Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 27
(opposite)
. Skeleton keys. Ten relatively complete early hominin
skeletons can be compared with LB1. The australopithecines (represented
here by Lucy, Little Foot, Dikika, Kadanuumuu, MH1, and MH2) were short
individuals with apelike body builds; WT 15K, a
Homo erectus
specimen from
Kenya, had a taller body that was proportioned more like modern humans.
The Dmanisi fossils were medium-statured individuals with relatively mod-
ern limb proportions, similar to WT 15K.
Australopithecus
is known only from
Africa, where it partly overlapped in time with more recent
Homo habilis
(OH
62). By around 1.8 million years ago, variants of
Homo erectus
had appeared
outside Africa in Dmanisi, Eurasia; and in Java, Indonesia. Remains of small-
statured, relatively apelike
Homo floresiensis,
from 95,000 to 17,000 years ago,
were unearthed on Flores (LB1). There is debate about whether their direct
ancestor was
Homo erectus
. Graph by Martin Young.
got to the island of Flores at some unknown time before 1 million years
ago? Or were they larger-bodied like
Homo erectus,
with their descen-
In order to address these questions we must compare the remains of
Homo floresiensis
with those from other hominins, some of whom lived
millions of years ago. Figure 27 provides a simplified “big picture”
that captures geographical and temporal information about the fossils
pologists known as “splitters” envision bushy hominin family trees that
have many branches (species). “Lumpers,” on the other hand, tend to
interpret differences between individual fossils as representing varia-
tion within rather than between species, so their family trees are more
heavily pruned. Both approaches are useful, depending on one's objec-
tives. For the sake of this discussion, however, my chart focuses on large
groups that contain specimens that others sometimes split into differ-
ent species. For example, some paleoanthropologists assign the species
Homo ergaster
to a subset of the specimens that I have included in African
Homo erectus.
These scientists may or may not be right that the group of
fossils that lumpers have assigned to African
Homo erectus
really contains
