Kenyanthropus

Kenyanthropus platyops

• Kenya

Kenyanthropus platyops is a fossil species from the species of the great apes, which was assigned by their discoverers, the immediate ancestors of man ( Hominini ). Since Kenyanthropus platyops some characteristics with Paranthropus, Australopithecus anamensis and Homo rudolfensis shares, in others different from this, its exact position in the human family tree is controversial. Some researchers believe that it is a special form of the genus Australopithecus at Kenyanthropus platyops.

Naming

The name of this kind, the first description was published in 2001 by Meave Leakey, Louise Leakey and others, points to the location west of Lake Turkana in Kenya, assigns it to the people (Greek anthropus = man) and describes the external appearance (Greek Platus = flat, opsis = face); The name actually means " flachgesichtiger man from Kenya ". In the English -speaking world the first description of the underlying Fossil also "Flat Faced Man" is called.

Kenyanthropus platyops is the only species of the genus Kenyanthropus. Chance, however, the species Homo rudolfensis is interpreted as a second species of the genus Kenyanthropus and therefore referred to as " Kenyanthropus rudolfensis ".

The type specimen

The holotype of Kenyanthropus platyops and with it the genus Kenyanthropus locality was in August 1999 by Justus Eru on the so-called Lomekwi that drains in northern Kenya to Lake Turkana out discovered. He wears the archive number KNM- WT 40,000. The almost complete skull fragment of a left maxilla was placed to the side ( KNM- WT 38350 ), which had been recovered already in August 1998 at the same location of Blasto Onyango in the original description as paratype. The type specimen has been dated to an age of 3.5 million years, and the Nairobi National Museum (formerly National Museum of Kenya, therefore KNM ) held in Nairobi.

The size of the single so far discovered the skull of Kenyanthropus platyops corresponds, according to the first description of those of Australopithecus africanus and Australopithecus afarensis, but the shape of the facial skeleton was reconstructed much flatter hundreds of fragments than in the other two species. It is also interesting that Australopithecus afarensis lived at the same time as Kenyanthropus platyops in Africa. The habitat of Kenyanthropus platyops could be identified as relatively moist and therefore well covered on the basis of botanical and zoological companion finds. The numerous finds of fossil Bovidae suggest a landscape that was characterized by transitions between savannah and bush areas and also in the watercourses and lakes existed with gallery forests.

The locomotion of Kenyanthropus platyops is unclear, since no arm or leg bones were discovered.

Controversy

Both findings, to which the first description of Kenyanthropus platyops based, were found in poor condition imaginable: the cranium KNM- WT 40000 had been crushed into a thousand fragments scraped, and the maxilla KNM- WT 38350 consisted of several fragments. Several dozen other finds, including a right lower jaw with all the back teeth ( KNM- WT 8556 ), a skull fragment with an ear canal ( KNM- WT 4001 ) and several teeth, although deriving from similar ancient Fund layers as the two fragments of the type instance, have but no features on the basis of which they clearly Kenyanthropus platyops could assign. 2003 therefore argued Tim White, the skull fragments were much too deformed ( "these characters have Virtually all been Influenced to varying degrees by expanding matrix distortion" ), as that their reconstruction of the foundation of a new generic name should have been made ​​; if it were possibly a variant of Australopithecus afarensis. Other scientists presented the findings in the near Australopithecus anamensis or proposed to place him as Homo platyops to Homo. Meave Leakey, however, remained in their thesis of a separate genus.