Challenges claim that 2-million-year-old fossil is human ancestor

Statistical analysis of fossil data shows that it is unlikely that Australopithecus sediba , a nearly two-million-year-old, apelike fossil from South Africa, is the direct ancestor of Homo , the genus to which modern-day humans belong. The research by paleontologists from the University of Chicago , published this week in Science Advances , concludes by suggesting that Australopithecus afarensis , of the famous "Lucy" skeleton, is still the most likely ancestor to the genus Homo . The first A. sediba fossils were unearthed near Johannesburg in 2008. Hundreds of fragments of the species have since been discovered, all dating to roughly two million years ago. The oldest known Homo fossil, the jawbone of an as yet unnamed species found in Ethiopia, is 2.8 million years old, predating A. sediba by 800,000 years. Despite this timeline, the researchers who discovered A. sediba have claimed that it is an ancestral species to Homo. While it is possible that A. sediba (the hypothesized ancestor) could have postdated earliest Homo (the hypothesized descendant) by 800,000 years, the new analysis indicates that the probability of finding this chronological pattern is highly unlikely.