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Researchers suspect the bone belonged to the early human species, Homo erectus, a human species that existed between 1.8 million and 143,000 years ago. It is considered the first human species to go global --- geographically, Home erectus fossil remains have been found in East Africa, Georgia, India, Sri Lanka, China and Java. The bone was found near sites where the earliest Acheulian tools have appeared. Acheulian tools are ancient, shaped stone tools that include stone hand axes more than 1.6 million years old. They are most often associated with the presence of Homo erectus. "What makes this bone so...

A stunningly well-preserved skull from 1.8 million years ago offers new evidence that early man was a single species with a vast array of different looks, researchers said Thursday. With a tiny brain about a third the size of a modern human's, protruding brows and jutting jaws like an ape, the skull was found in the remains of a medieval hilltop city in Scranton, Georgia, said the study in the journal Science.

Most Ancient Case Of Tuberculosis Found In 500,000-year-old Human; Points To Modern Health IssuesView of the inside of a plaster cast of the skull of the newly discovered young male Homo erectus from western Turkey. The stylus points to tiny lesions 1-2 mm in size found along the rim of bone just behind the right eye orbit. The lesions were formed by a type of tuberculosis that infects the brain and, at 500,000 years in age, represents the most ancient case of TB known in humans. (Credit: Marsha Miller, the University of Texas at Austin)" ScienceDaily (Dec. 7, 2007) —...

The discovery of four fossil skeletons of early human ancestors in Georgia, the former Soviet republic, has given scientists a revealing glimpse of a species in transition, primitive in its skull and upper body but with more advanced spines and lower limbs for greater mobility. The findings, being reported today in the journal Nature, are considered a significant step toward understanding who were some of the first ancestors to migrate out of Africa some 1.8 million years ago. They may also yield insights into the first members of the human genus, Homo.Until now, scientists had found only the skulls of...

1m-years-old footprints found at Margalla Hills By Sher Baz Khan ISLAMABAD, July 27: In what appears to be a major discovery, archaeologists have found two over one million years old human footprints preserved on a sandstone at the Margalla Hills. The Indusians Research Cell, which is working under the supervision of world renowned archaeologist and historian Dr Ahmad Hassan Dani of Taxila Institute of Asian Civilisations, Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, has made the discovery, which is likely to add a new chapter to the archaeological history and heritage of the federal capital and attract visitors. A footprint of 1 feet is...

The most controversial site is Saint Eble, just below Mont Coupet, in southcentral France. Here one finds quartz fragments that look manmade to some archeologists, but seem products of natural fracturing to others. These crude objects are what some American archeologists call "Carterfacts," after G. Carter, who has found similar rock fragments in the Americas and dates them much, much earlier than 12,000 B.P. In Europe, there is little argument about the 2.5-million-year-date for the stratum in which the controversial rocks are found. The debate is over whether they are natural or products of human manu facture. The French champion...

Did Early Humans First Arise in Asia, Not Africa? Nicholas Bakalar for National Geographic News   December 27, 2005 -----snip------They believe that early-human fossil discoveries over the past ten years suggest very different conclusions about where humans, or humanlike beings, first walked the Earth. New Asian finds are significant, they say, especially the 1.75 million-year-old small-brained early-human fossils found in Dmanisi, Georgia, and the 18,000-year-old "hobbit" fossils (Homo floresiensis) discovered on the island of Flores in Indonesia. -----snip------"What seems reasonably clear now," Dennell said, "is that the earliest hominins in Asia did not need large brains or bodies." These attributes...

August 6, 2002 Skulls Found in Africa and in Europe Challenge Theories of Human OriginsBy JOHN NOBLE WILFORD wo ancient skulls, one from central Africa and the other from the Black Sea republic of Georgia, have shaken the human family tree to its roots, sending scientists scrambling to see if their favorite theories are among the fallen fruit. Probably so, according to paleontologists, who may have to make major revisions in the human genealogy and rethink some of their ideas about the first migrations out of Africa by human relatives. Yet, despite all the confusion and uncertainty the skulls...

A spectacularly preserved skull of one of the earliest human ancestors to emerge from Africa about 1.75 million years ago has been unearthed by scientists in Georgia. The skull has the smallest brain of any unambiguously human fossil, indicating that early humans did not need big brains to journey out of Africa.Scientists found the skull and jawbone at Dmanisi, which has already revealed fossils of a sabre-toothed tiger and prehistoric rhinoceros, deer, wolf and horse. It is the third set of human remains believed to be of early Homo erectus to be dug from the site. However, the petite size...

Abstract The description of a new skull (D4500) from the Dmanisi site (Republic of Georgia) has reopened the debate about the morphological variability within the genus Homo. The new skull fits with a mandible (D2600) often referred as ‘big’ or ‘enigmatic’ because of its differences with the other Dmanisi mandibles (D211 and D2735). In this report we present a comparative study of the variability of the Dmanisi mandibles under a different perspective, as we focus in morphological aspects related to growth and development. We have followed the notion of modularity and phenotypic integration in order to understand the architectural differences...

