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Science 14 November 2008:
Vol. 322. no. 5904, pp. 1089 - 1092
DOI: 10.1126/science.1163592
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Reports

A Female Homo erectus Pelvis from Gona, Ethiopia

Scott W. Simpson,1,2 Jay Quade,3 Naomi E. Levin,4,5 Robert Butler,6 Guillaume Dupont-Nivet,7 Melanie Everett,8,9,10 Sileshi Semaw9,10*

Analyses of the KNM-WT 15000 Homo erectus juvenile male partial skeleton from Kenya concluded that this species had a tall thin body shape due to specialized locomotor and climatic adaptations. Moreover, it was concluded that H. erectus pelves were obstetrically restricted to birthing a small-brained altricial neonate. Here we describe a nearly complete early Pleistocene adult female H. erectus pelvis from the Busidima Formation of Gona, Afar, Ethiopia. This obstetrically capacious pelvis demonstrates that pelvic shape in H. erectus was evolving in response to increasing fetal brain size. This pelvis indicates that neither adaptations to tropical environments nor endurance running were primary selective factors in determining pelvis morphology in H. erectus during the early Pleistocene.

1 Department of Anatomy, Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, Cleveland, OH 44106–4930, USA.
2 Laboratory of Physical Anthropology, Cleveland Museum of Natural History, Cleveland, OH 44106, USA.
3 Department of Geosciences/Desert Laboratory, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA.
4 Department of Geology and Geophysics, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT 84112, USA.
5 Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences, California Institute of Technology, MC 100-23, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA.
6 Department of Physics, University of Portland, Portland, OR 97203–5798, USA.
7 Faculty of Geosciences, Utrecht University, Budapestlaan 17, 3584 CD Utrecht, Netherlands.
8 Department of Geological Sciences, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47407, USA.
9 The Stone Age Institute, 1392 West Dittemore Road, Gosport, IN 47433, USA.
10 Center for Research into the Anthropological Foundations of Technology (CRAFT), Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405, USA.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: ssemaw{at}indiana.edu

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