Overview
- The specimen, labeled MLP-3000, comprises a partial lower jaw without teeth and an associated lower molar crown recovered at Mille-Logya in Ethiopia.
- Multiple dating approaches, including magnetostratigraphy, place the fossil at roughly 2.6 million years old near the Late Pliocene transition.
- Micro-CT and anatomical analyses show robust Paranthropus traits alongside more primitive features, prompting a conservative designation as Paranthropus sp.
- The discovery extends the genus’s previously known northern limit by about 1,000 kilometers beyond earlier Ethiopian finds such as Konso.
- Its occurrence in sediments spanning the poorly sampled 3.0–2.4 million-year interval points to greater ecological versatility and coexistence with early Homo and Australopithecus in the region.