Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
40. Brown et al. 1985; Walker and Leakey 1993; Dean and Smith 2009.
41. Dean and Smith 2009. This estimate of WT 15K's age at death is an update
to earlier estimates that suggested he might have been as old as 11.
42. Tattersall 2007, 1644.
43. Wood and Lonergan 2008; Falk et al. 2000.
44. Brown et al. 1985.
45. Tattersall 2007. Tattersall is a splitter who does not think that WT 15K
belongs in
Homo ergaster.
Instead, he would place it and KNM-ER 1813 and OH 13
in
Homo microcranous
(1645
-46).
46. See Wood and Lonergan 2008, 361. It should be noted, however, that
this assumption fails to do justice to the extensive variation that is revealed by
observing all of the hominin fossils, including fragmentary ones. This variation
is one reason why some paleontologists, like Ian Tattersall, prefer to be splitters
rather than lumpers. On the other hand, the suggestion that the African fossils
of early
Homo
are regional variations of
Homo erectus
has been strengthened by
the recent discovery of a 1.55-million-year-old cranium (KNM-ER 42700) from
the Ileret region of Kenya (Spoor et al. 2007). With a cranial capacity of 691 cm
3
,
the cranium has features that were previously seen only in the Asian
Homo erec-
tus
specimens.
47. Swisher et al. 1996. See Wong 2005 for discussion.
48. According to Stone (2006), artifacts older than 1 million years were not
recovered from Java until 2006. Stone reported that this changed when archae-
ologist Harry Widianto, of the National Research Centre of Archaeology, in
Yogyakarta, Indonesia, reported unearthing 220 stone flakes that were at least
1.6 million years old from the Sangiran site in central Java. These tools provide
some of the earliest evidence for stone tools outside Africa. Stone quotes the
anthropologist Russell Ciochon as saying that the flakes are smaller and finer
than the stone choppers made by
Homo erectus
in Africa, which may be related to
the scarcity of raw materials in the region.
49. Shipman 2002, 454. Interestingly, in speaking about Asian
Homo erectus
in general, Wood and Lonergan note, “The limb bones are modern human-like
in their proportions and have robust shafts, but the shafts of the long bones of
the lower limb are flattened from front to back (femur) and side to side (tibia)
relative to those of modern humans” (Wood and Lonergan 2008, 362).
50. According to Wood and Lonergan (2008), remains of
Australopithecus
have
been dated back to 4.5 million years.
51. As noted, this neat dichotomy is based on just a few skeletons and makes
no effort to account for the extensive variation seen within the major “morphs” of
