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Science 2 July 2004:
Vol. 305. no. 5680, pp. 75 - 78
DOI: 10.1126/science.1097661
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Reports

Small Mid-Pleistocene Hominin Associated with East African Acheulean Technology

Richard Potts,1,2* Anna K. Behrensmeyer,3 Alan Deino,4 Peter Ditchfield,5 Jennifer Clark1

Hominin fossils from the African mid-Pleistocene are rare despite abundant Acheulean tools in Africa and apparently African-derived hominins in Eurasia between 1.0 and 0.5 million years ago (Ma). Here we describe an African fossil cranium constrained by 40Ar/39Ar analyses, magnetostratigraphy, and sedimentary features to 0.97 to 0.90 Ma, and stratigraphically associated with Acheulean handaxes. Although the cranium represents possibly the smallest adult or near-adult known between 1.7 and 0.5 Ma, it retains features observed in larger Homo erectus individuals, yet shows a distinct suite of traits indicative of wide population variation in the hominins of this period.

1 Human Origins Program, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC 20560–0112, USA.
2 Division of Paleontology, National Museums of Kenya, P.O. Box 40658, Nairobi, Kenya.
3 Department of Paleobiology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC 20560, USA.
4 Berkeley Geochronology Center, 2455 Ridge Road, Berkeley, CA 94709, USA.
5 Research Laboratory for Archaeology, University of Oxford, 6 Keble Road, Oxford, OX1 3QJ, UK.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: potts.rick{at}nmnh.si.edu

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THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
A Female Homo erectus Pelvis from Gona, Ethiopia.
S. W. Simpson, J. Quade, N. E. Levin, R. Butler, G. Dupont-Nivet, M. Everett, and S. Semaw (2008)
Science 322, 1089-1092
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