Hominin foot bones found in 3.4-million-year-old sediments in Ethiopia have been assigned to a recently described species. This provides further evidence of different elements of the human family tree living side-by-side in the cradle of humanity and further obscures the question of whether the best known early human fossil was a direct ancestor of ours. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.

When the fossil known as Lucy was found, and eventually given the name Australopithecus afarensis , it was thought the human family tree was a straight line, and this must be our direct ancestor. However, we know the branching was as complex as the trees Lucy and her kind still sometimes climbed . For example, four years ago, ev

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