Has the missing link been found12/28/2023 Dubois had specifically been looking for the missing link between apes and humans, and for him the combination of a human-like body and ape-like brain represented just that (Shipman 2002). erectus?Įugene Dubois first identified and described a new human-like set of Indonesian fossils at the end of the 19 th century, naming the specimens Pithecanthropus erectus (upright, ape-man) because of their combination of bipedality and a brain size much smaller than living humans. erectus? How might we describe and explain the evolutionary pattern of H. erectus in the Pleistocene? What role did behavioral and technological innovation play in establishing the complex and geographically widespread evolutionary pattern of H. erectus that allowed it to expand across different habitats throughout portions of Eurasia and Africa? What limitations constrained the expansion and evolution of H. erectus fossils: How did the ecology of Homo erectus differ from that of preceding hominins? What are the characteristics of H. These are some of the questions that researchers ask of H. ![]() erectus across a large range of environments suggests a change in the ecology of this lineage relative to early hominins, a change that certainly has significance for how evolutionary forces acted to shape the pattern of variation we observe in the fossil lineage. Homo erectus thus presents paleoanthropologists with the challenge of trying to interpret fossil variation in the context of both widespread geographic and temporal distribution.įurthermore, the expansion of H. erectus populations persisted until near the end of the Pleistocene, as evidenced by fossils from Southeast Asia. With its earliest appearance in the fossil record from localities in the Lake Turkana Basin, Kenya, sometime around two million years ago, H. ![]() The species was not only geographically widespread, it also had a long temporal span in the hominin fossil record (Antón 2003). There are a number of fascinating evolutionary questions that can be asked of H. In some cases, such as Olduvai Gorge and Koobi Fora, fossils have been recovered from many individual localities within the area, spanning a large range of dates. Exact dates are difficult to obtain for many of these localities, so the above dates represent best approximate ranges. A partial list of key Homo erectus fossil localities, and some of the key specimens preserved at each. ![]() Trinil 2, Mojokerto, Sangiran 17, Sangiran 2
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