Re: 30,000 year old Homo erectus

Gerrit Hanenburg (G.Hanenburg@inter.nl.net)
Tue, 17 Dec 1996 18:09:00 GMT

pmanansala@csus.edu (Paul Kekai Manansala) wrote:

>>Out of curiosity, what characters does Wolpoff feel are shared between
>>Javanese Homo erectus and modern Australian (aborigines I assume)?

>I'll have to dig around for some of his older works. It mostly involves
>things (working from memory) like the shape of the frontal region and
>the brow ridges, the shape of the occiput, bumps around the parietal
>region, the shape of the orbit, etc. Hope I haven't gotten this confused
>with something else.

Frayer et al.(1993) mention the following Australasian synapomorphies:

-thickened fault bones
-long,flattened frontal squama
-strong,straight continuous browridges
-posterior position for minimum frontal breadth
-prebregmatic eminence
-large projecting faces
-massive,rounded cheekbones facing antero-laterally
-large postcanine teeth
-"rolled edge" on the lower margin of the orbits
-ridge on the cheek at the zygomaxillary suture
-nasal floor that flows out smoothly onto the face
-pattern of dental reduction ("holding sex constant,average postcanine
tooth size does not change in this clade until the Holocene")

Frayer,D.W.,Wolpoff,M.H.,Thorne,A.G.,Smith,F.H.,Pope,G.G.(1993),
Theories of Modern Human Origins:The Paleontological Test.
American Anthropologist 95(1):14-50

Gerrit