Top Results for 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...

Years of careful excavation were needed to free Little Foot from the rock of South Africa's Sterkfontein cave system. Catalogued as StW 573, the unusually complete australopithecine skeleton was recognized through bones identified gradually beginning in the 1990s. Dating studies place the specimen a...

The Taung Child consists of a fossilized juvenile skull and a natural brain endocast, a cast formed within the skull that preserves aspects of the brain's outer shape. Discovered at Taung in South Africa in 1924, it was described by Raymond Dart in 1925 as Australopithecus africanus. Dart identified...

A juvenile skeleton discovered by Kamoya Kimeu near Lake Turkana in Kenya in 1984 provides an unusually detailed view of early Homo. Known as Turkana Boy and catalogued as KNM-WT 15000, the individual lived about 1.6 million years ago. Researchers commonly assign the specimen to Homo ergaster or to...

Ardi preserves a combination of features relevant to climbing and movement on the ground. Catalogued as ARA-VP-6/500, this partial skeleton of Ardipithecus ramidus comes from Ethiopia's Afar region and is about 4.4 million years old. The remains were discovered in the 1990s and presented in a major...

Known as Lucy, AL 288-1 is a partial skeleton of Australopithecus afarensis discovered by Donald Johanson's team at Hadar, Ethiopia, in 1974. Dated to about 3.2 million years ago, it preserves roughly 40 percent of the skeleton. Surviving material includes portions of the pelvis and legs as well as...

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...

Klasies River Caves are a group of coastal archaeological sites in the Eastern Cape of South Africa. Excavations have documented repeated Middle Stone Age occupations, human remains generally classified as early Homo sapiens, shell middens, hearths, stone tools, and animal bones dating back roughly...

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 helped establish Africa's central place in the study of human origins through twentieth-century archaeological and paleoanthropological research. A Kenyan-born British scientist, he worked extensively at Olduvai Gorge in what is now Tanzania. Fossils and stone tools from East Africa sup...

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.