Significats de a. afarensis en anglès

Later studies of A. afarensis feet offer even more evidence.

As well as learning skills from her mother, Lucy may well have learned from other A. afarensis.

This hand use is distinct from other fossil hominins in this study, including A. afarensis and A. africanus.

Chimpanzees also live in groups of a few dozen individuals, and A. afarensis may have stuck with this system.

Other fossil fragments suggested that Lucy was an unreliable measuring stick for A. afarensis, but the new fossil is the most conclusive evidence yet.

But a bigger problem for the idea that A. afarensis were our direct ancestors is that our lineage has turned out to be very complicated.

Unlike Lucy and every other A. afarensis fossil, the new skeleton has complete forelimb and hindlimb bones, allowing researchers to estimate its size more accurately.

So if chimps can do it, Spoor says we might expect that A. afarensis -which was basically a "bipedal chimpanzee" -could too.

In line with that, a 2006 study of a 3-year-old A. afarensis suggested that their brains reached their full size much earlier than ours do.