Researchers Discover All the Skeletons in the Rising Star Cave System are Female

The research team excavating the Rising Star Cave system in South Africa just discovered that the 20 skeletons they found are all female.

The Rising Star cave system is home to Homo naledi, an ancient human relative with a brain the size of a chimpanzee’s. Scientists confirmed the finding using ancient proteins preserved in tooth enamel. Specifically they tested for the protein amelogenin which looks different depending on whether it came from an X or Y chromosome. They tested 20 individuals ac