Crushing grip, precision tools

Researchers found the first-hand fossils of Paranthropus boisei. They show gorilla-like fingers with human-like thumbs that could craft stone tools 1.5 million years ago.

UC researchers and Stony Brook University published findings in Nature on 15 October 2025, revealing that hand bones (KNM-ER 101000), excavated between 2019 and 2021 from Koobi Fora, Kenya, combine crushing grip strength with precision manipulation capability.

Paleoanthropologists credited stone tools to Homo for decades because Homo had "modern-looking" hands. This attribution persisted even when Nutcracker Man fossils outnumbered Homo remains 10-to-1 at tool sites. Species with different bone proportions were excluded from the technology narrative despite evidence of dexterity.

Will textbook publishers rewrite human evolution timelines to reflect multiple hominin species developing technology?

Will museums update "Homo the Toolmaker" exhibits to reflect these findings?

[Analysis] Nature peer-reviewed study by Mongle et al. — The discovery effectively ends decades of debate about whether Nutcracker Man made tools, as hand morphology proves both crushing strength for plant processing and precision manipulation for tool crafting coexisted in the same species 1.5 million years ago.

One fossil hand just made every intro-to-anthropology syllabus obsolete, and the people who wrote those syllabi are now Googling how to issue corrections without looking foolish.

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