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1.8 Million-Year-Old Skull Suggests Three Early Human Species Were One
ananyo writes "A 1.8 million-year-old human skull dramatically simplifies the textbook story of human evolution, suggesting what were thought to be three distinct species of early human (Homo habilis, Homo rudolfensis and Homo erectus) was just one. 'Skull 5', along with four other skulls from the same excavation site at Dmanisi, Georgia, also shows that early humans were as physically diverse as we are today (paper abstract)."
It is not exactly like that. It is rather that any given sample along one line, regardless where it is on the timeline, belongs to only one and the same species, regardless of evolutionary change! A new species is _only_ formed when one line is split into two lines. And even more surprising, to many, then is that neither is the same species as their ancestor, for solely technical reasons.