At one time the proposed hominid line taught to new anthropology students was pretty simple. It went something like Australopithicus to Homo habilis, habilis to H. erectus, erectus to us. This was debated, but it was a basic view the fossil evidence supported.
It’s more complicated now, that tree is bushy, but the good news is some details have been filled in. One of the details is or was Homo rudolfensis, henceforth called Rudy here, a proposed subspecies that lived about 2 MYA. But Rudy was only represented by a handful of teeth, bone scraps, and one beautifully preserved, fairly complete skull dubbed KNM-ER 1470 found by none other than Richard and Meave Leakey at Koobo Fora, Kenya, in 1972. That may have changed this week: [Read more…]