![]() The Nariokotome specimen, an adolescent male individual, was over five feet tall at the time of his death (Walker & Leakey 1993 Figures 3 & 4). One of the traits most commonly associated with Homo erectus is an increase in body size. In this view, the ecological niche occupied by these species is more limited, leading to the isolation, and ultimately speciation, among different regional populations. Middle Pleistocene remains from Europe might be a second or third separate lineage ( Homo heidelbergensis). erectus, but also have more ancestral traits, might be considered a separate lineage (often called Homo ergaster). From this perspective, earlier fossils from Western Asia (e.g., Dmanisi, Georgia Figure 2) and Africa (e.g., Koobi Fora, Kenya) that are similar to the classic Asian H. In that case, the bulk of its representatives lived from the end of the Lower Pleistocene through the Middle Pleistocene (~1.4-0.2 mya). erectus is restricted largely to Eastern and Southeast Asia, consistent with the original fossils attributed to the taxon. For example, some researchers argue that H. Whether or not a sample from one region, for example Africa, part of a polytypic, geographically widespread lineage ( Homo erectus), or whether it is part of a related, but different species, is a debated topic and reveals much about the evolutionary pattern of the species (Rightmire 1998). What is the evolutionary relationship among fossils that share many similarities, but also subtle differences, separated across time and space? This question, prompted by the early Chinese and Javan fossils, remains an active research question today for the much larger sample of fossils assigned to H. Today, these two samples, along with a much larger collection of fossils from Asia, Africa, and Europe, are most commonly referred to simply as Homo erectus. Subsequent discoveries in the 1920s and 1930s from the site of Zhoukoudian, China, of fossils with similar characteristics-originally designated Sinanthropus pekinensis-raised the question of a possible evolutionary relationship between these regional samples. Dubois had specifically been looking for the missing link between apes and humans, and for him the combination of a human-like body and ape-like brain represented just that (Shipman 2002). erectus?Įugene Dubois first identified and described a new human-like set of Indonesian fossils at the end of the 19 th century, naming the specimens Pithecanthropus erectus (upright, ape-man) because of their combination of bipedality and a brain size much smaller than living humans. erectus? How might we describe and explain the evolutionary pattern of H. erectus in the Pleistocene? What role did behavioral and technological innovation play in establishing the complex and geographically widespread evolutionary pattern of H. erectus that allowed it to expand across different habitats throughout portions of Eurasia and Africa? What limitations constrained the expansion and evolution of H. erectus fossils: How did the ecology of Homo erectus differ from that of preceding hominins? What are the characteristics of H. These are some of the questions that researchers ask of H. erectus across a large range of environments suggests a change in the ecology of this lineage relative to early hominins, a change that certainly has significance for how evolutionary forces acted to shape the pattern of variation we observe in the fossil lineage. Homo erectus thus presents paleoanthropologists with the challenge of trying to interpret fossil variation in the context of both widespread geographic and temporal distribution.įurthermore, the expansion of H. erectus populations persisted until near the end of the Pleistocene, as evidenced by fossils from Southeast Asia. With its earliest appearance in the fossil record from localities in the Lake Turkana Basin, Kenya, sometime around two million years ago, H. The species was not only geographically widespread, it also had a long temporal span in the hominin fossil record (Antón 2003). There are a number of fascinating evolutionary questions that can be asked of H. In some cases, such as Olduvai Gorge and Koobi Fora, fossils have been recovered from many individual localities within the area, spanning a large range of dates. ![]() Exact dates are difficult to obtain for many of these localities, so the above dates represent best approximate ranges. A partial list of key Homo erectus fossil localities, and some of the key specimens preserved at each. Trinil 2, Mojokerto, Sangiran 17, Sangiran 2
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