New fossils reveal the hand of Paranthropus boisei.

ABSTRACT: When Mary Leakey discovered the OH 5 cranium of Paranthropus boisei alongside Oldowan stone artefacts, it was declared "the oldest yet discovered maker of stone tools"¹. Whether Paranthropus made and used tools has been debated ever since^2-4, largely because there are no known hand bones that can be definitively attributed to this genus. Here we report fossil hand and foot bones unambiguously associated with craniodental material of P. boisei. KNM-ER 101000 demonstrates that P. boisei shared key manipulative and bipedal adaptations with the genus Homo. Moreover, the hand morphology of KNM-ER 101000 converges on that of gorillas in ways that are consistent with manual food processing and would have facilitated powerful grasping, such as that used in climbing. These fos

SUBMITTER: Mongle CS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12657221 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature