Natural History Magazine

February 2007

Featured Story

Additional Images of Extinct Humans

Illustrations by Viktor Deak and Gary J. Sawyer

An adult male Australopithecus afarensis
glares at an intruder while taking a cooling
dip in a lake. The aquatic setting is based
on recent observations of gorillas in the
wetlands of the Congo forest, where they
like to wade and forage for aquatic plants.

Hominid with large molar teeth, Paranthropus robustus lived in southern Africa about 1.7 million years ago. Many fossil features, including those of the hip and thigh, attest that it was bipedal, and characteristics of the hands indicate that the animal may have been able to make and use stone tools. It was a member of a diverse group of hominids that disappeared from the fossil record by about a million years ago.

Adolescent Homo ergaster searches through swamp grass for food. The reconstruction is based on the well-preserved skeleton, found in northern Kenya, of a nine-year-old male. Known as “Nariokotome boy” (or “Turkana boy”),
this individual lived 1.6 million years ago. He was of slender build with essentially modern-human proportions; when mature, he would have stood about six feet tall. Some consider H. ergaster the earliest fossil hominid that can properly
be called human.

H. georgicus is named for fossils discovered at Dmanisi, a 1.8-million-year-
old Georgian site in the lower Caucusus Mountains. The five crania and four jawbones unearthed there since 1991 represent the earliest firm evidence of a hominid that lived outside Africa. Its brain was small (between 600 and 700 cubic centimeters) compared with that of modern humans (which averages 1,350 cubic centimeters). The fossils were discovered in association with crude stone choppers and scrapers.