Rosa Rubicondior: Refuting Creationism - Adding A Little Bit More To The Human Evolutionary Story

Two fragments of the newly discovered mandible specimen in the location they were originally found.

Alemseged Research Group.

New 2.6-million-year-old Paranthropus fossil reshapes understanding of early hominins | Biological Sciences Division | The University of Chicago

Research published two days ago in Nature by a team led by University of Chicago paleoanthropologist Professor Zeresenay Alemseged will dismay and delight creationists in about equal measure — especially those who manage to rationalise a fossil dating from about 2.6 million years before they believe Earth and everything on it was created — because it shows that scientists were wrong about something.

It is the news that the jawbone of an archaic hominin, Paranthropus, has been found in Ethiopia some 200 miles further north than the previously believed northern limit of these hominins.

Normally, to a binary-thinking creationist, science being wrong about even the most minor and unimportant detail is “proof” that science is wrong about everything. This childish belief probably stems from them having a single source-book which has been deemed to be inerrant, so even the slightest falsehood in it renders that claim untenable. They assume it is the same with science: that what scientists believe comes from supposedly inerrant textbooks written by “prophets” such as Charles Darwin, serving as the source-books from which all scientists get their information. So, if scientists are ever wrong, all the books from the science libraries of the world can be thrown in the waste bin, leaving creationism’s book of “inerrant” origin myths as the winner.

What they find hard to comprehend, apparently, is that scientific knowledge is cumulative, with current thinking always provisional, pending further confirmation or in need of revision in the light of new information, and that facts are neutral in any dispute, so can be objective referees. They fail to realise that because science works this way, scientists from all over the world will eventually converge on a single answer. Religions, by contrast, because they are not based on evidence but on the tenuous thread of interpretation of an ancient book which itself presents no evidence for its claims, continue to diversify into ever smaller sects, each claiming to have the one true answer but having no evidence to referee the dispute.

But of course, in the best scientific tradition, this jawbone simply adds richness to the hominin evolutionary story and raises the possibility that Paranthropus, like Australopithecus and Homo, was present in the Afar region of Ethiopia. And that opens up the intriguing possibility — given the propensity of hominins to diverge and then hybridise — that modern Homo sapiens could have some Paranthropus ancestry.

Paranthropus^ the “robust” hominins. Paranthropus is an extinct genus of hominins that lived in eastern and southern Africa between about 2.7 and 1.2 million years ago. It is best known for its so-called “robust” anatomy — not in the sense of being especially large or powerful overall, but because of its massively built jaws, large molar teeth, thick enamel, and prominent cheekbones. Many species also had a sagittal crest (a ridge along the top of the skull) for the attachment of powerful chewing muscles.

Three species are widely recognised:

Paranthropus aethiopicus (East Africa, ~2.7–2.3 Ma)
Paranthropus boisei (East Africa, ~2.3–1.2 Ma)
Paranthropus robustus (South Africa, ~2.0–1.2 Ma)

These hominins were specialised for processing tough, fibrous, or gritty foods such as roots, tubers, sedges, and possibly hard seeds. Stable-isotope and microwear studies show that different species exploited different diets, but all appear adapted for heavy chewing.

Despite their imposing jaws, Paranthropus species had relatively small brains (roughly 400–550 cm³), similar to or only slightly larger than those of Australopithecus.

Where Paranthropus sits in the hominin family tree

Paranthropus is generally regarded as a specialised side-branch of the hominin lineage rather than a direct ancestor of modern humans. Most palaeoanthropologists think it diverged from an australopithecine-like ancestor sometime after about 3 million years ago, around the same time that the genus Homo was emerging.

In simplified terms:

An australopithecine ancestor gave rise to at least two major lineages:

one leading to Homo (eventually Homo sapiens),
another leading to the robust, chewing-adapted Paranthropus.

This makes Paranthropus a cousin lineage rather than a direct ancestor of modern humans.

However, the family tree is not a neat, branching diagram. The early hominin record shows multiple contemporaneous species living side by side, sometimes in the same regions. Genetic evidence from later hominins (such as Neanderthals and Denisovans) shows that hybridisation between hominin lineages did occur. Although no ancient DNA has yet been recovered from Paranthropus fossils, the possibility that early hominin species occasionally interbred cannot be ruled out.

