Australia: The Land Where Time Began

A biography of the Australian continent 

A Complete Skull, Dmanisi, Georgia and Early Homo Evolutionary Biology

The site at Dmanisi, Georgia, has produced an impressive sample of hominid cranial and post-cranial remains, which document the presence of Homo outside Africa about 1.8 Ma. In this paper the authors¹ report on a new cranium that was recovered from the Dmanisi site (D4500)and its mandible (D2600), that together represent the first hominid skull that was completely preserved, from the Early Pleistocene. D4500/D2600) combines a small braincase of 546 cc capacity with a large prognathic face that shows close morphological affinities with the earliest known Homo skulls known from Africa. There are now 5 crania recovered from Dmanisi that provide evidence of wide morphological variation within and among early Homo paleodemes, which implies the existence of a single lineage of early Homo that is evolving, with Phylogeographic continuity across continents.

Sources & Further reading

1. Lordkipanidze, David, Marcia S. Ponce de León, Ann Margvelashvili, Yoel Rak, G. Philip Rightmire, Abesalom Vekua, and Christoph P. E. Zollikofer. "A Complete Skull from Dmanisi, Georgia, and the Evolutionary Biology of Early Homo." Science 342, no. 6156 (October 18, 2013 2013): 326-31.