Early Homo erectus skeleton from west Lake Turkana, Kenya

Nature ◽  
1985 ◽  
Vol 316 (6031) ◽  
pp. 788-792 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Brown ◽  
John Harris ◽  
Richard Leakey ◽  
Alan Walker
Keyword(s):  
Homo Erectus ◽  
Lake Turkana ◽  
West Lake ◽  
Early Homo

A note on the reported occurrence of very early Homo from West Lake Turkana, Kenya

1994 ◽  
Vol 27 (5) ◽  
pp. 447-448 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Harris ◽  
Meave Leakey ◽  
Alan Walker
Keyword(s):  
Lake Turkana ◽  
West Lake ◽  
Early Homo

scholarly journals Homo naledi, a new species of the genus Homo from the Dinaledi Chamber, South Africa

eLife ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lee R Berger ◽  
John Hawks ◽  
Darryl J de Ruiter ◽  
Steven E Churchill ◽  
Peter Schmid ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Single Species ◽  
Homo Erectus ◽  
Cranial Morphology ◽  
Human Populations ◽  
Early Homo ◽  
Homo Habilis ◽  
Cave System ◽  
Unknown Species ◽  
Cradle Of Humankind

Homo naledi is a previously-unknown species of extinct hominin discovered within the Dinaledi Chamber of the Rising Star cave system, Cradle of Humankind, South Africa. This species is characterized by body mass and stature similar to small-bodied human populations but a small endocranial volume similar to australopiths. Cranial morphology of H. naledi is unique, but most similar to early Homo species including Homo erectus, Homo habilis or Homo rudolfensis. While primitive, the dentition is generally small and simple in occlusal morphology. H. naledi has humanlike manipulatory adaptations of the hand and wrist. It also exhibits a humanlike foot and lower limb. These humanlike aspects are contrasted in the postcrania with a more primitive or australopith-like trunk, shoulder, pelvis and proximal femur. Representing at least 15 individuals with most skeletal elements repeated multiple times, this is the largest assemblage of a single species of hominins yet discovered in Africa.

Into the Woods Early Homo sapiens and Tropical Forest Colonization

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Roberts
Keyword(s):  
Tropical Forests ◽  
Late Pleistocene ◽  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Homo Erectus ◽  
Rapid Expansion ◽  
Early Pleistocene ◽  
Human Populations ◽  
Tropical Regions ◽  
Early Homo ◽  
Middle And Late Pleistocene

Popular philosophical associations of tropical forests, and forests in general, with an inherent ancestral state, away from the stresses, pollution, and technosphere of modern life, are nicely summarized by Murakami’s quote above (2002). Given the probable origins of the hominin clade in tropical forests, this quote is also apt from an evolutionary standpoint. Yet, somewhat surprisingly, tropical forests have frequently been considered impenetrable barriers to the global migration of Homo sapiens (Gamble, 1993; Finlayson, 2014). As was the case with the focus on ‘savannastan’ in facilitating the Early Pleistocene expansion of Homo erectus discussed in Chapter 3 (Dennell and Roebroeks, 2005), the movement of H. sapiens into tropical regions such as South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Australia has tended to be linked to Late Pleistocene periods when forests contracted and grasslands expanded (Bird et al., 2005; Boivin et al., 2013). Alternative narratives have focused on the importance of coastal adaptations as providing a rich source of protein and driving cultural and technological complexity, as well as mobility, in human populations during the Middle and Late Pleistocene (Mellars, 2006; Marean, 2016). The evidence of early art and symbolism at coastal cave sites such as Blombos in South Africa (Henshilwood et al., 2002, 2011; Vanhaeren et al., 2013) and Taforalt in North Africa (Bouzouggar et al., 2007) is often used to emphasize the role of marine habitats in the earliest cultural emergence of our species. Indeed, for the last decade, the pursuit of rich marine resources (Mellars, 2005, 2006) has been a popular explanation for the supposed rapidity of the ‘southern dispersal route’, whereby humans left Africa 60 ka, based on genetic information (e.g., Macaulay et al., 2005), to reach the Pleistocene landmass that connected Australia and New Guinea (Sahul) by c. 65 ka (Clarkson et al., 2017). In both of these cases, the coast or expanses of grassland have been seen as homogeneous corridors, facilitating rapid expansion without novel adaptation.

The primitive brain of early Homo

Science ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 372 (6538) ◽  
pp. 165-171 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcia S. Ponce de León ◽  
Thibault Bienvenu ◽  
Assaf Marom ◽  
Silvano Engel ◽  
Paul Tafforeau ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Frontal Lobe ◽  
Great Apes ◽  
Homo Erectus ◽  
Cognitive Tasks ◽  
Great Ape ◽  
Ongoing Debate ◽  
Brain Organization ◽  
Cortical Organization ◽  
Early Homo ◽  
Western Asia

The brains of modern humans differ from those of great apes in size, shape, and cortical organization, notably in frontal lobe areas involved in complex cognitive tasks, such as social cognition, tool use, and language. When these differences arose during human evolution is a question of ongoing debate. Here, we show that the brains of early Homo from Africa and Western Asia (Dmanisi) retained a primitive, great ape–like organization of the frontal lobe. By contrast, African Homo younger than 1.5 million years ago, as well as all Southeast Asian Homo erectus, exhibited a more derived, humanlike brain organization. Frontal lobe reorganization, once considered a hallmark of earliest Homo in Africa, thus evolved comparatively late, and long after Homo first dispersed from Africa.

