La paléoanthropologie jusqu’aux dernières années du 20e siècle n’avait guère de doutes . Les premiers représentants de l’espèce homo sapiens se distinguaient clairement des derniers australopithèqus. L’étude des gènes provenant d’ossements fossilisés de femelles appartenant indiscutablement à l’espèce sapiens et qui furent rapprochés de gènes appartenant à des ossements d’australopithèques a depuis mis en évidence le fait que les deux espèces auraient cohabité jusqu’à la disparition, pour des raisons encore peu précises, des australopithèques
Au contraire, l’article dont nous publions ici les références et l’abstract présente une étude récente montrant que en Afrique du Sud des fossiles de dents prouvent que la part des sapiens est moins grande que l’on ne le pensait jusqu’à présent. Ceci peut venir corroborer la thèse selon laquelle la distinction entre homo(s) et australopithèques n’a pas beaucoup de sens. Nous sommes tous un peu des sapiens !!!
Référence
Dental data challenge the ubiquitous presence of Homo in the Cradle of Humankind
July 5, 2022
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2111212119
Significance
Identifying the earliest members of the genus Homo is crucial for understanding when and where selective pressures resulted in its emergence from a Plio-Pleistocene hominin taxon. Our revision of a large part of the dental fossil record from southern Africa provides evidence suggesting a paucity of Homo remains and indicates increased levels of dental variation in australopith taxa. Results of the Ba/Ca, Sr/Ca, and elemental mapping of enamel and dentine also indicate that some of the purported Homo specimens show a paleoecological signal similar to that of the australopiths.
Abstract
The origins of Homo, as well as the diversity and biogeographic distribution of early Homo species, remain critical outstanding issues in paleoanthropology. Debates about the recognition of early Homo, first appearance dates, and taxonomic diversity within Homo are particularly important for determining the role that southern African taxa may have played in the origins of the genus. The correct identification of Homo remains also has implications for reconstructing phylogenetic relationships between species of Australopithecus and Paranthropus, and the links between early Homo species and Homo erectus. We use microcomputed tomography and landmark-free deformation-based three-dimensional geometric morphometrics to extract taxonomically informative data from the internal structure of postcanine teeth attributed to Early Pleistocene Homo in the southern African hominin-bearing sites of Sterkfontein, Swartkrans, Drimolen, and Kromdraai B. Our results indicate that, from our sample of 23 specimens, only 4 are unambiguously attributed to Homo, 3 of them coming from Swartkrans member 1 (SK 27, SK 847, and SKX 21204) and 1 from Sterkfontein (Sts 9). Three other specimens from Sterkfontein (StW 80 and 81, SE 1508, and StW 669) approximate the Homo condition in terms of overall enamel–dentine junction shape, but retain Australopithecus-like dental traits, and their generic status remains unclear. The other specimens, including SK 15, present a dominant australopith dental signature. In light of these results, previous dietary and ecological interpretations can be reevaluated, showing that the geochemical signal of one tooth from Kromdraai (KB 5223) and two from Swartkrans (SK 96 and SKX 268) is consistent with that of australopiths._
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NB. Homo présentés ici dans l’ordre chronologique : rudolfensis, georgicus, habilis, ergaster, erectus, antecessor, heidelbergensis, neanderthalensis, naledi, floresiensis et sapiens.
Australopithèque: Primate fossile de la famille des hominidés, connu par des ossements d’Afrique australe et orientale, découverts à partir de 1924.
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