Paranthropus aethiopicus is an extinct species of Paranthropus. The finding discovered in 1985 in West Turkana, Kenya, KNM-WT 17000 (known as the "Black Skull" due to the skull having fossilized by a dark mineral), is one of the earliest examples of robust australopithecines. The skull is dated to 2.5 million years old, older than the later forms of robust australopithecines. Anthropologists suggest that P. aethiopicus lived from 2.7 and 2.5 million years ago. The features are quit primitive and share many traits with Australopithecus afarensis, thus P. aethiopicus is likely to be a direct descendent. With its face being as projecting as A. afarensis, its brain size was also quite small at 410 cc.
P. aethiopicus was first found in Ethiopia in 1968 as the first assigned specimen. Lower jaw and teeth fragments have been uncovered. P. aethiopicus had a large bony ridge at the top of its skull acting as an anchor for the powerful jaw muscles built for heavy chewing on vegetarian such as nuts and tubers (as in gorilla skulls). It also had large zygomatic arches. Not much is known about this species since the best evidence comes from the black skull and the jaw. There is not enough material to make an assessment to how tall they were, but they may have been as tall as Australopithecus afarensis.
Not all anthropologists agree that P. aethiopicus gave rise to both Paranthropus boisei and P. robustus, since the skull more closely resembles that of A. afarensis. The one clue that makes P. aethiopicus a possible descendent to both P. boisei and P. robustus is the similarity in jaw size. P. athiopicus is known to have lived in mixed savanna and woodland. More evidence must be gathered about P. aethiopicus in order to accurately describe its physiology. The "Black Skull"'s bizarre primitive shape gives evidence that P. aethiopicus and the other autralopithecines are on an evolutionary branch of the hominid tree, distinctly diverging from the Homo (human) lineage.
References
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