Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The first member of the genus Homo to be hairless was Homo erectus, originating about 1.6 million years ago. [6] The dissipation of body heat remains the most widely accepted evolutionary explanation for the loss of body hair in early members of the genus Homo, the surviving member of which is modern humans.
The extant Homo heidelbergensis (cladistically granting Homo sapiens), which was originally African, emerged within the Asian Homo erectus. Contemporary groups appear to have been interbreeding, so any phylogeny like this only gives a coarse impression of the evolution of Homo , and extinct lineage may have partially continued in other groupings.
Homo erectus derives from early Homo or late Australopithecus. Homo habilis , although significantly different of anatomy and physiology, is thought to be the ancestor of Homo ergaster , or African Homo erectus ; but it is also known to have coexisted with H. erectus for almost half a million years (until about 1.5 Ma).
The researchers believe Homo erectus became isolated on the island around 1 million years ago and underwent a dramatic reduction in body size during a period of around 300,000 years.
The earliest known evidence for African H. erectus, dubbed Homo ergaster, is a single occipital bone (KNM-ER 2598), described as "H. erectus-like", and dated to about 1.9 Ma (contemporary with Homo rudolfensis). This is followed by a fossil gap, the next available fossil being KNM-ER 3733, a skull dated to 1.6 Ma. [16]
Around 1.8 million years ago, Homo erectus migrated out of Africa via the Levantine corridor and Horn of Africa to Eurasia. This migration has been proposed as being related to the operation of the Saharan pump, around 1.9 million years ago. [citation needed] Homo erectus dispersed throughout most of the Old World, reaching as far as Southeast ...
Java Man (Homo erectus erectus, formerly also Anthropopithecus erectus or Pithecanthropus erectus) is an early human fossil discovered in 1891 and 1892 on the island of Java (Indonesia). Estimated to be between 700,000 and 1,490,000 years old, it was, at the time of its discovery, the oldest hominid fossil ever found, and it remains the type ...
Turkana Boy, also called Nariokotome Boy, is the name given to fossil KNM-WT 15000, a nearly complete skeleton of a Homo erectus youth who lived 1.5 to 1.6 million years ago. This specimen is the most complete early hominin skeleton ever found. [1] It was discovered in 1984 by Kamoya Kimeu on the bank of the Nariokotome River near Lake Turkana ...