Homo sapiens idaltu
| Archaic Humans Fossil range: Pleistocene
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| <tr bgcolor="pink"><th></th></tr><tr style="text-align:center;"><td>Homo sapiens idaltu White et al, 2003</td></tr> | |
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Homo sapiens idaltu (roughly translated as "elderly wise man") is an extinct subspecies of Homo sapiens that lived almost 160,000 years ago in Pleistocene Africa. Its fossilized remains were discovered in Ethiopia in 1997 by Tim White, but first unveiled in 2003. The fossils were found at Herto Bouri, a region of Ethiopia under volcanic layers. By using radioisotopes dating, the layers date between 154,000 and 160,000 years old. Three well preserved craniums are accounted for, the most well preserved is from an adult male (BOU-VP-16/1) having a brain capacity of 1450cc. The other craniums include another partial adult male and a six year old child.
These fossils differ slightly from those of early forms of H. sapiens such as Cro-Magnon found in Europe and other parts of the world in that its morphology has many archaic features not typical of H. sapiens (although modern human skulls do differ in certain regions around the globe). It appears to be the oldest representative of the H. sapiens species found so far. The name idaltu is an Amharic word for "elder". These specimens are likely to represent the direct ancestors of modern Homo sapiens sapiens thought to have originally evolved in Eastern Africa.
References
- White et al, Pleistocene Homo sapiens from Middle Awash, Ethiopia, Nature, 423:742-7 (2003).
- http://zinken.typepad.com/palaeo/05_human_evolution/
External links
- Chapter 5, Toba Volcano, by George Weber - Includes nice photo
- http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s877478.htm
