Why is Paranthropus important to our understanding of evolution?
Paranthropus discoveries at the Cradle of Humankind signalled a major shift in thinking about evolution. It became clear that human evolution was not a single chain of adaptations – it was more like a tree or bush of parallel lineages. Some lineages were successful, or able to adapt to changing environments, while others were not and became extinct. The term Paranthropus means “parallel to human”, as these hominids walked upright and lived at about the same time as our direct predecessors in the Homo genus, Homo habilis and Homo ergaster.