mandible

The county medical examiner’s office tried for years to find the owner of the errant piece of mandible, but their DNA databases turned up no matches.

“It’s a convincing case,” Ward says, “but it’s just one mandible until about 2 million years ago,” when at least two members of the genus, Homo habilis and H. erectus, appear elsewhere in eastern Africa.

In the new study, Azar, Nel, Diying Huang, and Michael S. Engel describe two male mosquitoes with piercing mouthparts, including an exceptionally sharp, triangular mandible and elongated structure with small, tooth-like denticles.

Their data indicated that the Choerolophodontidae mandible was specialised for cutting horizontally or slanted-growing plants, which may explain the absence of mandibular tusks.

The Gomphotheriidae mandible was found to be equally suited for cutting plants growing in all directions.