The first skull of Australopithecus boisei

Suwa, Gen; Asfaw, Berhane; Beyene, Yonas; White, Tim D.; Katoh, Shigehiro; Nagaoka, Shinji; Nakaya, Hideo; Uzawa, Kazuhiro; Renne, Paul R.; WoldeGabriel, Giday

doi:10.1038/39037

Cited by 123 publications

(69 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…The idea that two related hominin species could not have been sympatric because of overlapping resource requirements and preferences is one of the driving forces of the single species hypothesis (73). However, fossil discoveries in the 1970s and 1980s challenged this by clearly demonstrating the coexistence of Paranthropus and Homo, in some cases in close proximity, during the Pleistocene (74)(75)(76). Hominin fossil discoveries since the 1990s are now showing that hominin diversity was not limited to the Pleistocene but rather extended as far back as the middle Pliocene, if not earlier.…”

Section: Pliocene Hominin Diversity Sympatry and The Question Of Nimentioning

confidence: 99%

The Pliocene hominin diversity conundrum: Do more fossils mean less clarity?

Haile‐Selassie

Melillo

2016

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Recent discoveries of multiple middle Pliocene hominins have raised the possibility that early hominins were as speciose as later hominins. However, debates continue to arise around the validity of most of these new taxa, largely based on poor preservation of holotype specimens, small sample size, or the lack of evidence for ecological diversity. A closer look at the currently available fossil evidence from Ethiopia, Kenya, and Chad indicate that Australopithecus afarensis was not the only hominin species during the middle Pliocene, and that there were other species clearly distinguishable from it by their locomotor adaptation and diet. Although there is no doubt that the presence of multiple species during the middle Pliocene opens new windows into our evolutionary past, it also complicates our understanding of early hominin taxonomy and phylogenetic relationships.If one looks back over the controversies of human evolution, they have one element in common: new discoveries, theories, methods came along which no one in the controversy anticipated. The "facts" changed, and consequently people were not right or wrong in any simple way.S. L. Washburn and R. L. Ciochon, 1974 (1) New fossil discoveries and analytical methods that have proliferated during the last few decades have fundamentally changed how we study and interpret hominin fossils and understand human evolution. The discovery and subsequent naming of Australopithecus afarensis in the late 1970s was one of the major milestones in paleoanthropology (2). Its discovery not only pushed the record of hominins to earlier than 3 million years ago (Ma) (2), but also demonstrated the antiquity of human-like bipedality (3). However, the taxonomic homogeneity of the Au. afarensis hypodigm has been questioned since its naming (4-7), even though the Hadar fossil sample appears to be no more variable than other living ape species (8-11). A consensus emerged during the 1980s in which Au. afarensis, dated to between 3.7 and 2.9 Ma, was considered to be the sole early hominin species older than 3 Ma, largely supported by the lack of fossil evidence to indicate otherwise.When Australopithecus bahrelghazali was named in 1995 based on an approximately 3.5-Ma partial mandible from Chad (12), it was quickly dismissed as a geographic variant of Au. afarensis (13-15). The initial descriptions of Ardipithecus ramidus (16) and Australopithecus anamensis (17), followed by the naming of even earlier hominin species, such as Orrorin tugenensis (18), Ardipithecus kadabba (19,20), and Sahelanthropus tchadensis (21), extended the antiquity of our lineage as far back as >6 Ma. These early hominins initially appeared to show no temporal or spatial overlap, and hence reinforced the idea that the early phases of hominin evolution were characterized by phenetic continuity and phyletic gradualism, with only one hominin species existing in a region at any given time >3 Ma (e.g., ref. 22; see discussions below).The discovery of the Burtele partial foot from Ethiopia (23), the naming of Kenyan...

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Section: Pliocene Hominin Diversity Sympatry and The Question Of Nimentioning

confidence: 99%

The Pliocene hominin diversity conundrum: Do more fossils mean less clarity?

