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The fact that enough bone fragments were found to be able to reconstruct the skull was extremely rare, he said.
Paranthropus robustus may have gone extinct as climate change produced a more humid environment that affected their plant-based diet of tubers and roots.
Homo erectus, on the other hand, which ate meat as well as plants, survived the changes. “We believe these changes occurred during a period when South Africa was drying up, leading to the extinction of a number of contemporary mammal species,” said Andy Herries, an archaeologist involved in the discovery. “Climate change is likely to have produced environmental stressors that drove evolution within Paranthropus robustus.”
The fossil findings suggest that while Homo erectus eventually became more successful as a species, Paranthropus robustus was more common but went extinct.
The creatures were small: males are thought to have been around 3 feet 9 inches tall and weighed 120 pounds, while females were 3 feet 3 inches tall and weighed around 90 pounds.
The skull was found near the spot where the skull of a child Homo erectus was discovered five years ago.
The results were published in the journal Nature, Ecology and Evolution.
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