Homo ergaster is an extinct species or subspecies of archaic humans who lived in Africa in the Early Pleistocene. Whether H. ergaster constitutes a species of its own or should be subsumed into H. erectus is an ongoing and unresolved dispute within palaeoanthropology. Proponents of synonymisation typically designate H. ergaster as "African Homo erectus" or "Homo erectus ergaster". The name Homo ergaster roughly translates to "working man", a reference to the more advanced tools used by the species in comparison to those of their ancestors. The fossil range of H. ergaster mainly covers the period of 1.7 to 1.4 million years ago, though a broader time range is possible. Though fossils are known from across East and Southern Africa, most H. ergaster fossils have been found along the shores of Lake Turkana in Kenya. There are later African fossils, some younger than 1 million years ago, that indicate long-term anatomical continuity, though it is unclear if they can be formally regarded as H. ergaster specimens. As a chronospecies, H. ergaster may have persisted to as late as 600,000 years ago, when new lineages of Homo arose in Africa.
Meganthropus is an extinct genus of non-hominin hominid ape, known from the Pleistocene of Indonesia. It is known from a series of large jaw and skull fragments found at the Sangiran site near Surakarta in Central Java, Indonesia, alongside several isolated teeth. The genus has a long and convoluted taxonomic history. The original fossils were ascribed to a new species, Meganthropus palaeojavanicus, and for a long time was considered invalid, with the genus name being used as an informal name for the fossils.
In the human skull, a sagittal keel, or sagittal torus, is a thickening of part or all of the midline of the frontal bone, or parietal bones where they meet along the sagittal suture, or on both bones. Sagittal keels differ from sagittal crests, which are found in some earlier hominins and in a range of other mammals. While a proper crest functions in anchoring the muscles of mastication to the cranium, the keel is lower and rounded in cross-section, and the jaw muscles do not attach to it.
Homo rhodesiensis is the species name proposed by Arthur Smith Woodward (1921) to classify Kabwe 1, a Middle Stone Age fossil recovered from Broken Hill mine in Kabwe, Northern Rhodesia. In 2020, the skull was dated to 324,000 to 274,000 years ago. Other similar older specimens also exist.
Maba Man is a pre-modern hominin whose remains were discovered in 1958 in caves near the town called Maba, near Shaoguan city in the north part of Guangdong province, China.
The brow ridge, or supraorbital ridge known as superciliary arch in medicine, is a bony ridge located above the eye sockets of all primates and some other animals. In humans, the eyebrows are located on their lower margin.
He County or Hexian is a county in the east of Anhui Province, People's Republic of China, under the jurisdiction of Ma'anshan. It has a population of 650,000 and an area of 1,412 square kilometres (545 sq mi). The government of He County is located in Liyang Town.
KNM ER 406 is an almost complete fossilized skull of the species Paranthropus boisei. It was discovered in Koobi Fora, Kenya by Richard Leakey and H. Mutua in 1969. This species is grouped with the Australopitecine genus, Paranthropus boisei because of the robusticity of the skull and the prominent characteristics. This species was found well preserved with a complete cranium but lacking dentition. He was known for his robust cranial features that showed the signs of adaptation of the ecological niches. The big chewing muscles attached to the sagittal crest are traits of this adaptation.
Dali man is the remains of a late Homo erectus or archaic Homo sapiens who lived in the late-mid Pleistocene epoch. The remains comprise a complete fossilized skull, which was discovered by Liu Shuntang in 1978 in Dali County, Shaanxi Province, China.
Homo erectus is an extinct species of archaic human from the Pleistocene, with its earliest occurrence about 2 million years ago. Its specimens are among the first recognizable members of the genus Homo.
