KNM WT 17000
Black Skull ( " Black Skull " ) refers to a 2.5 ± 0.07 million years old fossil of Paranthropus aethiopicus, which was discovered in 1985 by Alan Walker west of Lake Turkana in Kenya. In the first scientific description by Alan Walker, Richard Leakey et al. the Fund was still made way Australopithecus boisei. The fossil bears the archive number KNM- WT 17000 and is kept in the Kenyan National Museum (hence: KNM, WT stands for West Turkana ).
The nickname " Black Skull " was given to the Fund, as he encamped several hundred thousand years in a strong manganese -containing soil, why were emplaced during the fossilization manganese oxides, which gave the fossil the bluish- black color.
KNM- WT 17000 is derived from an adult individual and consists of its massive skull and the widely drawn forward face skull with preserved in situ right third premolar of the upper jaw. It is also noticeable the towering head crest. It lacks a part of the skullcap, also missing some fragments from the area of the facial bones. Overall, the degree of preservation of a fossil this age is unusually good, as Walker, Leakey et al. " No evidence of any plastic deformation " and discovered the cranium its " spherical shape " ( " spheroidal shape" ) was retained. It is also the only previously known skull of a Paranthropus aethiopicus adult. For the intracranial space has a volume of 410 cm3 was calculated.
In the first description of the skull was noted that the fossil a much more prominent overbite ( the maxillary anterior teeth sticking well above the mandibular anterior teeth also ) having as all previously known fossils of the so-called robust australopithecines; the position of the teeth is rather to describe as largely orthognathisch. Therefore, it can not be excluded that the assignment of the skull should be revised to Australopithecus boisei in the light of further discoveries. Maybe there is a familial proximity to the mandibular fragment Omo 18-1967-18, the type specimen of the species aethiopicus Paraustralopithecus first time in 1967 scientifically described by Camille and Yves Coppens Arambourg; as a potential species names proposed Walker, Leakey et al. Australopithecus aethiopicus at the same time before.
In fact, it now came to an intensive professional scientific discussion of the kinship of finds from the mold circle of " robust" australopithecines, which already in 1987 in a merger of the Black Skull, the - considerably deviating dentate - Lower jaw fragment Omo 18-1967-18 and some Another bone fragments and teeth resulted in a new way, which (of a part of the researchers and even today ) was first Australopithecus aethiopicus Paranthropus aethiopicus, and later referred to as.