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The next step in research is to “sort the relationship of these different species to each other and also their role in our process of becoming human,” Hawks said during an announcement of the discoveries at the Cradle of Humankind, a site near the South African town of Magaliesburg where the fossils were found. The research was also published in the journal eLife.

The name of Homo naledi refers to the “Homo” evolutionary group, which includes modern people and our closest extinct relatives, and the word for “star” in the local Sotho language. The fossils were found in the Rising Star cave system, which includes more than two kilometres (1.25 miles) of underground, mapped passageways. The second chamber containing the more recent fossil discoveries is more than 100 metres from the cave where the original discoveries were made and publicly announced in 2015.

Some experts who were not involved in the research marveled at the age of the fossils, determined by dating Homo naledi teeth and cave sediments.

“This is astonishingly young for a species that still displays primitive characteristics found in fossils about 2 million years old, such as the small brain size, curved fingers, and form of the shoulder, trunk and hip joint. Yet the wrist, hands, legs and feet look more like those of Neanderthals and modern humans, and the teeth are relatively small and simple, and set in lightly built jawbones,” Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London wrote in an email to The Associated Press.