In a recent breakthrough regarding human evolution, researchers have unveiled that a peculiar foot unearthed in Ethiopia is from a yet-to-be-identified ancient relative.

The findings, released on Wednesday in the journal Nature, indicate the foot dates back approximately 3.4 million years and likely bears similarities to Lucy, another ancient human relative who inhabited the region around the same period.

However, scientists have revealed that Burtele’s foot, named after the site in northeastern Ethiopia where it was discovered in 2009, is distinctly different.

The fossil of Bartel’s foot has an opposable thumb akin to that of humans, suggesting its owner was a proficient climber, likely spending more time in trees compared to Lucy, according to the study.

For many years, Lucy’s species was believed to be the common ancestor of all subsequent hominids, serving as a more ancient relative to humans, including Homo sapiens, in contrast to chimpanzees.

Researchers were unable to confirm that the foot belonged to a novel species until they examined additional fossils found in the same vicinity, including a jawbone with twelve teeth.

After identifying these remains as Australopithecus deiremeda, they determined that Bartele’s feet were from the same species.

John Rowan, an assistant professor of human evolution at the University of Cambridge, expressed that their conclusions were “very reasonable.”

“We now have stronger evidence that closely related, yet adaptively distinct species coexisted,” Rowan, who was not part of the study, communicated in an email to NBC News on Thursday.

The research also examined how these species interacted within the same environment. The team, led by Johannes Haile Selassie of Arizona State University, suggested that the newly identified species spent considerable time in wooded areas.

The study proposed that Lucy, or Australopithecus afarensis, was likely traversing the open land, positing that the two species probably had divergent diets and utilized their habitats in distinct ways.

Various analyses of the newly found tooth revealed that A. deiremeda was more primitive than Lucy and likely fed on leaves, fruits, and nuts, the study indicated.

“These distinctions suggest they are less likely to directly compete for identical resources,” remarked Ashley Los Angeles-Wiseman, an assistant professor at the Macdonald Institute of Archaeology at the University of Cambridge.

In an email on Thursday, Wiseman highlighted the significant implications of this discovery for our understanding of evolution, stating that it “reminds us that human evolution is not a linear progression of one species evolving into the next.”

Instead, she asserted, it should be viewed as a branching family tree with numerous so-called “cousins” existing simultaneously, each adopting various survival strategies. “Did they interact? We may never know the answer to that,” she concluded.

Rowan also noted that as the number of well-documented species related to humans increases, so do the inquiries concerning our ancestry. “Which species were our direct ancestors? Which species were our close relatives? That’s the challenge,” he remarked. “As species diversity ascends, so too do the avenues for plausible reconstructions of how human evolution unfolded.”

Wiseman cautioned that definitive species classifications should rely on well-preserved skulls and fossil fragments belonging to multiple related individuals. While the new study bolsters the case for A. deiremeda, it “does not dismiss all other alternative interpretations,” she stated.