Update: This article was updated with comment from study lead author Thomas Plummer. “And of course if we found more hominin fossils in the process that would not be bad!" "We are going to continue collecting dating samples, work on vegetation reconstruction through phytolith analysis (the soils have lots of ancient phytoliths), and continue behavioral studies by investigating a broader range of archaeological sites, including in the vicinity of the freshwater spring," Plummer wrote in an email to Motherboard. “Perhaps not only Homo, but other kinds of hominins were processing food with Oldowan technology.” “The association of these Nyayanga tools with Paranthropus may reopen the case as to who made the oldest Oldowan tools,” Plummer said in a press release. While it is widely believed that Oldowan tools were first used by human ancestors in the Homo genus, the discovery of the tools in conjunction with the molars suggest that our evolutionary relatives may have also wielded these stone tools-and that the real history of the early hominins is more nuanced than we thought. The molars are the oldest fossilized Paranthropus remains ever found. Heres a restoration and review of an Ess-Vee vintage bench vice, in 100mm. The Paranthropus genus is not an ancestor to modern Homo sapiens, but rather a kind of evolutionary cousin. From what I can find online the company makes tools in India. Most incredibly, the paper also chronicles the team’s discovery of Paranthropus molars. Alongside the tools, researchers discovered the bones of two hippos, demonstrating that the hominins were able to utilize the tools to process and eat large animals. While it’s an impressive feat that the tools were made so long ago to begin with, they were also fully functional. “This shows the toolkit was more widely distributed at an earlier date than people realized.”
“This is one of the oldest if not the oldest example of Oldowan technology,” Thomas Plummer, an anthropology professor at Queen’s College and the study’s lead author, wrote in a press release. The researchers were able to date the tools back to about 2.9 million years ago, much earlier than previous records of stone tool use. “Oldowan technology was like suddenly evolving a brand-new set of teeth outside your body, and it opened up a new variety of foods on the African savannah to our ancestors.” “With these tools you can crush better than an elephant’s molar can and cut better than a lion’s canine can,” Rick Potts, senior author of the study and the National Museum of Natural History’s Peter Buck Chair of Human Origins said in a press release. Archeologists have been excavating the site since 2015 and discovered 330 artifacts (including tools), 1776 bones, and two hominin molars-but not belonging to any direct human ancestors. The paper in Science-which was co-authored by researchers spanning various institutions-describes a site in Nyayanga, Kenya that dates to 3.032 to 2.581 million years ago.
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