1.5-Million-Year-Old Hominin Fossil May Show How the Oldest Human Species Lived, Evolved

New research of a 1.5 million-year-old vertebra, the earliest hominins may have expanded outside Africa in numerous waves, each following diverse environments and equipped for different ways of life.

An Ars Technica report specified that when the first members of the human species ventured out of Africa, they walked into a world that past hominins like Homo erectus, had initially explored one million years earlier.

Anthropologists discovered the single vertebra from a hominin child's back who died about 1.5 million years ago at an archeological location in Ubeidya, Israel.

Combined with the fossilized bones of mammoths, saber-toothed tigers, hippos, and warthogs, the bone had sat among the relics of Pleistocene fauna since the excavation that unearthed it in 1966.

The Human Fossil Discovery

When Miriam Belmaker, a University of Tulsa anthropologist and co-author on the recent study looked through the animal fossils, she was able to recognize the vertebra belonging to a member of Homo, hum genus.

More so, the fact that the said pieces of the vertebra had not all fused together into one hard, bony piece, meant that it came from a child who had not yet completed growth and maturity. Perhaps, as described in the research, the child aged between six and 11 years old when he or she died.

The child had lived during a significant moment of human evolution. Between 1.9 million and 1.1 million years ago, some of the modern human genus' earliest members started expanding into Asia and Europe for the first time.

The present human species repeated an akin journey out of Africa approximately one million years after, although much earlier "hominins did it first."

'Acheulean'

In the now-called Jordan Valley, the early hominins, lived in a "warm, humid woodland." They were said to have shared the landscape with archetypical Pleistocene species such as saber-toothed tigers, giant buffalo, and mammoths, along with animals such as jaguars, warthogs, and baboons.

For their food preparation, the early humans were using a stone tool style that archeologists call "Acheulean."

Meanwhile, at Dmanisi Cave located farther north or now known as Georgia, other hominins lived in open, drier grassland, and used stone stool technology type now called "Olduwan."

The fact that hominin groups in different portions of Eurasia used different tool collections, some paleontologists proposes that hominins left Africa in many different waves with each bringing different cultural adaptations including the stone tools.

Height of the Child at 'Ubeidya'

In their study published in Scientific Reports, the researchers estimated that the child at 'Ubeidya possibly stood approximately 155 centimeters tall, or roughly five feet.

If the boy or girl was between six and 11 years old when they died, as the vertebra's unfused parts suggested, they were quite tall for their age. This is in comparison to the average height for a 13-year-old boy, or a 12.5-year-old girl in the modern US.

As an adult, this individual would have stood somewhere around 6'5" tall, roughly 20 centimeters taller than today's average American.

Meaning, those who lived in the Jordan Valley more than one million years ago used different tools in order to survive in a different environment compared to those at Dmanisi. Tthe two groups were found to be quite different in size.

Related information about the modern oldest human fossil discovered is shown on the National Geographic's YouTube video below:

Check out more news and information on Fossils in Science Times.