Fossil hominids (and their kin)
This section of the site gives details about fossil hominids and other primates.
The entire fossil section grows by cannibalizing other parts of the site. As new material grows to a sufficient level, I consolidate it into concise reviews of fossil hominids. That means that things are always changing here. A lot of this change is invisible; I usually date entries so that they don't appear on the front page. Many of the current entries are paper reviews about fossil hominids.
And then, there are the Flores files.
The section is divided into categories according to species, time, or geographic area.
Here are the categories:
And following are short excerpts of the posts in each category:
/fossils/afarensis
Australopithecus afarensis :: overview
The large sample from Hadar overlaps the smaller hominid samples from several sites that are near it in time, including the dental remains from Laetoli and Maka, and isolated finds from many East African localities...Keeping the faith, afarensis-style
From Free Republic: an article from Science News by Bruce Bower covers the recent flap about sexual dimorphism in early hominids...Dentition and diet in early hominids
Early hominid teeth changed substantially over time...Forelimbs and climbing in early hominids
Compared to their small body mass, the forelimbs of early hominids are both longer and more muscular than those of recent humans...Sexual dimorphism in A. afarensis, again
The Journal of Human Evolution early access section has a paper by J...Sexual dimorphism in A. afarensis, again
Earlier this year, Michael Plavcan et al.../fossils/afarensis/hadar
AL 438-1
Michelle Drapeau and colleagues (2005) report on the AL 438-1 specimen from Hadar...Paleoecology at Hadar
The coming attractions bin at Journal of Human Evolution includes a paper by Kaye Reed, reviewing the evidence of paleoenvironment in the Hadar formation: Habitat reconstructions of 12 submembers of the Hadar and Busidima formations (˜3.../fossils/africanus/sterkfontein
Sterkfontein variability
In a 2002 paper on cranial remains from Sterkfontein, Lockwood and Tobias write the following in a section called "Are there multiple hominin species from Sterkfontein Member 4...Age of hominids from Sterkfontein
A recent spate of articles has carried on a debate about the age of the Sterkfontein hominids...Sterkfontein Member 2 paleoenvironment
Pickering and colleagues (2004) examine the fauna from Sterkfontein Member 2, coming to the following conclusion: In summary, the mammalian fauna from Member 2 indicates a paleohabitat that was probably typified by rolling, rock-littered and brush- and scrub-covered hills (suitable for caracals and Makapania, and also commonly exploited by papionins).../fossils/africanus/taung
The eagles are coming! The eagles are com-AAARGGHH!
I wasn't going to link this, since there's not a research paper yet.../fossils/anamensis
Australopithecus anamensis :: overview
The sample from Kanapoi, along with other smaller samples predating Laetoli, at 3...A ladder, not a bush?
Tim White and colleagues (2006) report on new fossils from Aramis and a new site, Asa Issie, with estimated dates between 4...New hominid from Mille, Ethiopia
News story on MSNBC I link to the MSNBC news story because it comes with a picture.../fossils/apes
Fossil apes
The hominoids--the group including humans and living and fossil apes--originated sometime during the Oligocene period, between 34 and 24 million years ago.../fossils/apes/aegyptopithecus
Aegyptopithecus :: overview
The largest sample of early catarrhines come from the Fayum depression in present-day Egypt.../fossils/apes/ankarapithecus
Ankarapithecus :: overview
Ankarapithecus meteai remains include a handful of mandibles and partial faces from Central Turkey, and date to around 10 million years ago (Begun and Gulic, 1998).../fossils/apes/chororapithecus
More on Chororapithecus
Ann Gibbons reports on the 10-million-year-old gorilla-like Chororapithecus, elaborating on the biogeographic interpretation I mentioned yesterday: Gorilla or not, several experts agree that an ape of this antiquity in Africa strikes a blow at a hypothesis that the common ancestor of African apes arose in Eurasia and migrated to Africa...Did Gen Suwa just save paleoanthropology?
