Dmanisi原始人的比较研究

xielirong

来自格鲁吉亚共和国Dmanisi的原始人类经常被认为与“直立人”相似，也被认为很可能是非洲以外人类家族中已知最早的成员。这个结论到目前为止都是来自头骨。颅后材料（与一个头骨相关的一个未成年个体的部分骨架以及另外三个成年个体的身体构成部分）的首次呈现表明，Dmanisi原始人比“直立人”甚至还要更原始，与“能人”（Homo habilis）相似。在为该论文配发的News & Views文章中，Daniel Lieberman将这些新发现与来自肯尼亚Turkana湖的发现（刊登在8月9日的Nature杂志封面上）进行了对比。Lieberman说，从二者之间的相似性所得出的最初判断是，它们属于同一种。

原始出处：

Nature 449, 305-310 (20 September 2007) | doi:10.1038/nature06134; Received 16 April 2007; Accepted 30 July 2007

Postcranial evidence from early Homo from Dmanisi, Georgia

David Lordkipanidze1, Tea Jashashvili1,2, Abesalom Vekua1, Marcia S. Ponce de León2, Christoph P. E. Zollikofer2, G. Philip Rightmire3, Herman Pontzer4, Reid Ferring5, Oriol Oms6, Martha Tappen7, Maia Bukhsianidze1, Jordi Agusti8, Ralf Kahlke9, Gocha Kiladze1, Bienvenido Martinez-Navarro8, Alexander Mouskhelishvili1, Medea Nioradze10 & Lorenzo Rook11

Georgian National Museum, 0105 Tbilisi, Georgia
Anthropologisches Institut, Universit鋞 Zürich, 8057 Zürich, Switzerland
Department of Anthropology, Peabody Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA
Department of Anthropology, Washington University, St Louis, Missouri 63130, USA
Department of Geography, University of North Texas, Denton, Texas 76203, USA
Departament de Geologia, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 08193 Bellaterra, Spain
Department of Anthropology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55455, USA
ICREA, Institute of Human Paleoecology, University Rovira i Virgili, 43005 Tarragona, Spain
Senckenberg Research Institute, 99423 Weimar, Germany
Othar Lordkipanidze Center for Archaeological Research, 0102 Tbilisi, Georgia
Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra, Università di Firenze, 50121 Firenze, Italy
Correspondence to: David Lordkipanidze1 Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to D.L. (Email: dlordkipanidze@museum.ge).

The Plio-Pleistocene site of Dmanisi, Georgia, has yielded a rich fossil and archaeological record documenting an early presence of the genus Homo outside Africa. Although the craniomandibular morphology of early Homo is well known as a result of finds from Dmanisi and African localities, data about its postcranial morphology are still relatively scarce. Here we describe newly excavated postcranial material from Dmanisi comprising a partial skeleton of an adolescent individual, associated with skull D2700/D2735, and the remains from three adult individuals. This material shows that the postcranial anatomy of the Dmanisi hominins has a surprising mosaic of primitive and derived features. The primitive features include a small body size, a low encephalization quotient and absence of humeral torsion; the derived features include modern-human-like body proportions and lower limb morphology indicative of the capability for long-distance travel. Thus, the earliest known hominins to have lived outside of Africa in the temperate zones of Eurasia did not yet display the full set of derived skeletal features.