Word: erectus
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...DIED. JIA LANPO, 92, Chinese archaeologist who directed the Peking Man excavation; in Beijing. Over six decades, Jia helped unearth a record 45 Homo erectus fossils from the Zhoukoudian site near Beijing. He discovered the first Chinese hominid fossils dating from the Pleistocene era that began 1.8 million years ago, bolstering the theory that modern Chinese are descended from these early men. DIED. WALLACE REYBURN, 87, war correspondent and author of 25 books, including Rehearsal for Invasion, the first-hand account of the ill-fated Dieppe raid of 1942; in London. A deadpan wit, he raised eyebrows with Flushed with...
Instead, suggests Carl Swisher, a dating expert from the Berkeley (Calif.) Geochronology Center and co-author of the Science paper, wanderlust may simply have been part of H. erectus' personality. The species evolved some 2 million years ago, and armed with a larger brain and body than its predecessor, H. habilis, "it was probably changing its range and its living habitat almost immediately," says Swisher. H. erectus also developed a more carnivorous appetite and probably moved to follow game. "As soon as they lost this dependency on vegetation," says Alan Walker, a Pennsylvania State University paleoanthropologist, "they changed their lifestyle...
...erectus bones found outside Africa, these new ones are closest in form to African H. erectus--and may belong to a distinct species, Homo ergaster, which some experts have until now assigned to Africa. Since modern Homo sapiens is believed to have descended directly from H. ergaster, the discovery of closely related bones in Eurasia suggests that our own species may have evolved outside the ancestral continent or arisen in several places simultaneously. Says Swisher: "If you have the ancestral form outside Africa, then you have to entertain those thoughts...
...without complete fossil records, it's difficult to know definitively one way or the other. It's also unclear what route H. erectus took. The study's authors think the species went east to Asia and gave rise to the Asian branch of H. erectus, perhaps then turned north and finally west back to Europe. The fossil record in Europe is especially spotty, with about a million years separating the Dmanisi finds and any other hominid remains...
Researchers expect to continue uncovering a wealth of bones in Europe and are encouraged by the treasures at Dmanisi. "Certainly if they [H. erectus] were out that early, they've got to be other places as well," says Susan Anton, a University of Florida anthropologist and co-author of the Science paper. "It's just a matter of finding them...