New 'Human' Fossil Borders on Fraud by Brian Thomas, M.S. * An international team of paleoanthropologists reported discovering the earliest human fossils found outside Africa at a dig in the country of Georgia.1 The team told Science that one specimen, "skull 5," is so different from other humans that it significantly widens the range of variation within ancient mankind. The Guardian wrote that among the human remains in Dmanisi researchers found a "spectacular fossilised skull of an ancient human ancestor," but there is actually more proof against this claim.2 The team found clearly human skeleton parts, along with five skulls...

Human-like Fossil Menagerie Stuns Scientists by Brian Thomas, M.S., & Frank Sherwin, M.A. * An international team of scientists made a stunning and controversial discovery from an archaeological site in Dmanisi, a small town in the country of Georgia, that is forcing some scientists to unlearn everything they knew about the story of human evolution. The results from the find appeared in an October issue of the journal Science.1 Among other human skeleton bones, the researchers found five skulls or partial skulls. Some of them looked human, though they were smaller than today's average skull size. But the biggest surprise...

An Incredible New Skull Is Forcing Us To Rethink The Evolution Of Early Humans Dina Spector Oct. 17, 2013, 2:01 PM Photo courtesy of Georgian National Museum A 1.8-million-year-old skull combines a small braincase with a long face and large teeth, which is unlike any other Homo fossils on record. Researchers have traditionally used differences among fossilized remains of ancient humans to define separate species among the earliest members of our Homo genus — Homo erectus, Homo habilis, and Homo rudolfensis, for example. But an amazing new skull found in a republic of Georgia suggests that the specimens previously representing...

Early members of the genus Homo, possibly direct ancestors of people today, may have evolved in Asia and then gone to Africa, not vice versa... new evidence shows the species occupied a West Asian site called Dmanisi from 1.85 million to 1.77 million years ago, at the same time or slightly before the earliest evidence of this humanlike species in Africa, say geologist Reid Ferring of the University of North Texas in Denton and his colleagues... Evidence remains meager for the geographic origins of the Homo genus, says anthropologist Bernard Wood of George Washington University... and it's possible that humankind's...

A key stage in human evolution may have taken place on the fringes of Europe and not in Africa as has generally been thought, scientists said yesterday. Fossils of an ancient human relative, or hominin, from Georgia dated from 1.8 million years ago suggest that the first of our ancestors to walk upright could have done so in Eurasia, the British Science Festival was told. David Lordkipanidze, director of the Georgian National Museum, said the skulls, fossils and limb bones found at Dmanisi in 1999 and 2001 raise the possibility that Homo erectus, a forerunner of modern humans, evolved in...

ARCHAEOLOGY: New human fossils found in Georgia, north of Africa, have some rethinking migration of early man. DMANISI, Georgia - The forested bluff that overlooks this sleepy Georgian hamlet seems an unlikely portal into the mysteries surrounding the dawn of man. Think human evolution, and one conjures up the wind-swept savannas and badlands of east Africa's Great Rift Valley. Georgians may claim their ancestors made Georgia the cradle of wine 8,000 years ago, but the cradle of mankind lies 3,300 miles away, at Tanzania's famed Olduvai Gorge. But it is here in the verdant uplands of southern Georgia that David...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The earliest-known human ancestors to migrate out of Africa possessed a surprising mix of human-like and primitive features, according to scientists who studied remains dug up at a fossil-rich site in the former Soviet republic of Georgia.Writing on Wednesday in the journal Nature, the scientists described remains of three adults and one adolescent dating from about 1.77 million years ago, excavated at Dmanisi, about 55 miles southwest of the Georgian capital, Tbilisi.The remains shed light on a little-understood but critical period in human evolution -- the transition from the more ape-like creatures known as australopithecines to the...

Rewriting Human HistoryDiscoveries In Georgia Are Transforming Our View Of Human Evolution Looking out across a verdant lake valley alive with game, in a land to be known as Georgia at some remote future time, the diminutive, small-brained, ape-faced creature seems hardly destined for planetary conquest. Yet, from 1.75 million years ago, the slender little hominid – pre-human – is rewriting the story of who we are, where we came from and how we got here. Translating this epic tale is an energetic and enthusiastic Georgian scientist, David Lordkipanidze, who has waged a decade-long struggle to uncover, substantiate and protect...

Evolutionary Back Story: Thoroughly modern spine supported human ancestor Bruce Bower Bones from a spinal column discovered at a nearly 1.8-million-year-old site in central Asia support the controversial possibility that ancient human ancestors spoke to one another. WIDE OPEN. A recently discovered Homo erectus vertebra from central Asia (left) displays a larger spinal cord canal than does a corresponding bone (right) from a skeleton that had been found in Kenya. Meyer Excavations in 2005 at Dmanisi, Georgia, yielded five vertebrae from a Homo erectus individual, says anthropologist Marc R. Meyer of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. The finds occurred...

TBILISI, Georgia - Archaeologists in the former Soviet republic of Georgia have unearthed a skull they say is 1.8 million years old — part of a find that holds the oldest traces of humankind's closest ancestors ever found in Europe. The skull from an early member of the genus Homo was found Aug. 6 and unearthed Sunday in Dmanisi, an area about 60 miles southeast of the capital, Tbilisi, said David Lortkipanidze, director of the Georgian National Museum, who took part in the dig. In total, five bones or fragments believed to be about the same age have been found...