Homo gautengensis is a species name proposed by anthropologistDarren Curnoe in 2010 for South Africanhominin fossils otherwise attributed toH. habilis,H. ergaster, or, in some cases,Australopithecus orParanthropus. The fossils assigned to the species by Curnoe cover a vast temporal range, from about 1.8 million years ago to potentially as late as 0.8 million years ago, meaning that if the species is considered valid,H. gautengensis would be both one of the earliest and one of the longest lived species ofHomo.
Since Curnoe's 2010 description, recognition of the species has been limited. The classification of most of the fossils referred toH. gautengensis was controversial before the description of the species and continue to be controversial to this day. Somepalaeoanthropologists have gone as far as to declare that there is little reason to considerH. gautengensis a valid taxon.
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Palaeoanthropologists vary in their recognition of whichhominin fossil represents the earliest record of the genusHomo (and in what range of morphology the genus should encompass). Most of the fossils contending for the position have been dated to between 2.4 and 2.1 million years ago, and their classification is highly controversial on the genus level. Along with fossils such as the mandiblesAL 666 from Ethiopia andUR 501 from Malawi (both probably exceeding 2.1 million years in age), a skull designatedStw 53 was once one of the primary contenders.[1] Today, the fossil commonly seen as the earliest fossil specimen of theHomo genus isLD 350-1, a fossil jaw excavated in 2013 in theAfar Region in Ethiopia, dated to about 2.8 million years old.[2]
Stw 53 was discovered in August 1976 nearKrugersdorp,Transvaal in South Africa and was described in 1977 by palaeoanthropologists Alun R. Hughes and Philip V. Tobias as a skull probably from an early species ofHomo.[3] Though many palaeoanthropologists recognised the fossil as representing a species ofHomo, possiblyH. habilis, this has never been universally accepted, many instead seeing it as a specimen ofAustralopithecus africanus.[4] Though the site of the fossils was initially dated to over 2 million years old, work from 2012 suggests that the site was significantly younger, at 1.78–1.43 million years old.[1]
In 2010, anthropologistDarren Curnoe reviewed the large amount of fossil hominin specimens from South Africa and concluded that some of the fossils were sufficiently different from the other locally recognisedHomo species (H. habilis andH. ergaster/H. erectus) to represent a new species.[5] The classification of the fossil material in South Africa, on account of much of it being fragmentary, has historically been highly contested. A few scholars believed that the region didn't preserve any species ofHomo, arguing that the fossil material all belonged to australopithecines. Others believed that a single species was represented (H. ergaster) and others accepted the presence of bothH. ergaster/H. erectus andH. habilis.[4] Prior to Curnoe's description, it had already been suggested by other palaeoanthropologists, such as Frederick E. Grine and colleagues in 1993 and 1996 that Stw 53, and another skull,SK 847, represented a new species closely related toH. habilis.[6][7]
Based on a number of features in the teeth and skull Curnoue concluded to be distinguishing between Stw 53 and SK 847, and the typical conditions of these features inH. habilis andH. ergaster specimens, Curnoe stated that "it is now clear that the southern African fossils are morphologically too distinct" to be accommodated within either species. As such, Curnoe erected a new species,H. gautengensis, to accommodate them. The species namegautengensis derives from the South African provinceGauteng (its name in turn deriving from theSotho-Tswana word for "place of gold"), where the fossils referred to the species had been recovered. Alongside Stw 53 (theholotype specimen) and SK 847, Curnoe assigned numerous fossil specimens to the species, designating them asparatype specimens; SE 255, SE 1508, Stw 19b/33, Stw 75–79, Stw 80, Stw 84, Stw 151, SK 15, SK 27, SK 45, SKX 257/258, SKX 267/268, SKX 339, SKX 610, SKW 3114 and DNH 70.[8] Among the most major differences noted between Stw 53 andH. habilis by Curnoe was that some of the tooth crowns of Stw 53 were larger than the average tooth crowns ofH. habilis whereas other tooth crowns were significantly more narrow.[9]
Recognition ofH. gautengensis has been limited, with the classification of the individual fossils referred to the species still being contested among palaeoanthropologists. As an example, SK 847 has in addition toH. gautengensis also been referred toAustralopithecus africanus,Paranthropus robustus,H. habilis,H. ergaster,H. sp. nov orH. leakeyi (another proposed species with little recognition). Most of theH. gautengensis fossils are usually seen as representing fossil remains ofH. habilis orH. ergaster,[10] though no fossil has a single, universally agreed upon identification at the species level.[11] In 2011, palaeoanthropologist Lee R. Berger went as far as to state that "there is little reason to consider [H. gautengensis] a valid taxon", noting that the attribution of Stw 53 itself toHomo had been challenged on both anatomical and stratigraphic grounds. Notably, Berger stated that MH1, the holotype specimen ofAustralopithecus sediba, is more similar to earlyHomo than Stw 53 is, believing the former to be the skull of aAustralopithecus africanus or aAu. africanus-like relative ofAu. sediba.[1]H. gautengensis is not the only species name proposed for fossils historically considered by most to representH. habilis specimens, whileH. rudolfensis (once proposed for a group of fossils formerly consideredH. habilis) is widely accepted,[12] many other proposals, such asH. microcranous (for the fossilKNM-ER 1813) have little to no recognition today.[13] Antón and Middleton (2023) conducted a large analysis of hominin fossils and concluded that the Stw 53 skull cannot be allocated toHomo, SK 847 isH. aff.erectus, and Stw 80 is from an indeterminate genus.[14]
The specimens referred toH. gautengensis by Curnoe cover a vast temporal range, from ~2 million years ago (or 1.78–1.43 million years according to more recent dating[1]) to as late as 1.26–0.82 million years ago. If valid,H. gautengensis would be one of the earliest recognised species ofHomo (as fossils earlier than 2 million years old have rarely been assigned at the species level) and also one of the most long-lived, spanning a period of time of over a million years.[15]
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of July 2025 (link)| Taxonomy (Hominins) |
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