Homo Rudolfensis - KNM-ER 1470

KNM-ER 1470

The fossil KNM-ER 1470 was the center of much debate concerning its species. The skull was at first incorrectly dated at nearly three million years old, predating the Homo habilis species. Since then, the estimate has been corrected to 1.9 million years, but the differences in this skull, when compared to others of the Homo habilis species, are said to be too pronounced, leading to the presumption of a Homo rudolfensis species, contemporary with Homo habilis. It is not certain whether H. rudolfensis was ancestral to the later species of Homo, or whether H. habilis was, or whether some third species, yet undiscovered, was ancestral to the later Homo line.

In March 2007, a team led by Timothy Bromage, an anthropologist at New York University, reconstructed the skull of KNM-ER 1470. The new construction looked very ape-like (possibly due to an exaggerated rotation of the skull) and the cranial capacity based on the new construction was reported to be downsized from 752 cm³ to about 526 cm³, although this seemed to be a matter of some controversy. Bromage said his team's reconstruction included biological knowledge not known at the time of the skull's discovery, of the precise relationship between the sizes of eyes, ears, and mouth in mammals. A newer publication by Bromage has since further downsized the cranial capacity estimate from 752 cm³ to 700 cm³.

Read more about this topic:  Homo Rudolfensis