It is the supermodel look that many people aspire too , but it seems our early ancestors may have naturally had waif-like hips and thin legs . Scientists examining a 1.9 million year old pelvis and femur have found that a now extinct species of early human had very different bodies to our own . The fossil is thought to belong to either Homo rudolfensis or Homo habilis , two species of human ancestor that evolved in Africa . The 1.9 million year old femur and pelvis above are thought to belong to Homo habilis or Homo rudolfensis . While scientists have long studied the different skull shapes and facial features of these species , they are now turning their attention to their bodies . According to research led by anthropologists at the University of Missouri , these early Homo species far thinner narrow pelvises and thigh bones compared to our own species , Homo sapien and another extinct human species Homo erectus . 55 million years ago - First primitive primates evolve . 15 million years ago - Hominidae ( great apes ) evolve from the ancestors of the gibbon . 8 million years ago - First gorillas evolve . Later , chimp and human lineages diverge . 5.5 million years ago - Ardipithecus , early ‘ proto-human ’ shares traits with chimps and gorillas . 4 million years ago - Australopithecines appeared . They had brains no larger than a chimpanzee 's . 2.7 million years ago - Paranthropus , lived in woods and had massive jaws for chewing . 2.8 million years ago - The first members of the Homo family appeared in Africa as shown by the LD 350-1 fossil discovered in Ethiopia . 2.3 million years ago - Homo habalis is first thought to have appeared in Africa . 1.8 million years ago - Homo ergaster begins to appear in fossil record . 1.6 million years ago - Hand axes become the first major technological innovation . 800,000 years ago - Early humans control fire and create hearths . Brain size increases rapidly . 400,000 years ago - Neanderthals first begin to appear and spread across Europe and Asia . 200,000 years ago - Homo sapiens - modern humans - appear in Africa . 40,0000 years ago - Modern humans reach Europe . Their hip joints , however , were very similar to modern humans - unlike in chimpanzees where the hip is much flatter and higher than in humans . This would have given these early humans an upright posture but with narrow hips and spindly legs . Professor Carol Ward , a pathologist at the University of Missouri 's school of medicine who studied the remains , said : 'What these new fossils are telling us is that the early species of our genus , Homo , were more distinctive than we thought . 'They differed not only in their faces and jaws , but in the rest of their bodies too . 'The old depiction of linear evolution from ape to human with single steps in between is proving to be inaccurate . 'We are finding that evolution seemed to be experimenting with different human physical traits in different species before ending up with Homo sapiens . ' The fossilised pelvis and femur fossils were found at the Koobi Fora site on the eastern shore of Lake Turkana , in the Rift Valley of Kenya . Originally a fragment of a femur was discovered at the site in 1980 but a later excavation in 2009 revealed a new femur fragment and a piece of pelvis . Scientists have now found that the femur fragments are part for the same leg and belong the the same individual as the pelvis . Scientists have dated the fossils at around 1.9 million years old . As the oldest fossils of Homo erectus to be found are 1.8 million years old , they concluded that the fossilised bones may belong to to one to two other early human species around at the time - Homo habilis or Homo rudolfensis . The site where the fossil femur and pelvis were found is shown above along with when they were discovered . The site where the fossil femur and pelvis were found was in Koobi Fora , within the Rift Valley of Kenya . There are almost no skeletal pieces in the fossil record for these two species so the discovery has provided scientists a rare glimpse at how they may have looked . The researchers , whose study is published in the Journal of Human Evolution , used CT scans of the fossilised pelvis and femur to compare them to those of other species of primate , early human and modern humans . They concluded that the skeletons of early human ancestors may have quite different structures to our own . Most studies on how early Homo species would have looked have focused on the skull and facial features as can be seen in the above reconstruction of Homo habilis ( left ) and the skull of Homo rudolfensis ( right ) Professor Ward said : 'This new specimen has a hip joint like all other Homo species , but it also has a thinner pelvis and thighbone compared to Homo erectus . 'This doesn ’ t necessarily mean that these early human ancestors moved or lived differently , but it does suggest that they were a distinct species that could have been identified not just from looking at their faces and jaws , but by seeing their body shapes as well . 'Our new fossils , along with the other new specimens reported over the past few weeks , tell us that the evolution of our genus goes back much earlier than we thought , and that many species and types of early humans coexisted for about a million years before our ancestors became the only Homo species left . '
Fossilised legs and femur from early humans found in Rift Valley , Kenya . researchers believe they belong to either Homo rudolfensis or Homo habilis . The fossil legs and pelvis are far narrower than those of modern humans . This suggests our ancestors had thinner legs and hips than modern sapiens . The fossils show early humans had varied body proportions as well as legs .