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Did These Prehistoric Primates Really Bury Just Their Female Dead Deep in a Cave?
Key takeaways
- A fossilized Homo naledi skull Hawks et al. via Wikimedia Commons under CC BY-SA 4.0 Deep within South Africa’s Rising Star cave system is an open space called the Dinaledi Chamber.
- The experts published a study in 2015, declaring that the fossilized bones belonged to Homo naledi, a hominin species that lived in South Africa between about 335,000 and 236,000 years ago.
- Now, scientists have found something that further complicates the story.
A fossilized Homo naledi skull Hawks et al. via Wikimedia Commons under CC BY-SA 4.0 Deep within South Africa’s Rising Star cave system is an open space called the Dinaledi Chamber. It’s accessible only through a rough, vertical passage dubbed the “chute,” which is so narrow that spelunkers can only squeeze through if they hold their breath. In 2013 and 2014, a team of researchers did just that. Inside the chamber, they found a floor made of bones.
The experts published a study in 2015, declaring that the fossilized bones belonged to Homo naledi, a hominin species that lived in South Africa between about 335,000 and 236,000 years ago. In all, they’ve unearthed more than 1,500 bone fossils from the cave, belonging to more than a dozen individuals. Scientists around the world have hypothesized about how and why the bones came to rest in that dangerous chamber.
Now, scientists have found something that further complicates the story. According to a study recently published in the journal Cell, protein fragments from the cave’s fossilized teeth indicate that all the individuals buried there are female.