Its discoverers claim the find sinks more than a dozen species into a single evolutionary line leading to living people. But the new study highlights the propensity of some anthropologists to overstep the mark, interpreting the importance of their finds in a way that grabs the headlines.
More big claims
The more-than-150-year history of human evolutionary science is filled with many remarkable and headline-grabbing episodes.
Some of them were proved correct: Eugene Dubois’ 1891-92 discovery of Pithecanthropus (now Homo erectus), Raymond Dart’s 1925 announcement of Australopithecus africanus, and more recently, Michael Morwood and co-worker’s 2004 announcement of Homo floresiensis.
But today’s article in Science by David Lordkipanidze and co-workers is going to make an even bigger splash, by challenging a well-established paradigm.
They described and compared a new skull from the Dmanisi site in Georgia, dated to around 1.8 million years old. It is one of five...