The ancient hominid species that includes ‘Nutcracker Man’ may have made tools
Newly described fossils are the first hand, arm and shoulder specimens from the same Paranthropus boisei individual
By Bruce Bower
Paranthropus boisei, an African hominid that lived between around 2.3 million and 1.2 million years ago, may have strong-armed its way into stone-tool making with a deft touch.
That’s the implication of the first hand, arm and shoulder fossils discovered from the same P. boisei individual, say paleobiologist David Green and colleagues. The fossils suggest that this extinct species combined powerful arms suited to tree climbing with grasping hands capable of fashioning stone implements, the researchers report in the April Journal of Human Evolution.
P. boisei, a distant cousin to modern humans, lacked a thick, powerfully gripping thumb characteristic of its hominid contemporary, Homo erectus (SN: 3/24/15), a prolific maker of sophisticated stone tools. But the newly described hand bones suggest that P. boisei gripped well-enough to make and use simple stone and bone tools, just as other members of the human evolutionary family may have as early as 3.3 million years ago (SN: 5/20/15). That’s long before the emergence of the Homo genus, which appeared around 2.8 million years ago. But reports of tool-making before Homo originated are controversial.
“This is the first evidence that creatures that were almost certainly not our direct ancestors could have made tools,” says paleoanthropologist Bernard Wood of George Washington University in Washington, D.C. “So we can no longer assume — nor should we ever have assumed — that only Homo could make tools,” says Wood, who was not involved with the new research.