A new species of Homo Sapiens ancestor, Homo bodoensis.

A team of paleoanthropologists identified a new species of Homo Sapiens ancestor — they named it Homo bodoensis - held as the direct ancestor of Homo Sapiens. This species lived in Africa (this is not a surprise) during the Middle Pleistocene, around half a million years ago.

Here you can find a vulgarised explanation of the discovery, and the original paper is in open access here.

Of interest if you haven’t followed the latest updates about Homo Sapiens fossils in Africa — this paper published in Nature in 2017.