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Meeting Physical Anthropology and Paleoanthropology
The long-legged, relatively big-brained hominid called Homo erectus has long been considered the Moses of the human family -the species that led the first exodus out of Africa more than 1.5 million years ago. But that view was challenged recently when a team working in Dmanisi, Georgia, uncovered three small, 1.75-million-year-old skulls that are older and more primitive than any H. erectus in Africa. They raised the startling possibility that an earlier, small-brained species left Africa first (Science, 5 July 2002, pp. 26 and 85).
Now another surprisingly small skull has been unearthed-this time in Kenya. Introduced at the meeting, the diminutive fossil bears a surprising resemblance to the smallest skull from Dmanisi, according to paleontologist Meave Leakey, whose team from the National Museums of Kenya dug up the fossil in 2000. The researchers identify the unpublished skull as the smallest H erectus known from Africa, implying that some members of this peripatetic species had a puny brain case.
"It shows the incredible variation in size within H. erectus," says paleontologist Fred Spoor of University College London, UK., a member of Leakey's team. He adds that the resemblance between the Kenyan and...