Word: robustus
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...life-span, the australopithecines were surely one of evolution's better experiments. But nature is an inveterate tinkerer, even with successful species. Between 3 million and 1.9 million years B.P., several variations on the Australopithecus theme popped up in eastern and southern Africa, including A. africanus, A. aethiopicus, A. robustus and A. boisei. (Just to complicate matters, the last three are assigned by some experts to an entirely different genus, Paranthropus...
...their genes on to the next evolutionary generation. Between 3 million and 2 million years B.P., a healthy handful of descendants sprang from the A. afarensis line, upright primates that were similar to Lucy in overall body design but different in the details of bone structure. Australopithecus africanus, Paranthropus robustus, Paranthropus boisei -- all flourished in Africa. But in the evolutionary elimination tournament, the two Paranthropus species eventually lost out. Only A. africanus, most scientists believe, survived to give rise to the next character in the human drama...
...fossil record had also apparently shown that the australopithecines evolved in an orderly way: first came afarensis, followed by africanus, then robustus and boisei. But the age and form of WT 17000 convinced Leakey and Walker that the lineage was not simple after all. Boisei did not descend from robustus, and probably not even from afarensis...
...chance flight over Lake Natron in northern Tanzania, he spotted what looked like interesting sediment beds and, encouraged by his parents, set off to explore the area. His first expedition proved to be a success; the team he assembled found a fragment from an Australopithecus robustus. He decided to become an anthropologist...
...broad molars to chew their fibrous foods. Fossilized bones can indicate a creature's size and weight, just as the length of a thigh bone of a modern human can be used to accurately estimate his height. But often anthropologists must interpolate. Anatomists studying jawless skulls of Australopithecus robustus could not help noticing the creature's well-developed zygomatic arch, the structure to which the jaw muscles are anchored; they deduced that the man-ape had an enormous jaw. The discovery of large A. robustus jawbones proved that they were right...