Written by Henry McHenry IV


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Written by Henry McHenry IV

Paranthropus aethiopicus


Further specializations for strong chewing occur in P. aethiopicus fossils from the Omo remains, discovered in the Omo River valley in southern Ethiopia, and in remains found on the western shore of Lake Turkana in northern Kenya. Most of the remains are in the form of isolated teeth and fragmentary jaws, but one remarkably complete skull from 2.5 mya (the “Black Skull”) was recovered from West Turkana. In features related to chewing, P. aethiopicus resembles the East African P. boisei (2.2–1.3 mya) in having enormous molars and premolars, a thick palate and jaws, and projecting cheekbones. In other respects, however, P. aethiopicus shares the primitive morphology of A. afarensis in having a projecting lower face, a large rear portion for attachment of the jaw muscle (temporalis), and flat cranial bones, among other features. Its resemblance to P. boisei may be attributable to their similar diets rather than to a closely shared descent.

Paranthropus robustus and P. boisei

Paranthropus robustus and P. boisei are also referred to as “robust” australopiths. Some paleoanthropologists classify these two species as Australopithecus, but they appear to be closely related and distinctly different from other australopiths. In addition to a well-developed skull crest for the attachment of chewing muscles, other specializations for strong chewing include huge cheek teeth, massive jaws, and powerfully built cheekbones that project forward. These features make their skulls look very unlike those of modern humans.



The spectacular 1959 discovery of a nearly complete skull by Mary Leakey at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, first revealed the presence of a robust australopith in East Africa. It shares with its South African cousin the combination of chewing specializations and Homo-like evolutionary novelties not present in earlier australopiths. For this reason it is included in the same genus as the South African Paranthropus, but it is different enough to warrant its own species name, P. boisei. It dates to 2.2–1.3 mya, and in that interval it is the most abundant hominin species known, with specimens numbering in the hundreds. It has the greatest development of features related to chewing (mastication), possessing truly massive cheek teeth and jaws. It lived at the same time as species of early Homo, but there is some evidence that Homo and P. boisei preferred different habitats. Despite the enormity of its chewing apparatus, it had a relatively small body, with males weighing about 49 kg (108 pounds) and females 34 kg (75 pounds). P. robustus and P. boisei fossils are found with mammals that are usually associated with dry grassland habitats.

Relationship to Homo

Quality of the fossil record

Despite the fact that hominins were a rare and insignificant part of the mammalian fauna before about 40,000 years ago, Africans (anthropologists and nonanthropologists alike) and their international colleagues have had phenomenal success in exposing a rich fossil record of australopiths. However, abundant as the fossils are, there are still limitations. For example, the evidence is restricted geographically. The first two-thirds of the fossil record comes almost entirely from sites in the East African Rift Valley and from limestone caves in South Africa. The exceptions are Sahelanthropus tchadensis and the jaw fragment from Baḥr el-Ghazāl in Chad, which call attention to the strong likelihood that other hominins lived throughout tropical and subtropical Africa but left fossils that have not yet been found.

Even with comparatively rich samples of species such as Australopithecus afarensis and A. africanus, most of the specimens are very fragmentary, and even partial skeletons are rare. The A. afarensis skeleton “Lucy” stands almost alone in its completeness for the first several million years, joined only by a skeleton from Sterkfontein. The rarity of skeletons makes the reconstruction of body size and shape dependent on many assumptions, which can be subject to interpretation. Another limitation to understanding arises from homoplasy, the appearance of similarities in separate evolutionary lineages. Homoplasy was common in hominin evolution. Various evolutionary novelties appear in the record over time, but many must have evolved independently—for example, extreme expansion of the cheek teeth and all the chewing structures of “robust” australopith species and, to a lesser extent, of A. afarensis, A. africanus, and A. garhi. Extreme development of such traits links the robust australopiths—P. aethiopicus, P. boisei, and P. robustus—into a separate lineage.

A related difficulty is the limited understanding of character transformations. Are all traits truly independent evolutionary novelties, or are some of them part of complexes that change together? Jaw size and tooth size, for example, are not independent, and flexion of the base of the skull and being flat-faced are generally correlated. Taxonomic grouping based on shared evolutionary novelties (cladistic analysis) brings these correlations into focus. Research on developmental biology will provide important clues about the evolutionary independence of characteristics.

The limitations outlined above are important, but they must be balanced by appreciation of successes. These successes can be organized in many ways. For example, the accumulation of evolutionary novelties can be followed over time. This approach appears obvious, but it has its subtlety, acknowledging that any known sample of fossils represents a species that was successful at the time but was not necessarily the direct ancestor of later species. Speciation probably occurred in small, isolated, peripheral populations that the fossil record has not sampled. What we collect is what was successful at the time. Therefore, we might expect to find many unique characteristics (autapomorphies) of fossil species that exclude them from direct ancestry but that also provide keys to reconstructing the common ancestor of later species.

From this point of view, the fossil record is superb. One can follow the hominin lineage step by step as the accumulation of humanlike characteristics. Oddities may be autapomorphies of a particular species, but they do not necessarily exclude the possibility that it and subsequent species shared a common ancestor. It is important to realize that this accumulation has no predetermined direction. We look back on history and see patterns, but these patterns were not established in advance, as evolution has no predetermined direction.

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