SCIENCE-SAFRICA-US-PALEONTOLOGY-ANTHROPOLOGY

Professor Lee Berger, an American who is a professor at South Africa's University of the Witwatersrand, poses with the reconstructed hand of a hominin he discovered, during the unveiling of this Sediba Fossil in Johannesburg, on September 8, 2011. Until now, the first tool-maker was widely believed to be Homo habilis, based on a set of 21 fossilized hand bones found in Tanzania that date back 1.75 million years. However, a close examination of two partial fossilized skeletons of Au. sediba discovered in South Africa in 2008 and the new Sediba Fossil discovery suggest that these creatures who roamed the Earth 1.9 million years ago were crafting tools even earlier, and could be the first direct ancestor of the Homo species. AFP PHOTO / ALEXANDER JOE (Photo by ALEXANDER JOE / AFP) (Photo by ALEXANDER JOE/AFP via Getty Images)