article_snippet: This would make This the common ancestor for modern humans - Homo sapiens - and modern humans - Homo extinct relatives including Homo habilis, Homo erectus and Neanderthals.
article_snippet: Later, chimp and human lineages diverge .
article_snippet: 5.5 million years ago - Ardipithecus, early ‘proto-human’ shares traits with chimps and gorillas . 4 million years ago - Australopithecines appeared.
article_snippet: 2.8 million years ago - LD 350-1 appeared and may be the first of the Homo family .
article_snippet: 1.8 million years ago - Homo ergaster begins to appear in fossil record .
article_snippet: Dr Brian Villmoare, from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, helped lead the fossil hunters, said: 'In spite of a lot of searching, fossils on the Homo lineage older than two million years ago are very rare. '
article_snippet: LD 350-1 reveals that many of the anatomical patterns we see in 2 million-year old Homo were established much earlier in the evolution of the genus. '
article_snippet: At 2.8 million years ago we see relatively evolved Homo traits in combination with other much more primitive anatomical features.'
article_snippet: But exactly how Homo habilis had appeared was unclear due to a huge gap in the fossil record.
article_snippet: Until now the earliest evidence of the existence of the first Homo species was 2.3 million to 2.4 million year old fossils.
article_snippet: Scientists have been searching for decades for earlier examples in an attempt to understand how our ancestors split from other ape-like hominins.
article_snippet: Professor Kaye Reed, also from Arizona State University, said: 'Professor Kaye Reed, also from Arizona State University can see the 2.8 million year aridity signal in the Ledi-Geraru faunal community, but it’s still too soon to say that this means climate change is responsible for the origin of Homo.'
article_snippet: The new fossil has helped fill a huge gap in the evolutionary history (above) of how the Homo family appeared .
article_snippet: the Homo family used 3D imaging techniques to scan partial skull of Homo habilis - a human ancestor that lived 1.8 million years ago and is thought to have been among the first to use tools - earning it the nickname 'handy man'.
article_snippet: the researchers findings suggest that three different species of early human existed side-by-side between 2.1 million and 1.6 million years ago - Homo habilis, Homo erectus and Homo rudolfensis.
article_snippet: Scientists used 3D imaging techniques to reconstruct the skull of Homo hablis (left) which has provided clues about how this now extinct member of our evolutionary branch would have looked.
article_snippet: The image on the right shows an early reconstruction of Homo hablis at the Westfälisches Museum for Archaology in Herne .
article_snippet: Professor Fred Spoor, a researcher of evolutionary anatomy at University College London and the Max Planck Institute in Germany, said: 'By digitally exploring what Homo habilis really looked like Professor Fred Spoor, a researcher of evolutionary anatomy at University College London and the Max Planck Institute in Germany could infer the nature of Homo habilis ancestor, but no such fossils were known. '
highlights_snippet: The fossil may have belonged to  the earliest member of the Homo family .
  
highlights_snippet: The fossil means that the Homo family emerged 400,000 years earlier than believed .
  
highlights_snippet: Scientists think The fossil could represent a common ancestor for all Homo species .
  