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.
Solo Man is a subspecies of H. erectus that lived along the Solo River in Java, Indonesia, about 117,000 to 108,000 years ago in the Late Pleistocene. This population is the last known record of the species. It is known from 14 skullcaps, two tibiae, and a piece of the pelvis excavated near the village of Ngandong, and possibly three skulls from Sambungmacan and a skull from Ngawi depending on classification. The Ngandong site was first excavated from 1931 to 1933 under the direction of Willem Frederik Florus Oppenoorth, Carel ter Haar, and Gustav Heinrich Ralph von Koenigswald, but further study was set back by the Great Depression, World War II and the Indonesian War of Independence. In accordance with historical race concepts, Indonesian H. erectus subspecies were originally classified as the direct ancestors of Aboriginal Australians, but Solo Man is now thought to have no living descendants because the remains far predate modern human immigration into the area, which began roughly 55,000 to 50,000 years ago.
Java Man 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 specimen for Homo erectus.
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.
Ceprano Man, Argil, and Ceprano Calvarium, is a Middle Pleistocene archaic human fossil, a single skull cap (calvarium), accidentally unearthed in a highway construction project in 1994 near Ceprano in the Province of Frosinone, Italy. It was initially considered Homo cepranensis, Homo erectus, or possibly Homo antecessor; but in recent studies, most regard it either as a form of Homo heidelbergensis sharing affinities with African forms, or an early morph of Neanderthal.
Gustav Heinrich Ralphvon Koenigswald was a German-Dutch paleontologist and geologist who conducted research on hominins, including Homo erectus. His discoveries and studies of hominid fossils in Java and his studies of other important fossils of south-eastern Asia firmly established his reputation as one of the leading figures of 20th-century paleo-anthropology.
He County or Hexian is a county in the east of Anhui Province, 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.
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.
Nanjing Man is a specimen of Homo erectus found in China. Large fragments of one male and one female skull and a molar tooth of were discovered in 1993 in Hulu Cave on the Tangshan (汤山) hills in Jiangning District, Nanjing. The specimens were found in the Hulu limestone cave at a depth of 60–97 cm by Liu Luhong, a local worker. Dating the fossils yielded an estimated age of 580,000 to 620,000 years old.
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.
Paleoneurobiology is the study of brain evolution by analysis of brain endocasts to determine endocranial traits and volumes. Considered a subdivision of neuroscience, paleoneurobiology combines techniques from other fields of study including paleontology and archaeology. It reveals specific insight concerning human evolution. The cranium is unique in that it grows in response to the growth of brain tissue rather than genetic guidance, as is the case with bones that support movement. Fossil skulls and their endocasts can be compared to each other, to the skulls and fossils of recently deceased individuals, and even compared to those of other species to make inferences about functional anatomy, physiology and phylogeny. Paleoneurobiology is in large part influenced by developments in neuroscience as a whole; without substantial knowledge about current functionality, it would be impossible to make inferences about the functionality of ancient brains.
Jeffrey Todd Laitman is an American anatomist and physical anthropologist whose science has combined experimental, comparative, and paleontological studies to understand the development and evolution of the human upper respiratory and vocal tract regions. He is a Distinguished Professor of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City where he holds other positions, including Professor and Director of the Center for Anatomy and Functional Morphology, Professor of Otolaryngology and Professor of Medical Education.
The Daka calvaria, otherwise known as the Dakaskull, or specimen number BOU-VP-2/66, is a Homo erectus specimen from the Daka Member of the Bouri Formation in the Middle Awash Study Area of the Ethiopian Rift Valley.
FossilWLH-50 is a partial cranium fossil that was discovered in 1982, in the Willandra Lakes Region of Australia and was reconstructed by Alan Thorne. Based on its overall dimensions and the growth of cranial features, WLH-50 has been determined to be a male skullcap. Speculation surrounds the exact age of this fossil hominid and a debate concerning its ancestry in relation to other late Pleistocene hominids, as well as Ngandong hominids due to their close resemblance to one another.
The Ndutu skull is the partial cranium of a hominin that has been assigned variously to late Homo erectus, Homo rhodesiensis, and early Homo sapiens, from the Middle Pleistocene, found at Lake Ndutu in northern Tanzania.
The Mojokerto child, also known as Mojokerto 1 and Perning 1, is the fossilized skullcap of a juvenile early human. It was discovered in February 1936 near Mojokerto by a member of an excavation team led by Ralph von Koenigswald. Von Koenigswald first called the specimen Pithecanthropus modjokertensis but soon renamed it Homo modjokertensis because Eugène Dubois – the discoverer of Java Man, which was then called Pithecanthropus erectus – disagreed that the new fossil was a Pithecanthropus. The skullcap is now identified as belonging to the species Homo erectus.
The region of Southeast Asia is considered a possible place for the evidence of archaic human remains that could be found due to the pathway between Australia and mainland Southeast Asia, where the migration of multiple early humans has occurred out of Africa. One of many pieces of evidence is of the early human found in central Java of Indonesia in the late 19th century by Eugene Dubois, and later in 1937 at Sangiran site by G.H.R. van Koenigswald. These skull and fossil materials are Homo erectus, named Pithecanthropus erectus by Dubois and Meganthropus palaeojavanicus by van Koenigswald. They were dated to c. 1.88 and 1.66 Ma, as suggested by Swisher et al. by analysis of volcanic rocks.
The Kabuh Formation is a Plio-Pleistocene geologic formation from Central Java, consisting of several unnamed members belonging to the Kendeng Group. Many of the fossils discovered from Sambungmacan belonging to this group were discovered in an accumulated sediment deposit in a flood-controlling canal near the Solo River, including a series of hominin crania that are similar in anatomy and geologically younger than the Ngandong hominins upstream. This area was excavated throughout the 1970s.
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.
