Postcranial evidence from early Homo from Dmanisi, Georgia |
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Authors: | Lordkipanidze David Jashashvili Tea Vekua Abesalom Ponce de León Marcia S Zollikofer Christoph P E Rightmire G Philip Pontzer Herman Ferring Reid Oms Oriol Tappen Martha Bukhsianidze Maia Agusti Jordi Kahlke Ralf Kiladze Gocha Martinez-Navarro Bienvenido Mouskhelishvili Alexander Nioradze Medea Rook Lorenzo |
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Affiliation: | Georgian National Museum, 0105 Tbilisi, Georgia. dlordkipanidze@museum.ge |
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Abstract: | The Plio-Pleistocene site of Dmanisi, Georgia, has yielded a rich fossil and archaeological record documenting an early presence of the genus Homo outside Africa. Although the craniomandibular morphology of early Homo is well known as a result of finds from Dmanisi and African localities, data about its postcranial morphology are still relatively scarce. Here we describe newly excavated postcranial material from Dmanisi comprising a partial skeleton of an adolescent individual, associated with skull D2700/D2735, and the remains from three adult individuals. This material shows that the postcranial anatomy of the Dmanisi hominins has a surprising mosaic of primitive and derived features. The primitive features include a small body size, a low encephalization quotient and absence of humeral torsion; the derived features include modern-human-like body proportions and lower limb morphology indicative of the capability for long-distance travel. Thus, the earliest known hominins to have lived outside of Africa in the temperate zones of Eurasia did not yet display the full set of derived skeletal features. |
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