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5 - Craniometric variation in early Homo compared to modern gorillas: a population-thinking approach

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 August 2009

By
Joseph M. A. Miller ,
Gene H. Albrecht  and
Bruce R. Gelvin
Edited by
Fred Anapol ,
Rebecca Z. German  and
Nina G. Jablonski
Joseph M. A. Miller
Affiliation:
Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA
Gene H. Albrecht
Affiliation:
Department of Cell and Neurobiology, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90033, USA
Bruce R. Gelvin
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, California State University, Northridge, CA 91330, USA
Fred Anapol
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
Rebecca Z. German
Affiliation:
University of Cincinnati
Nina G. Jablonski
Affiliation:
California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco
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Summary

Introduction

Controversy has surrounded Homo habilis since its inception. Leakey et al. (1964) first described the taxon based on fossils discovered at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, East Africa (e.g., OH 7, OH 13, and OH 16). The first major debate concerned whether the fossils were representative of previously known taxa such as Australopithecus africanus and Homo erectus (e.g., Robinson, 1966; Brace et al., 1973). With the discovery of additional specimens in the 1970s from Tanzania (e.g., OH 24), Kenya (e.g., ER 1470 and ER 1813), and South Africa (e.g., Stw 53), H. habilis gained general acceptance as a valid taxon (Tobias, 1991).

In the 1980s and 1990s, however, a new controversy arose. Some workers concluded that the craniometric variation among early Homo crania is too great in degree or too different in pattern for a single species (Wood, 1985; Stringer, 1986; Lieberman et al., 1988; Wood, 1991, 1993; Kramer et al., 1995; Grine et al., 1996). Others (Tobias, 1991; Miller, 1991, 2000) concluded that the available data provide no basis for rejecting the single-species hypothesis.

The present study uses a population-thinking approach to compare craniometric variation among the most complete early Homo crania (KNM-ER 1470, KNM-ER 1813, OH 24, and Stw 53) to intraspecific variation in gorillas (see Fig. 5.1 for geographic distribution of fossils and gorillas). Our approach, first introduced in Albrecht et al. (2003), differs from previous, traditional studies in two fundamental ways.

Type
Chapter
Information
Shaping Primate Evolution
Form, Function, and Behavior
 , pp. 66 - 96
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2004

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References

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