Smithsonian Magazine has a story about tool use in our ancient cousins. A recent discovery of the first hand and foot bones on Paranthropus boisei has shed light on whether the species was able to use tools. The research was published in the journal Nature.

“The authors make a compelling case that this individual would have been able to grip rocks with sufficient precision to have been able to make and use simple stone tools,” David Strait, a paleoanthropologist at Washington University in St. Louis who did not participate in the research, tells National Geographic’s Tim Vernimmen. “This is arguably the best evidence yet found indicating Paranthropus was a toolmaker.”

P. boisei likely split off from our last common ancestor more than three million years ago and lived in eastern Africa around 1.2 million to 2.3 million years ago. While our distant relative is known for its powerful jaws and huge teeth, the fossil record was previously limited almost completely to the species’ teeth and skulls, making it difficult to deduce whether P. boisei could make and use stone tools. While paleontologists have found sites with both Homo and Paranthropus fossils, researchers generally attribute any associated stone tools to the former rather than the latter.

Now, however, “these authors are showing the hand morphology of Paranthropus was slightly different than what we see in the genus Homo,” Michael Petraglia, an archaeologist at Griffith University in Australia who was not involved in the research, explains to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Ellen Phiddian. Despite those differences, he adds, P. boisei was “nevertheless potentially a tool user as well.”