Overview
- Researchers report 25 teeth, a juvenile lower jaw, fragments of adult mandibles, and a juvenile hip bone from the Burtele localities in Ethiopia’s Afar Rift.
- Radiometric and paleomagnetic dating place the fossils at roughly 3.47 to 3.33 million years ago, overlapping sites that preserve A. afarensis.
- Comparative analyses identify an opposable or abducted big toe, curved toes, and midfoot flexibility consistent with climbing alongside bipedal walking with different push‑off mechanics.
- Enamel carbon isotopes show a predominantly C3, woodland‑leaning diet for A. deyiremeda, contrasting with the mixed C3/C4 diet inferred for A. afarensis.
- The integrated anatomical, dietary, and chronological evidence supports ecological niche partitioning and a branching, mosaic pattern of early hominin evolution.