That depends on whether these teeth are really from a gorilla, I suppose.../fossils/apes/dryopithecus
Dryopithecus::overview
Today, the only non-human primate native to Europe is the Barbary macaque, which has extended its North African range to a small area including Gibraltar, on the southern coast of Iberia.../fossils/apes/gigantopithecus
The life and times of Gigantopithecus
Russ Ciochon has a very nice article about Gigantopithecus up on his department webpage...Gigantopithecus :: overview
Gigantopithecus blacki was, as its name implies, a gigantic ape from the Pleistocene of China.../fossils/apes/lufengpithecus
Lufengpithecus :: overview
Lufengpithecus lufengensis is a fossil ape from China, dating to the latest Miocene and Pliocene.../fossils/apes/morotopithecus
Morotopithecus :: overview
The site of Moroto, in Uganda, has produced a few ape fossils dating to around 20 million years ago, including a large palate and partial face.../fossils/apes/oreopithecus
Oreopithecus :: overview
Oreopithecus bambolii is known from a series of well-preserved fossils, including some relatively complete skeletons, from the north of Italy dated to between 7 and 9 million years ago.../fossils/apes/ouranopithecus
Ouranopithecus
Ouranopithecus macedoniensis (called by some Graecopithecus) is from the Late Miocene of Greece, around 8 million years old.../fossils/apes/proconsul
Proconsul :: overview
Perhaps the largest sample of Miocene ape fossils, dated over the longest time period, is Proconsul.../fossils/apes/sivapithecus
On silk purses and pig's ears
This new paper by Jay Kelley (University of Illinois, Chicago) is about as close to a detective story that paleontologists get (via Palanthsci message board)...Sivapithecus
Sivapithecus includes a great diversity of Miocene ape species from South Asia.../fossils/boisei
Variation in Australopithecus boisei
Wood and Lieberman (2002) attempt to systematize the variation in fossil A.../fossils/china/middle
"Let's find a skull today."
So said the excavation team led by Li Zhanyang, working the site of Xuchang, in Henan province, China, just last month.../fossils/china/upper
A Mongolian hominid
Yves Coppens and colleagues have found a frontal bone, and a bit more, in Mongolia...Tianyuan
OK, NEWS FLASH: "Out of Africa dispersal was not as simple as once thought.../fossils/flores
Pygmoid, Australopithecus, Homo, yada yada...
I can't help noting the contrast between these two quotes...Retractions dept.
...Hobbit backlash building
The BBC ran a show tonight (Thursday Sept...Hobbit cretin FAQ
It's all over the news this week: Australian researchers Peter Obendorf, Charles Oxnard, and Ben Kefford claim that the Homo floresiensis skeleton LB 1 belonged to an individiual suffering from congenital hypothyroidism, or cretinism...Cryptomundo hobbit article
Loren Coleman has an article on his Cryptozoo News with quotes from several of the major players, including Peter Brown...The Liang Bua report
Elizabeth Culotta's article on the Liang Bua conference appears in this week's Science...Peter Brown refutes Flores filling claim
Homo floresiensis describer Peter Brown has kindly sent me a link to his own website, where he lays out evidence against the claims for recent dental work on the LB1 specimen: The left first mandibular molar of LB1, Homo floresiensis, is heavily worn...Was Homo floresiensis the tooth fairy?
It's enough to drive me crazy...Is that a Jethro Tull song?
