Evolution & Human Origins

What did the face of one of our ancestors look like more than 3 million years ago? Our international team has answered this question by virtually reconstructing the facial fragments of Little Foot, the most complete Australopithecus skeleton yet discovered. This reconstruction sheds light on the influence of the environment on how our face evolved. Our findings have just been published in the Comptes Rendus Palevol journal, and the new 3D face of Little Foot can be explored online on the MorphoSource platform . The search for human origins has never been more fruitful, with fossil discoveries pushing back the appearance of the earliest humans (members of the genus Homo) to 2.8 million years ago, and the development of cutting-edge