2010 FIFA World Cup

WikiLeaks releases a collection of more than 250,000 American diplomatic cables, including 100,000 marked "secret" or "confidential"

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NASA announces that its Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has captured photographic evidence of possible liquid water on Mars during warm seasons.

Barack Obama is reelected President of the United States

The Roman Catholic Church beatifies Pope Paul VI.

The XXII Olympic Winter Games are held in Sochi, Russia. Slopestyle events are introduced for the first time.

A fire destroys the National Museum of Brazil in Rio de Janeiro

Donald Trump, a Republican New York City businessman, is sworn in as the 45th President of the United States. Trump is the first person to be elected President of the United States who was neither a political office holder or a military general

A new species of orangutan is identified in Indonesia, becoming the third known species of orangutan as well as the first great ape to be described for almost a century.

Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill sign an Ecumenical Declaration in the first such meeting between leaders of the Catholic and Russian Orthodox Churches since their schism in 1054.

WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange is arrested after seven years in Ecuador's embassy in London.

Cuba and the United States reestablish full diplomatic relations, ending a 54-year stretch of hostility between the nations

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Scientists announce the discovery of Homo naledi, a previously unknown species of early human in South Africa.

10/09/2015View on timeline

Homo naledi is an extinct species of hominin, which anthropologists first described in September 2015 and have assigned to the genus Homo. In 2013, fossil skeletons were found in the Gauteng province of South Africa, in a chamber of the Rising Star Cave system, part of the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site about 50 km (31 mi) northwest of Johannesburg. Although archaic features of its skeleton resembled fossil specimens roughly two million years old, in 2017 the fossils were dated close to 250,000 years ago, and thus contemporary with the first appearance of larger-brained anatomically modern humans. The research team therefore thinks that H. naledi is not a direct ancestor of modern humans, but probably an offshoot within the genus Homo.

The species is characterised by a body mass and stature similar to small-bodied human populations, a smaller endocranial volume similar to Australopithecus, and a skull shape similar to early Homo species. The skeletal anatomy presents ancestral features known from australopithecines with more recent features associated with later hominins. As of 10 September 2015, fossils of at least fifteen individuals, amounting to more than 1550 specimens, have been excavated from the cave. Abundant fossil remains are still within the chamber. Newer findings (remains of at least three individuals: two adults and a child) in a second chamber, known as Lesedi ("light" in the Sotho-Tswana languages), were reported by John Hawks et al. (2017). In May 2018, anthropologists provided evidence that the brain of H. naledi was small, but nonetheless complex, sharing structural similarities with the modern human brain.

The fossils were discovered by recreational cavers Rick Hunter and Steven Tucker in 2013 in the almost inaccessible Dinaledi Chamber ("chamber of stars" in the Sotho-Tswana language). Homo naledi was formally described in September 2015 by a 47-member international team of authors led by South African paleoanthropologist Lee Berger of the University of the Witwatersrand, who proposed that the bones represent a new Homo species. Other experts contend more analyses are needed to support this classification. There are some indications that the hominin bodies may have been deliberately placed in the cave near the time of their death.

A sample of the 1,550 skeletal pieces recovered

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Published in 20/05/2019

Updated in 19/02/2021

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