Lordkipanidze David, Vekua Abesalom, Ferring Reid, Rightmire G Philip, Zollikofer Christoph P E, Ponce de León Marcia S, Agusti Jordi, Kiladze Gocha, Mouskhelishvili Alexander, Nioradze Medea, Tappen Martha
Georgian National Museum, Tbilisi, Georgia.
Anat Rec A Discov Mol Cell Evol Biol. 2006 Nov;288(11):1146-57. doi: 10.1002/ar.a.20379.
Newly discovered Homo remains, stone artifacts, and animal fossils from Dmanisi, Republic of Georgia, provide a basis for better understanding patterns of hominin evolution and behavior in Eurasia ca. 1.77 million years ago. Here we describe a fourth skull that is nearly complete, lacking all but one of its teeth at the time of death. Both the maxillae and the mandible exhibit extensive bone loss due to resorption. This individual is similar to others from the site but supplies information about variation in brain size and craniofacial anatomy within the Dmanisi paleodeme. Although this assemblage presents numerous primitive characters, the Dmanisi skulls are best accommodated within the species H. erectus. On anatomical grounds, it is argued that the relatively small-brained and lightly built Dmanisi hominins may be ancestral to African and Far Eastern branches of H. erectus showing more derived morphology.
新发现的来自格鲁吉亚共和国德马尼西的直立人遗骸、石器和动物化石，为更好地理解约177万年前欧亚大陆早期人类的进化模式和行为提供了依据。在此，我们描述了第四个几乎完整的头骨，该头骨在死亡时除一颗牙齿外其余牙齿全部缺失。上颌骨和下颌骨均因吸收而出现大面积骨质流失。该个体与该遗址的其他个体相似，但提供了有关德马尼西古群体内脑容量和颅面解剖结构变异的信息。尽管这一组合呈现出许多原始特征，但德马尼西头骨最适合归入直立人这一物种。基于解剖学依据，有人认为脑容量相对较小、体格较轻的德马尼西早期人类可能是非洲和远东地区具有更多衍生形态的直立人分支的祖先。
