Four years back, a lower jaw, jaw fragments and teeth were discovered in the Afar region of northern Ethiopia. The journal Nature-published study stated that the fossils belonged to a species dubbed Australopithecus deyiremeda.

The findings suggest that he was a second human ancestor who lived in around the same area and time as Lucy's species. For now, it is not known how the fossils dated at 3.3m to 3.5m years old is related to our own branch of the family tree.

Study's lead researcher Yohannes Haile-Selassie of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History said that our branch includes Homo sapiens and our closest extinct relatives. They have formed from the evolutionary grouping that now includes this new species and also Lucy's species.

Haile-Selassie said the addition of the new species and possibility of more to come can make the question even more complicated that which species has actually led human branch. It has not been decided yet as the discovered bones belongs to the newly identified or to any other species.

But Bernard Wood of George Washington University said that the discovery does stresses towards an idea that a second creature lived nearby Lucy' species at the same time. There is no denying in the fact that the discovery demands a lot of research.

"The new species is yet another confirmation that Lucy's species, Australopithecus afarensis, was not the only potential human ancestor species that roamed in what is now the Afar region of Ethiopia during the middle Pliocene", said experts.