Australopithecus sediba is an extinct species of australopithecine recovered from Malapa Cave, Cradle of Humankind, South Africa. It is known from a partial juvenile skeleton, the holotype MH1, and a partial adult female skeleton, the paratype MH2. They date to about 1.98 million years ago in the Early Pleistocene, and coexisted with Paranthropus robustus and Homo ergaster / Homo erectus. Malapa is interpreted as having been a natural death trap, the base of a long vertical shaft which creatures could accidentally fall into. A. sediba was initially described as being a potential human ancestor, and perhaps the progenitor of Homo, but this is contested and it could also represent a late-surviving population or sister species of A. africanus which had earlier inhabited the area.
SK 847 is the abbreviated designation for the fossilized fragments of a Homo habilis cranium, discovered in South Africa, which was dated to an age between 1.8 and 1.5 million years. This fossil shares morphological traits with the early African Homo erectus, sometimes known as Homo ergaster.
The Ndutu skull is the partial cranium of a hominin that has been assigned variously to late Homo erectusHomo rhodesiensis, and early Homo sapiens, from the Middle Pleistocene, found at Lake Ndutu in northern Tanzania.
Olduvai Hominid number 9, known as the Chellean Man, is a fossilized skull cap of an early hominin, found in LLK II, Olduvai Gorge by Louis S. B. Leakey in 1960. It is believed to be ca. 1.4 million years old. Its cranial capacity is estimated at than 1067 cm3, the largest value among all known African Homo erectus specimens. OH 9 is significant because the features it carried and its correlation to the species classification it resides in.
Xujiayao, located in the Nihewan Basin in China, is an early Late Pleistocene paleoanthropological site famous for its archaic hominin fossils.
Jinniushan is a Middle Pleistocene paleoanthropological site, dating to around 260,000 BP, most famous for its archaic hominin fossils. The site is located near Yingkou, Liaoning, China. Several new species of extinct birds were also discovered at the site.
The Dmanisi hominins, Dmanisi people, or Dmanisi man were a population of Early Pleistocene hominins whose fossils have been recovered at Dmanisi, Georgia. The fossils and stone tools recovered at Dmanisi range in age from 1.85 to 1.77 million years old, making the Dmanisi hominins the earliest well-dated hominin fossils in Eurasia and the best preserved fossils of early Homo from a single site so early in time, though earlier fossils and artifacts have been found in Asia. Though their precise classification is controversial and disputed, the Dmanisi fossils are highly significant within research on early hominin migrations out of Africa. The Dmanisi hominins are known from over a hundred postcranial fossils and five famous well-preserved skulls, referred to as Dmanisi Skulls 1–5.
Homo longi is an extinct species of archaic human identified from a nearly complete skull, nicknamed 'Dragon Man', from Harbin on the Northeast China Plain, dating to at minimum 146,000 years ago during the Middle Pleistocene. The skull was discovered in 1933 along the Songhua River while the Dongjiang Bridge was under construction for the Manchukuo National Railway. Due to a tumultuous wartime atmosphere, it was hidden and only brought to paleoanthropologists in 2018. The original describers postulated H. longi represents a member of the Denisovans, though this is unconfirmable without genetic testing. They also considered modern humans to be more closely related to H. longi than to the European Neanderthals, but DNA evidence suggests Denisovans are more closely related to Neanderthals than modern humans.
The Salé cranium is a pathological specimen of enigmatic Middle Pleistocene hominin discovered from Salé, Morocco by quarrymen in 1971. Since its discovery, the specimen has variously been classified as Homo sapiens, Homo erectus, Homo rhodesiensis/bodoensis, or Homo heidelbergensis. Its pathological condition and mosaic anatomy has proved difficult to classify. It was discovered with few faunal fossils and no lithics, tentatively dated to 400 ka by some sources.
The Narmada Human, originally the Narmada Man, is a species of extinct human that lived in central India during the Middle and Late Pleistocene. From a skull cup discovered from the bank of Narmada River in Madhya Pradesh in 1982, the discoverer, Arun Sonakia classified it was an archaic human and gave the name Narmada Man, with the scientific name H. erectus narmadensis. Analysis of additional fossils from the same location in 1997 indicated that the individual could be a female, hence, a revised name, Narmada Human, was introduced. It remains the oldest human species in India.
