Winnipeg researcher helps name new species of early humans
WINNIPEG -
New research, led by a Winnipeg paleoanthropologist, has resulted in the naming of a species of early humans.
The name of the human ancestor is “homo bodoensis,” which is a precursor to modern humans that lack our brain size. The homo bodoensis lived in Africa about half a million years ago.
The new name is based on the reassessment of fossils from Africa and Eurasia from the Middle Pleistocene.
Mirjana Roksandic, the lead researcher of the study and an anthropology professor at the University of Winnipeg, said the naming helps researchers to understand the development of human evolution in the Middle Pleistocene, which took place 774,000 to 129,000 years ago.
She noted the research looked at the distribution of primitive traits, inherited from distant ancestors; shared derived traits that appeared by mutation in the most recent ancestors; and specific traits that make Neanderthals.
“We came up with the fact that the distribution shows us that we have in Africa, we have only traits that are primitive, shared derived (traits), and specific then to modern humans,” Roksandic said.
“This makes Africa the best candidate for development of modern human species. This Middle Pleistocene species is different from modern humans because the shape of the brain is not yet the derived shape of the human brain.”
She described the homo bodoensis as the “in between species” that gave rise to the modern human.
“It provides us with the pool of variation that actually can lead to modern human variation,” Roksandic said.
Roksandic said when they started working on the research, they weren’t intending to name a new species.
“As we worked on this paper, we actually said, ‘Well, we’re going to have to name a new species if we’re going to be able to communicate clearly and simply about what is happening,” she said.
Roksandic said the process is nerve-wracking, because there are a lot of reasons you don’t want to name a new species.
“It was our way of solving the problems that we faced in explaining human evolution,” she said.
The name of a species is rare, and is only granted under strict circumstances by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature.
- With files from CTV’s Michael D’Alimonte.
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