Turkana Boy

Turkana Boy or Nariokotome Boy called the fossil of a male individual of the genus Homo, which was exceptionally intact retarded skeletal in August 1984 in Kenya on Nariokotome River, about 5 km west of Lake Turkana, discovered.

Description

In the first description the fossil was found to Homo erectus and dated to 1.6 million years; the age of the youth at the time of death was due to the permanent teeth are not fully erupted first to 11 to 13 years estimated (later to 9 years) and his height 169 cm; in a later analysis of the bone structure, the age of the fossil with 1.53 million years, and the body size was reported at 141-147 cm. Bernard Wood also hit of 1992, the Fossil - along with other finds of comparable age and comparable appearance - to provide to Homo ergaster, a species whose characteristics were never precisely delimited against Homo erectus and against other comparable ancient species of Hominini. The skull is very similar to the Homo erectus finds in Asia, in particular to the Java man.

Due to its more than 90 -percent completeness - there were around 80, but discovered partly broken body bone from the region below the neck - could be studied on the basis of this finding for the first time important differences between Homo erectus and Homo sapiens; only the majority of foot and hand bones was missing, and the skull was broken into 70 fragments. The reconstruction of the skull tactics involved an internal volume of about 880 cc, which would have presumably increased in adults at about 910 cm ³ (for comparison, the brain volume of people now is about 1400 cm ³). A particularly striking difference from modern man is that the spinal canal is much narrower than that of Homo sapiens.

The scientific name of the find is KNM- WT 15000, of custody is the Nairobi National Museum (formerly National Museum of Kenya, therefore KNM; WT for the west side of Lake Turkana ). The first indication of the most complete Homo erectus fossil - a skull fragment - discovered Kamoya Kimeu on August 23, 1984; the recovery of the entire skeleton by the research group of Alan Walker and Richard Leakey took five years, during which moved 1,500 tons of sediment and were searched. Until today - apart from some 100,000 year old Neanderthal skeletons - no skeleton comparable fully preserved a Chrono species of Hominini been discovered.