Anthropologists have uneartheed Selam, the three-year-old from 3.3m years ago:
Fossil hunters working in Ethiopia have unearthed the fragile bones of a baby ape-girl who lived 3.3m years ago, the earliest child ancestor discovered so far.Named Selam, meaning “peace” in the country’s languages, the creature belongs to a species called Australopithecus afarensis, the same as Lucy, the famous adult female discovered in 1974 and believed to be a forebear of the human genus, Homo.
The fossilised remains reveal a critical moment in human evolution that saw our earliest relatives shaking off the legacy of ape ancestors to take their first tentative steps along a path that ultimately led to modern humans.
The remarkably complete skeleton’s lower half is almost perfectly adapted to walking upright, while the upper body is more primitive, with gorilla-like shoulderblades and curved chimpanzee-like fingers suited to clinging and climbing trees.
The intact skull and nearly full set of teeth show the large, pointy canines that distinguish apes from early humans have disappeared, leaving only substantial chewing teeth.