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Publication Details
AFRICAN RESEARCH NEXUS
SHINING A SPOTLIGHT ON AFRICAN RESEARCH
Early Pleistocene Homo erectus fossils from Konso, southern Ethiopia
Anthropological Science, Volume 115, No. 2, Year 2007
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Description
Homo erectus has been broadly defined to include fossils from Africa, Asia, and possibly Europe, or restricted to a supposedly confined Asian clade. Recently discovered fossils of H. erectus are allowing new insights into aspects of its evolution, such as the timing and mode of the species' emergence in Africa and its relationship to Asian populations. However, the currently available African record predating 1.0 Ma is poor, consisting of the Turkana basin, Olduvai and the more limited South African materials. Here, we describe and compare eight craniodental fossils of ∼1.4 Ma recovered from Konso, Ethiopia, that we attribute to H. erectus. These include KGA10-1, one of the better-preserved H. erectus mandibular specimens known from eastern Africa, and other fragmentary dental and cranial remains. The Konso H. erectus fossils show a mosaic of primitive and derived features. These include a large and thick mandibular corpus, a moderately developed lateral prominence, a reduced premolar morphology, and a tendency for smaller relative sizes of the posterior molars compared with earlier Homo. In some dentognathic details, such as the lack of a buccolingually narrow M1 and the presence of double mental foramina, the Konso fossils differ from eastern African H. erectus of ≥1.5 Ma. The fragmentary cranial remains exhibit weak angular and occipital tori, and an apparently weak occipital flexion, as with the eastern African H. erectus examples known from ∼1.65 to 1.2 Ma. The available evidence is consistent with the interpretation that African early H. erectus shows morphological continuity within the ∼1.65 to 1.0 Ma time period, with relatively little morphological evolution prior to 1.4 Ma and advanced dentognathic gracility occurring sometime thereafter. The Konso evidence corroborates the hypothesis that the African H. erectus populations represent a variable but continuous evolutionary succession that was a likely source of multiple events of gene flow to the Eurasian continent. © 2007 The Anthropological Society of Nippon.
Authors & Co-Authors
Suwa, Gen
Japan, Tokyo
The University of Tokyo
Asfaw, Berhane
Ethiopia, Addis Ababa
Rift Valley Research Service Addis Ababa
Haile-Selassie, Yohannes
United States, Cleveland
Cleveland Museum of Natural History
White, Tim D.
United States, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
Katoh, Shigehiro
Japan, Sanda
The Museum of Nature and Human Activities, Hyogo
WoldeGabriel, Giday
United States, Los Alamos
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Hart, William K.
United States, Oxford
Miami University
Nakaya, Hideo
Japan, Kagoshima
Kagoshima University
Beyene, Yonas
Unknown Affiliation
Statistics
Citations: 79
Authors: 9
Affiliations: 8
Identifiers
Doi:
10.1537/ase.061203
Research Areas
Genetics And Genomics
Health System And Policy
Study Locations
Ethiopia