Sahelanthropus tchadensis is an extinct hominid species that is dated to about 7 million years ago. In terms of paleoanthropology and the origins of human evolution, including it in the Hominina evolutionary tree is still controversial, because its classification is older than the human-chimpanzee divergence of 6.3 to 5.4 million years ago, and the specimens are few. The partial cranium, discovered in Chad in 2001 by Michel Brunet and his team, is known as Toumaï
, meaning 'hope of life
'. [Brunet et al. 2002].