Three New Papers Complicate Human Origin Story

[Scylla]

Ancient hominids coexisted and interbred. More data on the subject discussed in this article:

 

https://gizmodo.com/humanitys-origin-story-just-got-more-complicated-1842616478

[Scylla]

More:

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/04/mysterious-human-ancestor-finds-its-place-our-family-tree#

[DD1991]

I heard of Homo rhodesiensis* beginning in 2007, but the legitimacy of that taxon has been debated for a long time because most researchers saw it as a specimen of Homo heidelbergensis. However,  the conclusions drawn by Welker et al. (2020) regarding Homo antecessor are yet another refutation of the long-sidelined notion of a multiregional hypothesis for the early evolution of Homo sapiens because indicate that antecessor is the Homo species most closely related to modern humans and Neanderthals. The new dating of Kabwe 1, provided by Grun et al. (2020), lends further support to the opinion of many paleoanthropologists that Homo rhodesiensis is a synonym of Homo heidelbergensis.

 

* The species name rhodesiensis refers to the fact that the country where Kabwe 1 (holotype of Homo rhodesiensis) was found used to be called Rhodesia (along with Zimbabwe) in honor of Cecil Rhodes (1853-1902), a champion of British imperialism in sub-Saharan Africa.

 

Rainer Grün; Alistair Pike; Frank McDermott; Stephen Eggins; Graham Mortimer; Maxime Aubert; Lesley Kinsley; Renaud Joannes-Boyau; Michael Rumsey; Christiane Denys; James Brink; Tara Clark; Chris Stringer (2020). Dating the skull from Broken Hill, Zambia, and its position in human evolution. Nature in press. doi:10.1038/s41586-020-2165-4.

 

Frido Welker; Jazmín Ramos-Madrigal; Petra Gutenbrunner; Meaghan Mackie; Shivani Tiwary; Rosa Rakownikow Jersie-Christensen; Cristina Chiva; Marc R. Dickinson; Martin Kuhlwilm; Marc de Manuel; Pere Gelabert; María Martinón-Torres; Ann Margvelashvili; Juan Luis Arsuaga; Eudald Carbonell; Tomas Marques-Bonet; Kirsty Penkman; Eduard Sabidó; Jürgen Cox; Jesper V. Olsen; David Lordkipanidze; Fernando Racimo; Carles Lalueza-Fox; José María Bermúdez de Castro; Eske Willerslev; Enrico Cappellini (2020). The dental proteome of Homo antecessor. Nature in press. doi:10.1038/s41586-020-2153-8.

[DD1991]

A couple of interesting papers on early human evolution you may find interesting:

 

Spoor F, Leakey MG, Leakey LN. 2010. Hominin diversity in the middle Pliocene of eastern Africa: the maxilla of KNM-WT 40000. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 365, 3377–3388. (10.1098/rstb.2010.0042)

 

Spoor F, Leakey MG, O'Higgins P. 2016. Middle Pliocene hominin diversity: Australopithecus deyiremeda and Kenyanthropus platyops. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 371, 20150231 (10.1098/rstb.2015.0231)

 

I remember that the early human genus Kenyanthropus was viewed in a 2003 paper by Tim White as a taphonomically deformed specimen of the well-known Australopithecus afarensis. However, Spoor et al. (2010), while agreeing with White that the facial region of KMN-WT 40000 is distorted, differences in the maxillary region support the validity of Kenyanthropus. The paper by Spoor et al. (2016) further refutes White's doubts about the legitimacy of Kenyanthropus by noting that KMN-WT 40000 is also distinct from the recently named species Australopithecus deyiremeda.

[Fossildude19]

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