Homo erectus in South Africa two million years ago, 200,000 years before Dmanisi

Researchers have described 18 new hominin fossils from Drimolen in South Africa's Cradle of Humankind, including a roughly two-million-year-old skull fragment of an adult Homo erectus, in a study published in Annals of Human Biology and reported by ScienceDaily on October 8.

The fragment, catalogued DNH 127, is about 200,000 years older than the adult fossils from Dmanisi in Georgia, about 1.8 million years old, which had been considered the oldest such finds.

Two evolutionary paths

At Drimolen, Paranthropus robustus, a heavy-jawed relative, outnumbered Homo erectus by more than ten to one, said Jesse Martin of La Trobe University. The two species evolved in opposite directions between 2.0 and 1.8 million years ago: Homo erectus towards a bigger brain and smaller molars, P. robustus towards bigger teeth and jaws.