Haile‐Selassie

Melillo

2016

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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“…23 Tobias 36 cogently made the case for distinguishing between P. boisei and P. robustus and, until recently, the enlargement of the two hypodigms had not materially altered that assessment. However, the discovery of a megadont hominin skull (KGA 10-525) at Konso prompted Suwa and coworkers 20 to suggest that some aspects of its morphology are common to both P. boisei and P. robustus. This, together with the recovery of additional cranial material from Koobi Fora (for example, KNM-ER 23000) 17 and the publication of the detailed analysis of a cranium from the Omo (Omo 323-896) 14 prompted at least one commentator to suggest that Paranthropus taxonomy should be reassessed.…”

Section: How Many Species?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Additional evidence of P. boisei has come from sites elsewhere in East Africa, most notably in 1993, when a well-preserved skull of P. boisei (KGA 10-525) was recovered in Ethiopia at Konso (formerly called Konso Gardula). 20 This skull was not only the geologically youngest known specimen of P. boisei, at 1.4 Ma, but also increased the geographical range of the taxon. Moreover, this was the first time that cranial and mandibular evidence from the same individual had been found in proximity, affirming the presumed associations between the ''robust'' crania and large jaws made by previous researchers.…”

Section: History Of Discoverymentioning

confidence: 99%

The Evolution of Zinjanthropus boisei

Constantino

Wood

2007

Evolutionary Anthropology

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Many people assume that OH 5, the type specimen of Paranthropus boisei, collected in 1959, was the first evidence of that taxon to be found, but OH 3, recovered in 1955, predated the discovery of OH 5 by four years. Thus, Paranthropus boisei recently celebrated the equivalent of its fiftieth birthday. This review marks that milestone by examining the way our understanding of this taxon has changed during its fifty, or so, year history.

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“…Field research and laboratory analysis thereafter established that the formation spans the time period >1.9 to ∼0.8 Ma (20)(21)(22). Abundant lithic assemblages and vertebrate fossils have been recovered (23)(24)(25), including fossil remains of Australopithecus boisei (∼1.43 Ma) and H. erectus (∼1.45 to ∼1.25 Ma) (19,26,27).…”

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confidence: 99%

The characteristics and chronology of the earliest Acheulean at Konso, Ethiopia

Beyene

Katoh

WoldeGabriel

et al. 2013

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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347

218

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The Acheulean technological tradition, characterized by a large (>10 cm) flake-based component, represents a significant technological advance over the Oldowan. Although stone tool assemblages attributed to the Acheulean have been reported from as early as circa 1.6-1.75 Ma, the characteristics of these earliest occurrences and comparisons with later assemblages have not been reported in detail. Here, we provide a newly established chronometric calibration for the Acheulean assemblages of the Konso Formation, southern Ethiopia, which span the time period ∼1.75 to <1.0 Ma. The earliest Konso Acheulean is chronologically indistinguishable from the assemblage recently published as the world's earliest with an age of ∼1.75 Ma at Kokiselei, west of Lake Turkana, Kenya. This Konso assemblage is characterized by a combination of large picks and crude bifaces/unifaces made predominantly on large flake blanks. An increase in the number of flake scars was observed within the Konso Formation handaxe assemblages through time, but this was less so with picks. The Konso evidence suggests that both picks and handaxes were essential components of the Acheulean from its initial stages and that the two probably differed in function. The temporal refinement seen, especially in the handaxe forms at Konso, implies enhanced function through time, perhaps in processing carcasses with long and stable cutting edges. The documentation of the earliest Acheulean at ∼1.75 Ma in both northern Kenya and southern Ethiopia suggests that behavioral novelties were being established in a regional scale at that time, paralleling the emergence of Homo erectus-like hominid morphology. chronostratigraphy | Early Pleistocene | lithic technology development

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The first skull of Australopithecus boisei

Cited by 123 publications

References 21 publications

The Pliocene hominin diversity conundrum: Do more fossils mean less clarity?

The Pliocene hominin diversity conundrum: Do more fossils mean less clarity?

The Evolution of Zinjanthropus boisei

The characteristics and chronology of the earliest Acheulean at Konso, Ethiopia

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