scholarly journals Early Homo , plasticity and the extended evolutionary synthesis

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (5) ◽  
pp. 20170004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan C. Antón ◽  
Christopher W. Kuzawa
Keyword(s):  
Phenotypic Variation ◽  
Fossil Record ◽  
Evolutionary Process ◽  
Homo Erectus ◽  
Evolutionary Synthesis ◽  
Early Pleistocene ◽  
Human Populations ◽  
Extended Evolutionary Synthesis ◽  
Early Homo ◽  
Regional Diversification

The Modern Synthesis led to fundamental advances in understandings of human evolution. For human palaeontology, a science that works from ancestral phenotypes (i.e. the fossil record), particularly important have been perspectives used to help understand the heritable aspects of phenotypes and how fossil individuals might then be aggregated into species, and relationships among these groups understood. This focus, coupled with the fragmentary nature of the fossil record, however, means that individual phenotypic variation is often treated as unimportant ‘noise’, rather than as a source of insight into population adaptation and evolutionary process. The emphasis of the extended evolutionary synthesis on plasticity as a source of phenotypic novelty, and the related question of the role of such variation in long-term evolutionary trends, focuses welcome attention on non-genetic means by which novel phenotypes are generated and in so doing provides alternative approaches to interpreting the fossil record. We review evidence from contemporary human populations regarding some of the aspects of adult phenotypes preserved in the fossil record that might be most responsive to non-genetic drivers, and we consider how these perspectives lead to alternate hypotheses for interpreting the fossil record of early genus Homo. We conclude by arguing that paying closer attention to the causes and consequences of intraspecific phenotypic variation in its own right, as opposed to as noise around a species mean, may inspire a new generation of hypotheses regarding species diversity in the Early Pleistocene and the foundations for dispersal and regional diversification in Homo erectus and its descendants .

scholarly journals Pelvic Morphology in Homo erectus and Early Homo

2017 ◽  
Vol 300 (5) ◽  
pp. 964-977 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Emilio Churchill ◽  
Caroline Vansickle
Keyword(s):  
Homo Erectus ◽  
Pelvic Morphology ◽  
Early Homo

Locating early Homo and Homo erectus tool production along the extractive foraging/cognitive continuum

2002 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 414-415
Author(s):  
Sue Taylor Parker
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Abilities ◽  
Great Apes ◽  
Stone Tools ◽  
Homo Erectus ◽  
Extractive Foraging ◽  
Early Homo ◽  
Cognitive Continuum

This commentary contests Wynn's diagnosis of the cognitive implications of the earliest stone tools and Acheulian tools. I argue that the earliest stone tools imply greater cognitive abilities than those of great apes, and that Acheulian tools imply more than the preoperational cognitive abilities Wynn suggests. Finally, I suggest an alternative adaptive scenario for the evolution of hominid cognitive abilities.

scholarly journals Contemporaneity of Australopithecus, Paranthropus, and early Homo erectus in South Africa

Science ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 368 (6486) ◽  
pp. eaaw7293 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andy I. R. Herries ◽  
Jesse M. Martin ◽  
A. B. Leece ◽  
Justin W. Adams ◽  
Giovanni Boschian ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Climatic Variability ◽  
Taxonomic Diversity ◽  
Homo Erectus ◽  
Early Homo ◽  
Endemic Evolution ◽  
Geological Context

Understanding the extinction of Australopithecus and origins of Paranthropus and Homo in South Africa has been hampered by the perceived complex geological context of hominin fossils, poor chronological resolution, and a lack of well-preserved early Homo specimens. We describe, date, and contextualize the discovery of two hominin crania from Drimolen Main Quarry in South Africa. At ~2.04 million to 1.95 million years old, DNH 152 represents the earliest definitive occurrence of Paranthropus robustus, and DNH 134 represents the earliest occurrence of a cranium with clear affinities to Homo erectus. These crania also show that Homo, Paranthropus, and Australopithecus were contemporaneous at ~2 million years ago. This high taxonomic diversity is also reflected in non-hominin species and provides evidence of endemic evolution and dispersal during a period of climatic variability.

scholarly journals Dmanisi hominin fossils and the problem of the multiple species in the early Homo genus

2015 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Santiago Wolnei Ferreira Guimarães ◽  
Carlos Lorenzo Merino
Keyword(s):  
Coefficient Of Variation ◽  
Homo Erectus ◽  
Early Pleistocene ◽  
Early Homo ◽  
Homo Habilis ◽  
Variation Range ◽  
Multiple Species ◽  
Unique Species

The D4500 (Skull 5), dated 1.8 Mya., is the most complete fossil within the set of five skulls found in Dmanisi, Georgia, as well as any other fossils associated to contexts of occupation of the early Pleistocene. Its discovery has brought forward the debate of the plurality of species, not just at the beginning of the Homo genus, but for much of its evolution.  The Skull 5 fossil presents a mixure of primitive and derivates characters associated to the Homo erectus and Homo habilis sensu lato. Based on the data referring to the five skulls researchers have considered the hypothesis of a single evolving lineage of early Homo as a mode to explain the great variation range of the Dmanisi fossils, similar to the range found in habilines. In other words, it is an explanation that reiterates the existence of only one unique species in the early of the Homo genus: the Homo erectus in a sensu lato. Our work consists of evaluating such supposition through the calculation of the coefficient of variation, which was estimated from the referred set and compared to those from already known species. Results achieved did not support the thinking that one unique species was able to bear all fossils of the early of Homo genus.  

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