Australopithecus afarensis
For a million years, the best-known early hominin walks upright across East Africa with an ape-sized brain.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 1 million years
- Known to
- ± 100 thousand years
- Era
- Pliocene, Cenozoic
Australopithecus afarensis is represented by hundreds of specimens from Ethiopia, Tanzania and Kenya, making it the best-sampled early hominin by a wide margin. It stands roughly 1.1 to 1.5 metres, is strongly sexually dimorphic, has a brain of about 400 to 500 cubic centimetres — chimpanzee range — and walks fully upright while retaining curved fingers and a shoulder built for climbing. It is the species that established the central fact of human origins: bipedalism came first, and by a very long way.