Fossil discovery reveals real age of homo erectus
An international team including Monash BDI researcher Dr Justin Adams has been widely reported as unearthing the earliest known skull of Homo erectus, our first ancestor to be nearly human-like in anatomy and aspects of behaviour. Published in Science, the study reveals that the two-million-year-old fossil was reconstructed from more than 150 fragments excavated northwest of Johannesburg, South Africa, over five years.
The news that Homo erectus existed 100,000 to 200,000 years earlier than previously thought appeared in media outlets including BrightSurf, the Herald-Sun and its syndicated outlets, the ABC, National Geographic, The Guardian and Telegana Today, India. The Smithsonian and the BBC concentrated on the finding that three different early humans—Australopithecus, Paranthropus and Homo erectus—appear to have lived at the same time in the same place.
Dr Adams was part of a team of nearly 30 researchers led by La Trobe University.