New human fossil discovery has everyone questioning the origin of mankind

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1. Article is misleading clickbait; the research doesn't throw much of anything seriouis into doubt

I don't think anybody ever seriously believed that these distantly related fossils were of our direct ancestors. Rather, there were once many lines of primates, none of whom fossilized well because of the habits that would eventually make us human. One of those lines did eventually become us, but whatever we find in Africa is more likely to be cousins than grandparents just because it's a very unusual thing for an animal that lives the way we do to become fossilized at all. Most of the ones we do find will be very primitive or the result of tragic accidents that prevented their peers from performing funerary rites.