Paranthropus boisei

Paranthropus boisei is an extinct australopithecine that lived in East Africa during the Early Pleistocene, about 2.5 to 1.15 million years ago, and is the most robust of the robust australopithecines. Its holotype skull, OH 5, was found by Mary Leakey at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, in 1959 and was first named Zinjanthropus boisei by Louis Leakey, earning the nickname Nutcracker Man. The skull is heavily built, with some of the largest molars and thickest enamel of any known ape, yet the brain was only about 450 to 550 cubic centimetres. A presumed male, OH 80, may have stood 156 centimetres tall and weighed about 61.7 kilograms. Despite the nickname it probably fed as a generalist on abrasive C4 plants such as grasses or underground storage organs, and it lived mainly in wet, wooded environments alongside early Homo.