Homo Erectus: First Human Out of Africa? New Fossil Evidence
- fossils discovered in Dmanisi, Georgia, have long been a source of debate among paleoanthropologists.
- erectus was the first human species to leave Africa, or if others preceded it, study co-author Victor Nery, a historian and archaeologist at the University of São Paulo...
- Previous analyses of the Dmanisi fossils mostly focused on the skulls.
Early, ancestral members of the human lineage may have left Africa earlier than widely thought, a new study of fossil teeth suggests.
Modern humans, Homo sapiens, are the only living member of the human lineage, Homo, which is thought to have arisen in Africa about 2 million to 3 million years ago and first left that continent a few hundred thousand years ago.But many other extinct human species previously roamed Earth, such as Homo habilis, suspected to be among the first stone-tool makers, and Homo erectus, the first to regularly
fossils discovered in Dmanisi, Georgia, have long been a source of debate among paleoanthropologists. Some researchers believe the fossils represent a single, early species of Homo, while others argue they represent two distinct human species. One, dubbed Homo georgicus, seemed more closely related to predecessors of humans known as australopiths, while the other, Homo caucasi, appeared more similar to early human species.
Resolving this controversy might reveal whether H. erectus was the first human species to leave Africa, or if others preceded it, study co-author Victor Nery, a historian and archaeologist at the University of São Paulo in Brazil, told Live Science.
Previous analyses of the Dmanisi fossils mostly focused on the skulls. In the new study, published dec.3 in the journal PLOS one, researchers instead concentrated on similarities and differences among the teeth.
The scientists analyzed 24 teeth from three individuals at Dmanisi. They compared them not only with each other, but also 559 teeth from other species, including australopiths, early humans such as H. habilis and H. erectus, and modern humans.
The teeth appeared to split into two groups, one closer to australopiths, and the other more similar to early humans, the researchers found. The differences between these groups was especially evident in teeth from the upper jaw.
These dental discoveries suggest “there were likely more than one species that occurred in the Dmanisi region,” study co-author Mark Hubbe,head and professor of anthropology at the University of Tennessee,Knoxville,told Live Science.
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