An international team of paleontologists reported finding the fossilized skeleton of a 3.3-million-year-old child in the Ethiopian desert.
It is the first time scientists have found a juvenile's skeleton from the primitive human species Australopithecus afarensis, of which the iconic fossil "Lucy" is a member. The fossil is the oldest child's skeleton ever discovered.
Researchers say the fossil, found at a research dig in Dikika, Ethiopia, was probably that of a girl no more than three years old when she died. The skeleton's features support the theory that A. afarensis walked upright, but the surprisingly gorilla-like arms suggest it might also have been skilled at swinging through the trees, report paleontologists led by Zeresenay Alemseged of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.
Since the child, who might have died in a flash flood, belonged to the same species as "Lucy," some scientists are referring to the newly discovered skeleton as "Lucy's baby," although it's estimated the child lived about 150,000 years earlier, The Washington Post said.
The discovery is detailed in this week's issue of the journal Nature.
Oldest child skeleton found in Ethiopia
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