Herto remains

Herto remains

For more information, click here. Or, Try these sources:

  • "Meet the Contenders for Earliest Modern Human". Smithsonian. January 11, 2012. Can be read here.
  • Amos, Jonathan (June 11, 2003). "Oldest human skulls found". BBC News. Can be read here.

Homo sapiens idaltu, also called Herto Man, is the name given to a number of around 160,000-year-old hominid fossils found in 1997 in Herto Bouri, Ethiopia. As "certain cranial traits are outside the range of modern human variation", paleoanthropologists determined that the finds belong to an extinct subspecies of Homo sapiens who lived in Pleistocene Africa. According to scientists, "[the fossil findings] predate classic Neanderthals and lack their derived features ... are morphologically and chronologically intermediate between archaic African fossils and later anatomically modern Late Pleistocene humans ... represent the probable immediate ancestors of anatomically modern humans ... their anatomy and antiquity constitute strong evidence of modern-human emergence in Africa." "Idaltu" is derived from a Saho-Afar word and translates to "elder" or "first born".

  • White, Tim D.; Asfaw, B.; DeGusta, D.; Gilbert, H.; Richards, G. D.; Suwa, G.; Howell, F. C. (2003), "Pleistocene Homo sapiens from Middle Awash, Ethiopia", Nature, 423 (6491): 742–747, Bibcode:2003Natur.423..742W, doi:10.1038/nature01669, PMID 12802332. Can be read here.