Pierre man.
This partial skull of a man 500,000 years was found in a travertine slab of a career like this in Turkey.
John Kappelman / University of Texas, Austin
workers of travertine plant near Denizli, Turkey, were recently surprised when they sawed a block limestone for tiles and discovered a portion of a human skull. Now it seems they involuntarily exposed fossilized remains of a species long sought the man who lived 500,000 years ago, researchers say. Although only four skull fragments were found, the fossil also shows the first case of tuberculosis.
The Middle East has long been an important crossroads for human travelers. "It is clear for some time that earlier hominids must have dispersed into Western Europe from Asia and / or Africa, and Turkey lies squarely on the likely route," says paleoanthropologist Philip Rightmire of Harvard University who was not part of the team. paleontologists spent decades prospecting in Turkey for remains of a human ancestor directly Homo erectus , which was the first hominid to migrate out of Africa. Although scientists have discovered fossils of H. erectus who lived there 1.7 million years in the area of Georgia, they found some fossils of man in this region that are between 1.7 million and 0,000 years ago.
After the plant manager contacted a researcher at the local university level, he alerted the rest of the team, which included researchers in France, Germany and the United States. They report in the current issue of American Journal of Physical Anthropology find that most resembles H. erectus . However, Rightmire said it might also be a member of H. heidelbergensis , a species found in Europe, which is thought to be the direct ancestor of Neanderthals.
Whatever his identity, the lead author John Kappelman of the University of Texas, Austin, said the skull bears scars that are a "ringer" to those created by the bacteria leptomeningitis tuberculosa , which causes a form of tuberculosis (TB) that attacks the membranes of the brain. The scars are the first signs of the disease in humans, said Kappelman. Previously, the earliest evidence of tuberculosis came from Egyptian and Peruvian mummies were old of thousands of years.
The presence of TB may also provide clues about what it looked like early humans and how it adapted to new habitats. If the hominid had dark skin, for example, he could have trouble getting enough vitamin D because it migrated north, because people with dark skin absorb less sunlight needed to make vitamin D than do people with fair skin. And when humans have a vitamin D deficiency, their immune system may be less vigilant, perhaps involving migrants with dark skin in Africa more vulnerable to diseases such as tuberculosis while heading climates less sunny Kappelman said.
"This is an extremely important finding," says paleoanthropologist Clark Larsen of Ohio State University, Columbus, because infectious disease can reveal new challenges faced by early humans as they moved in temperate regions. Kappelman hope the rest of the skull will eventually be located. "There were bones in the other slab, we have not," he said. "Someone can find the lottery prize of H. erectus kept in their tile counter."
Related Sites
- More details on Homo erectus
- the history of TB
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