Fossil Discoveries

H. neanderthalensis

• 1856

• Feldhofer cave

• Engis (child skull) in Belgium in 1829 and Gibraltar (cranium) in Forbes’s Quarry in 1848

H. erectus

• 1894

• Island of Java, Indonesia

• Eugene Dubois

Piltdown

• 1912

• Believed to be an early example of humans in Europe

• Hoax

• Found by Charles Dawson, originally described by Sir Arthur Smith Woodward, and Arthur Keith helped make it

• Modern human skull and an orangutan mandible with filed down teeth

Au. africanus

• 1925

• Limestone quarry in Taung, South Africa

• Recognized by Raymond Arthur Dart that it wasn’t an ape and he was qualified to say so

• 1st evidence of a creature more primitive than H. erectus

• Juvenile

• Considered by most to be ancestor of African apes

P. robustus

• 1938

• Kromdraoi, South Africa

• Robert Broom

• Fairly large and has big molars

• Early hominin, but less likely to be ancestors to modern humans

H. erectus

• 1940

• Franz Weidenreich had casts made and described things

• Beijing

P. boisei

• 1959

• Olduvai Gorge

• Mary Leakey

• Skull

• Found near stone tools

• Small brain, heavyset face, and large teeth

H. habilis

• 1964

• Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania

• Louis Leakey

• Larger brain than Australopithecus, smaller dentition, smoother and rounded cranium, bones of the hand showed human-like hand proportions

• Found with flaked stone tools

H. rudolfensis

• 1970s

Au. afarensis

• Haddock in Ehtiopia

• Maurice Taieb and Donald Johanson

• 1974: Discovered “Lucy”

Ar. ramidus

• 1994

• Afar Rift Valley in Ethiopia

• Timothy White and John Desmond Clark

• Upright body position but not as bipedal as us

Au. anamensis

• 1995

• Kanapoi, southern end of Lake Turkane

• Maeve Leakey

• We found a pretty complete cranium of it in Woroansa-Mille, Ethiopia in 2019

O. tugensis

• 2001

• Tugen Hills, Kenya

• Brigitte Senut and Martin Pickford

• Fairly small amount of fossils and is contentious

• Cranial material, some dentition, and a femur

• Probably could stand upright

S. tchadensis

• 2002

• Chad

• Michael Brunet

• Poorly preserved cranium and femur

• Reduced canine size and probably had upright posture

• Debate about if it’s a hominin or not

H. floresiensis

• 2004

• Cave in Indonesia

• Insular dwarfism of H. erectus or new species?

Au. sediba

• 2010

• Malapa, South Africa

• Matthew and Lee Berger

• Fairly preserved skull of a juvenile (MH1) and part of a skeleton of a female (MH2)

• Discussions on if it’s a new species or not

Denisovans

• 2015

• Cave in Siberia

• Very small fragment of a finger bone with a lot of DNA preserved

• Couldn’t create a new species because there weren’t any morphological features to describe

• A skull found in China in 2021 was found to have a DNA match in 2025

H. maledi

• 2015

• Rising Star cave system in South Africa

• Fairly large amount of material

• Pretty well preserved and a lot of fossils from the same species (some people say it’s evidence of deliberate burial)