Paleoanthropology: The Many Faces of Homo erectus - Tagesspiegel

18.10.2013 14:03 clock by Hartmut Wewetzer

Misc. The five skulls of early humans that were found in Dmanisi, Georgia. They are about 1.8 million years old. – Photo: Ponce de León / Zollikofer / University Zurich

The perceived diversity among early humans may prove to be an illusion. The discoveries put a team of researchers at the paleoanthropologist David Lordkipanidze the Georgian National Museum in Tbilisi near.

Lordkipanidze and his colleagues have found in Dmanisi, Georgia’s former cave system in a total of five skulls of early humans, uniquely well-preserved last eight years before a. He is considered the best preserved fossil sites from the early days of our species, according to a press release from the University of Zurich.

bone around 1.8 million years old and were probably deposited in the cave every few centuries – perhaps by predators. Detail, scientists now report recent skull discovery in the journal “Science”. They consider it very likely that all skull due to the spatial and temporal proximity are of species, namely Homo erectus.

same time, the findings are characterized by large individual differences. The skull was found last about unlike the other copies an apelike protruding upper jaw. However, the fossils of the genus Homo are assigned because they have typical characteristics such as an elongated forehead and a corresponding cranium.

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Scientists believe that the diversity of early humans found in Africa is probably more of a within the species Homo erectus and does not speak for different species. Widely scattered individual finds assigned names like “Homo habilis”, “Homo habilis”, “Homo ergaster” and “Homo erectus” which had been suggested. But as the finds in Georgia showed Homo erectus was a man of many faces. The fifth uniquely well-preserved skulls from Dmanisi, about combining the features of various African “species,” said Christoph Zollikofer of the University of Zurich, one of the researchers involved. Homo erectus arose two million years ago in Africa and started to make from here to Europe and Asia.