Staggering Finds Show Early Humans Lived Alongside the Very Apes They Evolved from [View all]

By Andy Corbley -Aug 19, 2025

From Ethiopia comes an incredible discovery—early humans seem to have potentially lived alongside the very apes they evolved from.

The discovery centers around teeth: that of a member of the genus Homo, of which we are a part, found next to the tooth of Australopithecus, the last in a line of apes that became humans.

The team of paleontologists who found the teeth are following protocol and not inferring anything about how the two species interacted, but the fact is that the Homo tooth was the older of the two, showing that human evolution wasn’t linear.

“This new research shows that the image many of us have in our minds of an ape to a Neanderthal to a modern human is not correct—evolution doesn’t work like that,” Kaye Reed, a research scientist and president’s professor emerita from Arizona State University, told CNN via email. “Here we have two hominin species that are together. And human evolution is not linear, it’s a bushy tree…”

More:
https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/staggering-finds-show-early-humans-lived-alongside-the-very-apes-they-evolved-from/