January's Discover magazine came in the mail; it has a list of the top 100 science stories of 2005...Size, shape, and microcephaly
I've been taking quite a lot of notes while studying last week's paper by Dean Falk and colleagues...Another brain scan hobbit paper coming
LiveScience writer Ker Than on the hobbits: "What we have is a little tiny brain that has four features that you can see with your eyes that are advanced and distributed from front to middle to back," [Dean] Falk said...The Liang Bua debate, continued
References: Vidal, John...A hobbit Internationale
There was an international meeting in Indonesia about the Flores hominids last week, including scientific presentations and a visit to the cave...Flores interviews on NOVA scienceNOW
I hadn't run across it before, but PBS ran a segment on the Liang Bua fossils in April...A show of "no support"
In an article about the controversy over the Liang Bua fossils, Rex Dalton of Nature inserts this non sequitur: Somewhat scientifically isolated, the 75-year-old Jacob has continued to adhere to the theory that hominin species from multiple regions around the globe evolved into a single line that produced modern H...The Rampasasa Pygmy Somatology Expedition
The interest in the biology of human pygmies did not begin with the Liang Bua find; it's been going on for awhile...Flores update, October 2005
This week's Nature is carrying a paper by Morwood, Brown, and colleagues (2005) presenting additional skeletal material from Liang Bua as well as a commentary by Daniel Lieberman...Have the hobbits been protsched?
USA Today has a feature article about the damage to the Liang Bua fossils upon their return from Yogyakarta...Homo floresiensis on National Geographic Explorer
I watched the hobbit episode of Explorer last night...Stalking the wild ebu gogo
In the current issue of Anthropology Today, there is a great article by Greg Forth (University of Alberta), covering the ebu gogo legend, and the impact of the Liang Bua discoveries on the local peoples of Flores...A guide to fantasy science
I'm about two-thirds of the way through Mike Morwood's new book, The Discovery of the Hobbit, and I'll be posting a review when I'm through...Can somebody find these hobbits a mommy?
More on the evolving story of the hobbit remains in this story (smh...Another diagnosis for a hobbit
Israel Hershkovitz, Liora Kornreich, and Zvi Laron think they know the problem with Liang Bua 1...The brain of the hobbit
News story on MSNBC News story on BBC Michael Balter story in Science Update: The original post is listed below...Hobbit news from Stony Brook
In another post I write about the Martin-Falk exchange on the microcephaly issue..."The Mystery of the Human Hobbit"
This show on the Discovery Channel (3/4/06) seems like it should have some promise -- at least compared to the National Geographic Explorer version from last year...Tools of the hobbits
Julien Riel-Salvatore figures the Liang Bua "hobbit" tools aren't so complicated after all: Personally, I have never been especially convinced by the claims for systematic blade technology associated with LB1...Give those hobbits a Vegemite sandwich
From The Australian: THE tiny hobbit-like humans of Indonesia may have lived in Australia before they became extinct about 11,000 years ago...Is this the end for Homo floresiensis?
The paper by Teuku Jacob and colleagues is being published in PNAS today...Liang Bua :: an australopithecine from Flores?
Here are some questions and likely answers about the Liang Bua (LB1) skeleton from the island of Flores...Is Liang Bua pathological :: update
After further investigation, there are two forms of pathological dwarfism that are relevant to the LB1 specimen...Martin versus Falk on microcephaly
Science is carrying an exchange of technical comments about microcephaly and the endocast of LB1...Mata Menge stone tools
Adam Brumm and colleagues (2006) describe the stone artifacts from the Mata Menge archaeological site on Flores...New CT study: LB1 "nearly identical" to microcephalic
I have in my e-mail a new article from ABC Science (Australia) that starts this way: The controversy over whether the hobbit is just a sick member of the human race has flared up again, this time in the pages of a prestigious scientific journal...The Flores find :: more thoughts on Liang Bua
I (and others) have had about a week to reflect on this new skeleton and its significance...Back to Rampasasa
Following up on an earlier post, Time Asia has a story on the Rampasasa "pygmies...News trickling about Liang Bua
I am seeing news reports this morning about this week's upcoming paper in Nature about the Homo floresiensis bones...If it weren't for those meddling kids...
What accounts for the coincidence of Science publishing the LB1 microcephaly exchange in the same week that Nature published the new Liang Bua bones...Island hopping
This article from The Age lays out an ambitious excavation schedule for Mike Morwood and colleagues: Professor Morwood, with a team headed by Indonesian archaeological professor Fachroel Aziz from Indonesia's Geological Survey Institute, will soon start excavations in the Atambua Basin of Timor...Floresiensis presentations
I'm at the AAPA meetings in Philadelphia this week, which were preceded yesterday and today by the meetings of the Paleoanthropology Society...Narrowing down Flores microcephaly
Well, I'm still writing from Zagreb, so I don't have a lot of time for review...You heard it here first :: hobbits are australopithecines!
