Anthropologists have discovered a 250,000-year-old Homo naledi child skull in South Africa … The description of the mysterious remains, whose age is about 250 thousand years, was published in two articles in the journal PaleoAnthropology.
The skull was discovered by anthropologists in 2017 in South Africa, in the Rising Star cave system. It was found in a narrow passage – 15 centimeters wide and 80 centimeters long – just 12 meters from Dinaledi Cave, where the remains of Homo naledi, one of the ancestors of modern humans, were first discovered in 2015. There are no other remains of the body of a child who died at the age of four to six years. He received the name Leti – from the word “letimela”, in Setswana language meaning “lost.”
The skull itself consists of 28 fragments and six teeth. “This is the first partial skull of a baby Homo naledi ever discovered, and gives us insight into all the life stages of this remarkable species,” said lead author of the study, associate professor at Louisiana State University Juliet Brophy. The size of Leti's brain is from 480 to 610 cubic centimeters, which, according to scientists, is 90-95 percent of the brain volume of an adult individual.
Leti's age has not yet been determined. The age of the remains of H. naledi found nearby is about 245-331 thousand years. According to researchers, the skull belongs to the same period. The cause of Leti's death also remains a mystery – no traces of the teeth of predators or scavengers have been found on the skull, and no evidence has been found that the remains were carried into the passage by water. According to scientists, this means that Leti's remains were placed in the passage by his relatives.