Posted on 07/01/2004 12:22:40 PM PDT by Junior
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A tiny pre-human who lived more than 900,000 years ago in what is now Kenya may have been a "short experiment" in evolution that never quite made it, scientists said on Thursday.
The little skull clearly belongs to an adult and was found last summer at a site where much larger hominids classified as Homo erectus lived, said Richard Potts of the Smithsonian Institution (news - web sites) and colleagues.
He or she died on a volcanic ridge, perhaps mauled by a lion or other carnivore, Potts said.
It is the smallest adult fossil found dating back to the time of Homo erectus, the species of pre-human that dominated between 500,000 and 1.7 million years ago, Potts' team writes in Friday's issue of the journal Science.
Potts believes the fossil find shows that early humans lived in little groups that became separate and distinct for a while, and then came together every few thousand years or so, swapping genes and then parting ways again.
"On occasion, they became isolated for a while, possibly hundreds of generations, and so developed their own unique combination of features," Potts said in an e-mail.
But dramatic climate and environmental changes known to have occurred during those times forced groups to move together again, and perhaps drove some into extinction.
Perhaps there were lots of "short experiments" -- species that never really quite made it, Potts said.
"In this light, I would see the hominid population at Olorgesailie as part of a single, highly variable species, with both large and small (possibly male/female) adults."
VIOLENT DEATH
This particular early human was found in an area that would have been a volcanic ridge 900,000 years ago. Potts' team is working, as anthropologists often do, from fragments of skull -- and guessing what the rest of the creature looked like.
It had carnivore bite marks on the left brow ridge, Potts said. "Quite possibly this is how the individual died. It was walking along or near the volcanic ridge leading up to the highlands (a safer nighttime place to be than by the water's edge in the lowland) and it didn't quite make it."
Remains of large tools have been found in the area, where Potts and colleagues have worked for years.
"The entire area was a grassy plain, filled with grazing zebra and very large grass-eating baboons, along with grazing elephants and huge pigs," Potts said.
"The toolmakers made extensive use of the volcanic rocks up on Mount Olorgesailie and surrounding highlands -- we've identified 14 different types of volcanic rocks that they chipped into handaxes."
Homo erectus remains have been found in parts of Africa, southern Europe and Asia. These hominids made tools and lived in groups, but anthropologists are trying to figure out whether there were separate species or sub-species among the group.
This particular individual will be difficult to classify, Potts said.
"It's really too hard to say what species it is, if you happen to think there were multiple species around at the time. I certainly used to think so," he said.
He has compared the skulls of fossils found from other hominids that lived around the same time, including Homo antecessor from Atapuerca in Spain or Homo cepranensis, from Ceprano, Italy.
"I find the variability in the skulls (and parts of skulls) impossible to divide neatly into separate lineages that stay consistently identifiable over any length of time, like Homo erectus in Asia does," Potts said.
Findings like this make me wonder: Just how many human "sub-species" have there been? How many of them completely disappeared, leaving no trace, and how many were absorbed into the genetic group we call "Homo Sapiens?" After all, if the Neanderthals could have been absorbed by our ancestors (as some believe), what about other groups of sort-of-humans?
Heads are shrunken by removing the skull in little pieces over a period of time. If this were the result of a "shrinking" ritual, it wouldn't exist.
American Indians were on their way to be a separate subspecies, being reproductively isolated -- until those damnable Vikings wandered by...
They must have been very scientifically advanced to even know what genes were. Unless it's a misspelling and he meant "jeans".
Post of the day. I have diet coke up my nose, you b*stard.
Considering any moronic welfare queen can swap genes effectively, I'm not sure this requires any advanced science.
The same is probably true for the inhabitants of Africa, south of the Sahara. And for the natives of Australia. And probably other groups. It was the development of ocean-going ships that ended everyone's genetic isolation. Then railroads, then planes. Nowadays, you can swap genes all over the planet during a two-week vacation.
I've read that Australian Aborigines are genetically different enough from other people that breeding with non- Aborigines is difficult, leading to a very high rate of miscarriage.
As we learn more about the human genome, I wonder what we'll discover about various genetically-isolated groups of humans.
Prehistoric dwarf-tossing gone wrong, maybe?
Or, even more interestingly, I wonder what will happen when (if?) humans spread to other planets.
They're extinct now, but the natives of Tasmania were morphologically different from other modern humans. I'm not sure there are any part-blood Tasmanians out there, which means they could not breed with others (though they were unattractive enough that this may have been an aesthetic thing).
Every little valley has a story to tell. For example: The Blue People of Troublesome Creek.
Good point. I don't know much about anthropology, but it does seem that whenever they find a human fossil, they assume the find is typical of the culture at the time. What if, by the laws of random chance, the two people alive today whose fossils get preserved are Shaquille O' Neil and Robert Reich?
In one million years, the textbooks might be saying "In the primitive globalization era, humans consisted of two tribes: giants and pygmies. We suspect they were at war most of the time."
It is Bush's fault!
Wow! 55 posts and I'm the first to suggest the obvious -- it was an alien.
Duh.
> it does seem that whenever they find a human fossil, they assume the find is typical of the culture at the time.
Statistically valid, and generally supported by further evidence. When you find a fossil *anything*, the greatest likelyhood is that it is a more or less average example of whatever it is.
Heck, doesn't even need to be a fossill... just pick a human (or cow, or cat, whatever) at random, and chances are pretty good that it'll be pretty representative.
My understanding is that Neanderthals were sufficiently distinct from modern humans so that interbreeding (and absorption) could not occur.
No hobbits in Africa.
Hobbits live in areas that look deceptively like the midlands in Africa.
Since this is in a volcanic ridge it has to be one of the discards of the evil one.
No hobbits in Africa.
Hobbits live in areas that look deceptively like the midlands in England..
Since this is in a volcanic ridge it has to be one of the discards of the evil one.
Quick correction. I saw the error as I hit the post button. It was too late to recall. I am a fool.
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