Homo habilis

From EvoWiki

Homo habilis is an extinct species of hominid of the genus Homo.

There has been some doubt about the taxon H. habilis sought after by Louis Leakey. Leakey spent several years in the Olduvai Gorge looking for a "true man" between the Australopithecines and Homo erectus. Supporters of Leakey point to OH 7 (called by some the "pre-Zinj juvenile") as its type specimen. Leakey observed differences in cranial shape and tooth proportions as compared with Australopithecines, in addition to a brain that is about twenty percent larger. But C. L. Brace and Ashley Montagu state that, of the specimens extracted from Olduvai Gorge by the Leakeys, those called H. habilis in Bed I are indistinguishable from Australopithicus, and the alleged H. habilis finds in Bed II are compatible with Homo erectus (Human Evolution 1977:294).

Possible confirmation of the species classification H. habilis was uncovered in East Lake Turkana (ER 1470). Jurmain et al. points out that the skull vault and face are unlike Australopithecines in several ways and yet that the face is still robust. It is dated to roughly the same time as the Olduvai finds, i.e. 1.8 to 1.6 million years ago (Introduction to Physical Anthropology 2000:274). Anthropologists think that an early form of Homo, which might be called Homo habilis, was living alongside the Australopithecines in Africa from roughly 2.5 million years ago and 1.5 million years ago, at which point the Australopithecines went extinct.