This is Richard Roberts in an Australian radio interview (the interview is formatted in one-sentence paragraphs, this is a single contiguous excerpt): Let's take a point of argument that this particular individual with a small brain is a microcephalic individual, is such an individual...Homo floresiensis on 60 minutes
This week's (May 1) 60 Minutes on CBS had a report on the hobbit..."I'd be very surprised if the hobbits didn't fall down there."
So says Mike Morwood about the discovery (reported in The Australian) of a newfound chamber behind and beneath Liang Bua cave: The unexpected discovery of a chamber in the Flores island cave was made last year by an Australian-Indonesian team - led by ANU paleoclimatologist Mike Gagan - while they were investigating ancient climates...Questioning the Flores dwarf Stegodon remains
Nicolas Rolland and Susan Crockford have a short piece in the current (June 2005) Antiquity concerning the Stegodon remains from Liang Bua (link courtesy of Jacques Cinq-Mars of the Palanth forum)...From one microcephalic to twenty
Falk et al...Wong Flores update
Kate Wong has a post at the Scientific American blog about what's coming up with the Flores fossils...Kate Wong hobbit update 2
Kate is still writing about Flores papers at the AAPA meetings, a post dedicated to Ralph Holloway's study of the endocast...Kate Wong hobbit update 1
Back from the physical anthropology meetings in Anchorage, Kate Wong of Scientific American is posting news about the hobbits.../fossils/habilis/er
KNM-ER 1470 is not a microcephalic
I keep seeing this story about Tim Bromage's "computer-simulated" reconstruction of KNM-ER 1470...Big arms, small sacrum
In case you're following the debate about Homo habilis limb proportions, there's a new contribution by Martin Haeusler and Henry McHenry in the JHE holding pen.../fossils/lower/atapuerca
1.2 million year old hominid from Spain
Eudald Carbonell and many colleagues report on a partial mandible from Sima del Elefante, one of the caves at Atapuerca, Spain: The earliest hominin occupation of Europe is one of the most debated topics in palaeoanthropology...An old Spanish tooth
National Geographic News has a short article about the tooth from Sima del Elefante, Atapuerca.../fossils/lower/dmanisi
New Dmanisi skull
So far only short items in the Georgian media, evidently based on a press release...Dmanisi paleoecology
I'm mining the data supplements from the Dmanisi postcrania paper for interesting stuff...News flash: Dmanisi hominids were not short
By now, the news of the Dmanisi hominids' small size has been out for years...Caring for the edentulous
One of the features of the National Geographic (April 2005) article on Dmanisi is the discussion of the necessity of other people to aid and care for the old and infirm...Dmanisi in National Geographic
The article in the April 2005 National Geographic about Dmanisi has some interesting details that have not been made public before...Hands down, palms forward
I've seen the "palms facing forward" quote in a few news reports about last week's Dmanisi postcrania paper.../fossils/lower/gona
New Homo erectus crania at meetings
UPDATE (2008/4/15): The presentation was withdrawn from the meetings.../fossils/lower/phylogenetics
Is a lack of fossils the problem with early Homo?
