Homo habilis just got some long arms to go along with its dexterous handy hands. In a recent paper in the journal The Anatomical Record, Fred Grine and colleagues describe and analyze some spectacular fossils recovered near the town of Ileret in Kenya, dating to just over 2 million years ago. There were a few different kinds of human-like species inhabiting the planet around this time, but researchers were able to assign these bones to Homo habilis thanks to some chemical clues connecting them to a nearly complete set of teeth found a few meters away. This partial skeleton of a young adult individual is an incredible discovery, connected by clever scientific sleuthing, and provides important information about an early member of the human lineage.

You can see some great photos of these fossils (as well as a fantastic fossil foot of a different individual) in a 2015 press release from the Turkana Basin Institute. A more recent announcement from the Institut Català Paleontologia includes a photo showing the late great Bill Jungers and fossil maven Meave Leakey with the fossils, which helps show the actual size of the bones.

Ann Gibbons’ article about the discovery has a great quote from paleoanthropologist Stephanie Melillo (who discovered the Burtele foot fossil): “If you dressed up a Homo habilis individual in clothes and you saw her walking in the distance, would you do a double take? This study shows us that the answer is YES!”

The reason we might react to seeing Homo habilis like Gertie glimpsing E.T., as this skeleton shows, is that this early human had longer arms (especially forearms) than most of us do today. Thickness of the bones also shows that they were probably quite strong as a result of experiencing lots of force from use during life. Long and strong hominin arms are typically interpreted as evidence that these ancient ancestors spent a good deal of time climbing trees.

These features have previously been documented in some of the few other partial skeletons attributed to Homo habilis, as Grine and colleagues note. Indeed, the new article does a deep dive into what is known (and unknown) about the bones and body of Homo habilis, and it also provides a thoughtful review of recent research cautioning against over-interpreting climbing behaviors from fossil remains.

For more fossil fun, the article’s supporting online material includes “3D manipulative files” of the original specimens, so anyone can have a look at the bones in 3D using Microsoft Word: