordering a lake in central Ethiopia. Models of the habitat of Au. africanus, based on fauna from the two major South African cave sites—Sterkfontein and Makapansgat—stress closed-canopy wooded conditions: either