Kenyanthropus

Kenyanthropus is an extinct genus of early hominins from Kenya, known chiefly from Kenyanthropus platyops fossils dated to about 3.5 million years ago.

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Kenyanthropus platyops: An extinct hominin species from Kenya, known from fossils dated to about 3.5 million years ago. This species supplies the genus’s principal fossil evidence.
Hominin: A human or extinct species more closely related to humans than to chimpanzees. Kenyanthropus is classified within this evolutionary group.
Australopithecus afarensis: An extinct East African hominin species that lived roughly 3.9 to 2.9 million years ago. Its fossils overlap in age and region, complicating comparisons with Kenyanthropus.
Richard Leakey: A Kenyan paleoanthropologist who led major fossil expeditions in the Turkana Basin. He co-led the field project that recovered the Kenyanthropus type specimen.
KNM-WT 40000: A fragmentary 3.5-million-year-old hominin cranium discovered at Lomekwi, Kenya. Its distorted skull became the type specimen for Kenyanthropus platyops.
Paleoanthropology: The study of human evolution through fossils, archaeology, and related evidence. Kenyanthropus is reconstructed through this field’s fossil-based methods.
Australopithecus africanus: An extinct hominin species known from South African fossils dating roughly 3.3 to 2.1 million years ago. Comparisons with this species inform debates over Kenyanthropus’s distinctiveness.
Lomekwi 3: An archaeological site in Kenya known for stone tools dated to about 3.3 million years ago. Its nearby discoveries place Lomekwi in a broader record of early hominins and tools.
Lomekwi: A fossil-bearing locality west of Lake Turkana in northern Kenya. The locality yielded the skull that established Kenyanthropus platyops.
Cranial morphology: The form and structure of the skull, including its proportions and anatomical features. The genus’s proposed distinctiveness rests largely on skull shape.