Turkana Boy, the human fossil also called Nariokotome Boy, was a nearly
complete skeleton of a Homo ergaster or African Homo erectus
ever found.
What kind of human was Turkana Boy?
Who is Turkana Boy? He is
the Homo erectus
whose (almost) complete skeleton was found by Richard Leakey’s team near Lake Turkana in the mid-1980s.
What is the evidence that suggests Turkana Boy did not have body hair?
Their research suggests that
humans lost their thick coat of body hair almost three million years ago
, paving the way for Turkana Boy to outrun and kill the meat he needed to feed his growing brain.
How did scientists know that the Turkana Boy was not an adult?
His pelvis shows he was male.
His second molars had erupted, but not his third (the wisdom teeth)
, indicating he was not an adult. … Turkana Boy’s cranial capacity at death was 880 cubic centimeters, but scientists estimate it would have reached 909 cubic centimeters if he had grown into adulthood.
How did researchers determine Turkana Boy’s age at death?
Alan Walker and Richard Leakey in 1993 estimated the boy to have been about 11–12 years old based on known
rates of bone maturity
. Walker and Leakey (1993) said that dental dating often gives a younger age than a person’s actual age.
Is Turkana boy older than Lucy?
The public press on Turkana Boy has
been minuscule compared to that of Lucy
, likely because this find was claimed to be 1.4 million years old by some experts and as old as 1.9 million Darwin years by others.
Who discovered Lucy?
The team that excavated her remains, led by
American paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson and French geologist Maurice Taieb
, nicknamed the skeleton “Lucy” after the Beatles song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” which was played at the celebration the day she was found.
Where was zinjanthropus found?
The name given by Professor Louis Leakey to the fossil skull of an early hominin
What is our closest extinct relative?
Together with an Asian people known as Denisovans,
Neanderthals
are our closest ancient human relatives. Scientific evidence suggests our two species shared a common ancestor. Current evidence from both fossils and DNA suggests that Neanderthal and modern human lineages separated at least 500,000 years ago.
What species was Lucy?
Australopithecus afarensis
, Lucy’s species. When this small-bodied, small-brained hominin
What was the most likely cause of death for Turkana Boy?
The Turkana Boy (Homo ergaster) lived in Africa about 1.5 million years ago. Although he died young, his bones show that he did not die from an attack by a predator because his nearly complete skeleton shows no damage from either predators or scavengers.
Why is 1974 fossil called Lucy?
“Lucy” acquired her name from the 1967 song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” by the Beatles, which was played loudly and repeatedly in the expedition camp all evening after the excavation team’s first day of work on the recovery site.
What is a significant characteristic of Nariokotome boy?
The Nariokotome boy is a
remarkably complete skeleton of Homo erectus
(also sometimes called Homo ergaster) and illustrates many of the evolutionary developments that distinguish the early humans from the australopiths that preceded them. These include a skeleton more specialized for bipedalism and a larger brain.
How long have humans existed?
The first human ancestors appeared
between five million and seven million years ago
, probably when some apelike creatures in Africa began to walk habitually on two legs. They were flaking crude stone tools by 2.5 million years ago. Then some of them spread from Africa into Asia and Europe after two million years ago.
Who called hominins?
Hominin, any member of the zoological “tribe” Hominini (family Hominidae, order Primates), of which only one species exists today—Homo sapiens, or human beings. The term is used most often to refer to
extinct members of the human lineage
, some of which are now quite well known from fossil remains: H.
How old is zinjanthropus?
Mary found the
roughly 1.8-million-year-old
skull of a hominid with a flat face, gigantic teeth, a large crest on the top of its head (where chewing muscles attached) and a relatively small brain. They named the species Zinjanthropus boisei (now known as Paranthropus boisei).