Why Paranthropus matters

The existence of Paranthropus shows that human evolution was not a straight line from “ape” to “human”, but a bushy, experimental process with multiple lineages trying different ecological strategies. While the robust hominins ultimately went extinct, they represent a successful and long-lived adaptation that coexisted with early members of the genus Homo for over a million years.

Their story underlines a central point of evolutionary biology: most evolutionary experiments fail — not because they were “badly designed”, but because changing environments favour some adaptations over others.

The discovery of the jawbone and what it means for our understanding of the history of the hominins is explained in a University of Chicago news item:

New 2.6-million-year-old Paranthropus fossil reshapes understanding of early hominins
A partial lower jaw discovered in Afar, Ethiopia expands the known geographic distribution of Paranthropus northward by 1000 km, revealing the genus to be more widespread and adaptively versatile than previously thought.
In a new paper published in Nature, a team led by University of Chicago paleoanthropologist Professor Zeresenay Alemseged reports the discovery of the first Paranthropus specimen from the Afar region of Ethiopia, 1000 km north of the genus’ previous northernmost occurrence. This finding offers significant new information about when and where Paranthropus existed, its adaptation to diverse environmental conditions, and how it may have interacted with other ancient relatives of modern humans including our genus Homo.
If we are to understand our own evolutionary trajectory as a genus and species, we need to understand the environmental, ecological, and competitive factors that shaped our evolution. This discovery is so much more than a simple snapshot of Paranthropus’ occurrence: It sheds fresh light on the driving forces behind the evolution of the genus.

Professor Zeresenay Alemseged, lead author
Department of Organismal Biology and Anatomy
University of Chicago
Chicago, IL, USA.

Alemseged sifts through unidentified fossil fragments in the field to find parts of a Paranthropus specimen.

Alemseged Research Group.

Paranthropus previously “missing” among hominins in the Afar and northeast Africa.

Since the human and chimpanzee lineages diverged around 7 million years ago, human ancestors went through a dramatic evolutionary process that ultimately led to the emergence of Homo sapiens around 300,000 years ago.

We strive to understand who we are and how we became to be human, and that has implications for how we behave and how we are going to impact the environment around us, and how that, in turn, is going to impact us.

Professor Zeresenay Alemseged.

In the fossil record, the human lineage is represented by over 15 hominin species that generally fit into four groups:

Facultative bipeds, e.g. Ardipithecus — Occasionally bipedal but mostly living in trees and walking on all four limbs.
Habitual bipeds: Australopithecus — Retained arboreality to some degree but mostly practiced upright walking and experimented with stone tools.
Obligate bipeds: Homo— The genus to which modern humans belong, characterized by a larger brain, sophisticated tools and obligate bipedalism.
Robust hominins: Paranthropus (also known as robust australopithecines) — Habitually bipedal like Australopithecus but distinguished by extremely large molars capped by thick enamel and facial and muscular configurations that suggest a powerful chewing apparatus.

Hundreds of fossils representing over a dozen species of Ardipithecus, Australopithecus, and Homo had been found in the Afar region of northern Ethiopia, so the apparent absence of Paranthropus was conspicuous and puzzling to paleoanthropologists, many of whom had concluded the genus simply never ventured that far north. While some experts suggested that dietary specialization restricted Paranthropus to southern regions, others hypothesized that this could have been the result of Paranthropus’ inability to compete with the more versatile Homo, [however] neither was the case: Paranthropus was as widespread and versatile as Homo and the new find shows that its absence in the Afar was an artifact of the fossil record.

Professor Zeresenay Alemseged.

Professor Zeresenay Alemseged demonstrates how fragments of the newly discovered mandible specimen fit together.

Alemseged Research Group.

Rethinking hominin biogeography, adaptation, and competition.

The 2.6-million-year-old partial jaw reported in Nature comes from the Mille-Logya research area in the Afar and is one of the oldest Paranthropus specimens unearthed to date. After recovering as many fragments as possible from the field site, the team brought them back to Chicago to analyze internal anatomy and morphology with powerful micro-CT scanning.
It’s a remarkable nexus: an ultra-modern technology being applied to a 2.6-million-year-old fossil to tell a story that is common to us all.

