Best Hominin

LB1 is the principal fossil specimen of Homo floresiensis, a small-bodied hominin discovered in 2003 at Liang Bua cave on the Indonesian island of Flores. The partial skeleton includes a skull and indicates an adult individual about one meter tall, leading to the informal nickname Hobbit. Associated...

Little Foot, catalogued as StW 573, is an unusually complete australopithecine skeleton recovered from the Sterkfontein cave system in South Africa. Its bones were identified gradually beginning in the 1990s and required many years of careful excavation from surrounding rock; dating studies place it...

The Taung Child is the fossilized skull and natural brain endocast of a juvenile Australopithecus africanus discovered at Taung, South Africa, in 1924. Raymond Dart described it in 1925, identifying a combination of ape-like cranial traits and evidence for habitual upright posture. As the first reco...

Turkana Boy, catalogued as KNM-WT 15000, is a remarkably complete early Homo skeleton discovered in 1984 near Lake Turkana in Kenya by Kamoya Kimeu. Usually assigned to Homo ergaster or African Homo erectus, the juvenile individual lived about 1.6 million years ago and had long legs and human-like b...

Ardi, catalogued as ARA-VP-6/500, is a partial skeleton of Ardipithecus ramidus from the Afar region of Ethiopia. The remains are about 4.4 million years old, were discovered in the 1990s, and were presented in a major scientific description in 2009. Ardi combines adaptations for climbing with anato...

Lucy is the common name of AL 288-1, a partial skeleton of Australopithecus afarensis discovered by Donald Johanson's team at Hadar, Ethiopia, in 1974 and dated to about 3.2 million years ago. The specimen preserves roughly 40 percent of the skeleton, including parts of the pelvis, legs, spine, ribs...

Selam is the nickname of DIK-1-1, a juvenile Australopithecus afarensis skeleton discovered at Dikika in Ethiopia and dated to about 3.3 million years ago. The specimen preserves an unusually complete skull together with parts of the shoulders, vertebral column, ribs, pelvis, arms, and legs, making...

Sahelanthropus tchadensis is an extinct primate known from late Miocene fossils discovered in Chad, including a distorted but relatively complete cranium nicknamed Toumai. The remains are approximately 6 to 7 million years old and combine a small braincase with reduced canine teeth and facial featur...

Small-brained hominin from South Africa's Rising Star Cave system, first described in 2015; its mosaic of primitive and modern skeletal traits and evidence of possible deliberate body disposal are distinctive.

Louis Leakey was a 20th-century archaeologist renowned for his pioneering work in paleoanthropology. His extensive research at Olduvai Gorge, Kenya, fundamentally shifted scientific understanding by demonstrating Africa as the birthplace of human evolution. He investigated hominin fossils and their...

Orrorin tugenensis is an extinct primate from the late Miocene, known from fossils discovered in Kenya's Tugen Hills and dated to about six million years ago. The specimen catalogued as BAR 1000'00 is among the material associated with the species. Features of the femur have been interpreted as evid...

Mary Leakey was a British archaeologist specializing in paleoanthropology. Her work significantly advanced our understanding of early hominin evolution. She notably unearthed fossil footprints dating back 3.6 million years at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, providing direct evidence of bipedalism. Addition...

Homo longi is a proposed species of archaic human based on CAGS-HV-PA-01, a nearly complete skull reportedly discovered near Harbin in northeastern China. Researchers formally described the specimen in 2021 and reported that it was at least 146,000 years old. Nicknamed Dragon Man, the skull combines...

Homo luzonensis is an extinct hominin species described in 2019 from teeth and fragmentary hand, foot, and thigh bones found in Callao Cave on Luzon in the Philippines. Specimen CCH6 is part of this fossil assemblage, some of which is approximately 67,000 years old. The remains combine traits not se...

Richard Leakey was a 20th-century Kenyan archaeologist specializing in paleoanthropology. His significant discoveries, most notably the Turkana Boy hominin skeleton, provided crucial insights into human evolution. He led extensive research expeditions primarily in East Africa, particularly the Turka...

Meave Leakey (born 1942) is a British paleoanthropologist known for her fieldwork in Kenya's Turkana Basin and contributions to the study of human evolution. She married into the famous Leakey family, becoming the wife of Richard Leakey and continuing the family's legacy of fossil discoveries. In 19...

Flat-faced hominin discovered in Kenya in 1999 and dated to approximately 3.5 million years ago; its distinctive cranial morphology complicates the view of a single linear human ancestry for that period.