Key to Early Humans Provides Plenty More to Unlock

Photograph by Vano Shlamov, AFP/Getty Images

David Lordkipanidze's finds ultimately upended prior theory on humans' early ancestors.

About a quarter century ago, a 1.8-million-year-old skull fossil was discovered in the republic of Georgia that eventually wound up altering scientific consensus on humans' earliest known ancestors to venture outside of Africa.

Today, the site where those fossils were found remains a treasure trove of evolutionary history.

Paleoanthropologist David Lordkipanidze led the excavation of the Georgia site, known as Dmanisi. Based on a haul of fossils, including Skull 5, an astonishingly complete skull of an adult male, an international team of scientists led by Lordkipanidze eventually concluded that all early fossil humans belong to the same species, Homo erectus. Their findings ran against the prevailing view that several species existed in the Pleistocene.

September 24 marks the anniversary of the original fossil find, coinciding with this week’s International Senckenberg Conference in Tbilisi, Georgia's capital, where the history of Homo erectus is center stage. [...] /news.nationalgeographic.com


Actualización: Investigadores del IPHES han participado en la Homo erectus 100+25, International Senckenberg Conference

Las sesiones han tenido lugar en el Georgian National Museum, en Tbilisi, del 20 al 24 de septiembre

El director del IPHES, Robert Sala, y el investigador ICREA-IPHES, Jordi Agustí, han asistido al congreso, donde se han presentado diversas investigaciones de miembros de este instituto

 

En 1991, 100 años más tarde del descubrimiento en 1891 de los restos fósiles de Pithecanthropus erectus in Java, la International Senckenberg Conference ayudo en su celebración en Frankfurt a poner al día 10 décadas de investigación al entorno de la especie Homo erectus. Ahora, en 2016, 25 años después, el “Homo erectus enigma” sigue siendo una de las principales cuestiones por resolver en el estudio de la evolución humana. 

 

125 years of Homo erectus. TBILISI 20-24 September 2016, organizada por el Georgian National Museum, the Senckenberg Research Institute Frankfurt/Main, y el ROCEEH Project of the Heidelberg Academy of Science se ha celebrado en dicho museo en Tbilisi con el fin de poner al día las principals noveades y estudios entorno a Homo erectus...