Unité Mixte de Recherche 6578, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique/Université de la Méditerranée/Etablissement Français du Sang, Marseille, France.
PLoS One. 2011 Apr 20;6(4):e18821. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0018821.
One of the present challenges in the study of human evolution is to recognize the hominin taxon that was ancestral to Homo sapiens. Some researchers regard H. heidelbergensis as the stem species involved in the evolutionary divergence leading to the emergence of H. sapiens in Africa, and to the evolution of the Neandertals in Europe. Nevertheless, the diagnosis and hypodigm of H. heidelbergensis still remain to be clarified. Here we evaluate the morphology of the incomplete cranium (calvarium) known as Ceprano whose age has been recently revised to the mid of the Middle Pleistocene, so as to test whether this specimen may be included in H. heidelbergensis. The analyses were performed according to a phenetic routine including geometric morphometrics and the evaluation of diagnostic discrete traits. The results strongly support the uniqueness of H. heidelbergensis on a wide geographical horizon, including both Eurasia and Africa. In this framework, the Ceprano calvarium--with its peculiar combination of archaic and derived traits--may represent, better than other penecontemporaneous specimens, an appropriate ancestral stock of this species, preceding the appearance of regional autapomorphic features.
人类进化研究目前面临的挑战之一是要识别出哪些原始人类是智人的祖先。一些研究人员认为海德堡人是参与导致人类在非洲出现以及尼安德特人在欧洲进化的进化分支的原始物种。然而，海德堡人的诊断和模式种仍然需要澄清。在这里，我们评估了最近被重新修订为中更新世中期的 Ceprano 不完整头骨（颅骨）的形态，以测试该标本是否可以归入海德堡人。分析是根据一种表型程序进行的，包括几何形态测量学和诊断离散特征的评估。结果强烈支持海德堡人在广泛的地理范围内的独特性，包括欧亚大陆和非洲。在这个框架内，Ceprano 颅骨——具有古老和衍生特征的独特组合——可能比其他同时代的标本更能代表该物种的合适祖先种群，早于区域特化特征的出现。
