Homo habilis
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Homo habilis Temporal range: Early |
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| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Clade: | Synapsida |
| Class: | Mammalia |
| Order: | Primates |
| Suborder: | Haplorhini |
| Family: | Hominidae |
| Tribe: | Hominini |
| Genus: | Homo |
| Species: | †H. habilis |
| Binomial name | |
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Homo habilis Leakey et al., 1964 |
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Homo habilis is a species of the tribe Hominini, during the Gelasian and early Calabrian stages of the period, which lived between roughly 2.1 and 1.5 million years ago, with a possible discovery of a fragment of a jawbone intermediate between Australopithecus and H. habilis dated to 2.8 million years ago reported in 2013.
A team led by scientists Louis and Mary Leakey uncovered the fossilized remains during the time frame of 1960-1963 at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania; these fossils were speculated to be a new species, and called Homo habilis (" man"), because they suspected that it was this slightly larger-brained early human that made the thousands of stone tools also found at Olduvai Gorge.
In its appearance and morphology, H. habilis is the least similar to modern humans of all species in the genus Homo (except the equally controversial H. rudolfensis), and its classification as Homo has been the subject of controversial debate since its first proposal in the 1960s.
There has been scholarly debate regarding its placement in the genus Homo rather than the genus Australopithecus. The small size and rather primitive attributes have led some experts (Richard Leakey among them) to propose excluding H. habilis from the genus Homo and placing them instead in Australopithecus as Australopithecus habilis.
Louis Leakey, the British-Kenyan paleoanthropologist who was the first to suggest the existence of H. habilis, and his wife, Mary Leakey, found the first trace of H. habilis in 1955: two hominin teeth. These were later classified as "milk teeth", and therefore considered difficult to link to taxa unlike permanent teeth. However, in 1959, Mary Leakey recovered the cranium of a young adult which had a small brain, large face, tiny canines and massive chewing teeth (which earned it the nickname of "The Nutcracker man").
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Wikipedia