Kenyanthropus Platyops | Flat Faced Man From Kenya

It was one of the Technicians of Meave Leakey that discovered a left upper jaw bone in August 1998 at Lomekwi west at Lake Turkana in Kenya, this bone has been dated to be 3.3 million years old.
A year later in August 1999 a skull was discovered in nearly the same location, this skull came from the Kataboi deposit and was dated to be 3.53 million years old.
Until 2001 it wasn’t clear to which species or genus these fossils belonged to, but eventually they were assigned as the type species for Kenyanthropus Platyops.
Kenyanthropus as the name for the Genus and Platyops as the species name.
The naming of this species was quite deliberately done, as Kenya is the place where the fossils were found, anthropus is the Greek word for man as explained in mu Paranthropus genus video, Platyops comes from the Greek words Platys which means flat and oops which means face.
Therefore the name of Kenyanthropus Platyops quite literally translates to flat faced man from Kenya.
But why were they placed in a new genus and not assigned to any of the existing Genuses?


#Kenyanthropus #KenyanthropusRudolfensis #Platyops

Music: Adrian von Ziegler
Sources:
https://australian.museum/learn/scien...
https://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/...
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Keny...
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/scienc...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenyant...
https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenyant...
https://www.science.org/content/blog-...

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