Professor Zeresenay Alemseged.

This new find shows that Paranthropus was as widespread and versatile as Homo and was not necessarily outcompeted by Homo.

Paranthropus was previously nicknamed the “nutcracker” genus, highlighting the very large molars, thick enamel, and heavy jaws and reflecting assumptions that this chewing apparatus caused Paranthropus to occupy a highly specialized and narrower dietary niche. But the new Paranthropus from Afar reveals that starting from its earliest origins, Paranthropus was widespread, versatile, and able to crack more than just nuts.
The new discovery gives us insight into the competitive edges that each group had, the type of diet they were consuming, the type of muscular and skeletal adaptations that they had, whether they were using stone tools or not — all parts of their adaptation and behavior that we are trying to figure out. Discoveries like this really trigger interesting questions in terms of reviewing, revising, and then coming up with new hypotheses as to what the key differences were between the main hominin groups.

Professor Zeresenay Alemseged.

Two fragments of the newly discovered mandible specimen in the location they were originally found.

Alemseged Research Group.

Publication:
Alemseged, Z., Spoor, F., Reed, D. et al.
Afar fossil shows broad distribution and versatility of Paranthropus. Nature (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09826-x

Abstract
The Afar depression in northeastern Ethiopia contains a rich palaeontological and archaeological record, which documents 6 million years of human evolution. Abundant faunal evidence links evolutionary patterns with palaeoenvironmental change as a principal underlying force¹. Many of the earlier hominin taxa recognized today are found in the Afar, but Paranthropus has been conspicuously absent from the region. Here we report on the discovery, in the Mille-Logya research area, of a partial mandible that we attribute to Paranthropus, dated to between 2.5 and 2.9 million years ago and found in a well-understood chronological and faunal context. The find is among the oldest fossils attributable to Paranthropus and indicates that this genus, from its earliest known appearance, had a greater geographic distribution than previously documented². Often seen as a dietary specialist feeding on tough food, the range of diverse habitats with which eastern African Paranthropus can now be associated shows that this suggested adaptive niche did not restrict its ability to disperse as widely as species of Australopithecus and early Homo. The discovery of Paranthropus in the Afar emphasizes how little is known about hominin evolution in eastern Africa during the crucial period between 3 and 2.5 million years ago, when this genus and the Homo lineage presumably emerged.

Alemseged, Z., Spoor, F., Reed, D. et al.
Afar fossil shows broad distribution and versatility of Paranthropus. Nature (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09826-x

© 2026 Springer Nature Ltd.
Reprinted under the terms of s60 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

For creationists, then, this discovery is a double embarrassment. On the one hand, it further extends the fossil record of hominins into yet another inconvenient corner of deep time and geography, while on the other it neatly illustrates how science actually works: hypotheses are refined, boundaries are adjusted, and understanding improves as new evidence comes in. What it does *not* do is undermine the entire enterprise of palaeoanthropology or cast doubt on the reality of human evolution, despite the fevered hopes of those who imagine that any minor correction is a fatal blow to all of science.

Notably, the authors themselves show no difficulty whatsoever in fitting this new find into an evolutionary framework. There is no hand-wringing, no talk of “crisis” or “collapse” of evolutionary theory, and no appeal to supernatural intervention to plug a supposed gap. Instead, the jawbone is treated exactly as it should be: as a new data point that enriches our picture of early hominin diversity, biogeography, and ecological flexibility. It refines our understanding of where Paranthropus lived, how widely it ranged, and how complex the early hominin landscape really was.

In other words, this is not a problem for evolution at all — it is a routine success story for it. The fossil record continues to grow, predictions continue to be borne out, and the messy, branching, occasionally hybridising reality of human evolution becomes ever clearer. What remains conspicuously absent, as ever, is any comparable explanatory framework from creationism — only a set of immovable dogmas that must be defended by denial, distortion, or special pleading whenever the evidence refuses to cooperate.

Once again, the facts turn out to be neutral referees in the dispute. And once again, they come down firmly on the side of an evidence-based, evolutionary account of our origins rather than on a handful of ancient origin myths that cannot be updated, tested, or corrected when they are shown to be wrong.

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