Just noticing, in this John Noble Wilford article: A new report, to be published Thursday in Nature, will review more skeletal evidence of the transitional aspects of the Dmanisi specimens.../fossils/lower/turkana
The KNM-ER 42700 calvaria
One of the highlights of the scientific program of the meetings was Fred Spoor's paper on the new cranial vault from Ileret, KNM-ER 42700...Man bites dog
Appropriate to yesterday's post about the hypothesis of a Eurasian-African clade distinction in early humans, is today's paper from Fred Spoor, Meave Leakey and others, describing the KNM-ER 42700 calvaria and the (unassociated) KNM-ER 42703 maxilla.../fossils/middle
French Connection to China Syndrome, dentally
I've read through the new paper by Martinón-Torres et al...Bringing down "Goliath"
A number of readers have been asking what the deal is with the "Goliath" specimen discussed by Lee Berger (and reconstructed by him and Steve Churchill) in the National Geographic program, "Searching for the Ultimate Survivor...French team studies Narmada fossil
These days it's increasingly easy to keep track of what everybody else is doing...New Middle Pleistocene hominid found in Ethiopia
Reuters is running a short story describing the find of a 200,000 - 500,000 year old skull by Sileshi Semaw's field crew...Tuberculosis in an archaic human
Based on a press release from John Kappelman, this is pretty interesting: Although most scientists believe tuberculosis emerged only several thousand years ago, new research from The University of Texas at Austin reveals the most ancient evidence of the disease has been found in a 500,000-year-old human fossil from Turkey.../fossils/middle/kocabas
A new Middle Pleistocene hominid from Turkey
John Kappelman was kind enough to send me a preprint of the report on the new Turkish Middle Pleistocene specimen.../fossils/neandertal
Neandertals: gone fishin' or not?
An earlier post reviewed recent work by Bocherens and colleaugues (2005) attributing high nitrogen-15 proportions in Neandertal bones to mammoth consumption...Neandertals noshed on mammoth meat?
In an article in the Jul 2005 issue of Journal of Human Evolution, Hervé Bocherens and colleagues contribute new isotopic values for bone collagen from three Neandertals, a review of results from prior studies of Neandertal isotope ratios, and an interpretation of the values obtained for the Saint-Césaire specimen based on comparisons with contemporary hyena bones.../fossils/neandertal/spain
A tooth to pick with this story
Reuters tells us that Neandertals used toothpicks: Two molar teeth of around 63,400 years old show that Neanderthal predecessors of humans may have been dental hygiene fans, the Web site of newspaper El Pais reported on Tuesday.../fossils/orrorin/lukeino
Bipeds at Lukeino
The earliest skeletal traces of bipedalism come from the fossils from Lukeino, in the Tugen Hills of western Kenya...The Orrorin identity
There's nothing especially surprising about the functional interpretations in Richmond and Jungers' paper about the Orrorin BAR 1002'00 femur.../fossils/pacific
What about Palau?
Lee Berger, Steve Churchill, Bonita De Klerk, and Rhonda L.../fossils/primate/new_world
Frogs rafted, too
One of the strange things about primate evolution is the arrival of anthropoid monkeys in South America sometime during the Oligocene.../fossils/sahelanthropus
Thoughts on the Sahelanthropus reconstruction
I am at the AAPA meeting in Milwaukee this week, and so posting is by necessity very light...A challenge to Sahelanthropus
And it comes from me...Sahelanthropus :: introduction
In 2002, French paleoanthropologist Michel Brunet and his team announced the discovery of a fossil skull and unassociated jaws and teeth from Chad, in North-Central Africa, which may be the oldest hominid yet found (Brunet 2002).../fossils/upper/africa
About Hofmeyr
The article sort of has me stumped.../fossils/upper/europe
Earliest fossil twin burial?
The AP is reporting on the discovery of a double newborn burial near Krems, Austria...Mladec: 31,000 BP
Mladec 1 (left) and 5 (right), lateral view A new paper in Nature (May 19, 2005) by Eva Wild and colleagues reports new AMS dates from the Mladec hominid sample...Washington Post on Pestera cu Oase
This article is about nine months old now, but one of my students brought me a clipping, so I thought I would pass it along...Vilhonneur 1, skeleton of the artist as a young man
Dominique Henry-Gambier and colleagues report in the December Journal of Human Evolution on a newly-discovered cave near Vilhounneur, France, with Gravettian-style parietal art and a partial human skeleton: A remarkable discovery in France raises anew the question of the relationship between parietal art and funerary practices...
John Hawks Department of Anthropology
University of Wisconsin—Madison
Copyright © 2006 John Hawks