1. The old man of La Chapelle:
When: Aug.3,1908
Who: Amédée Bouyssonie, Jean Bouyssonie, Louis
Bardon
Where: La Chapelle-aux-Saints, France
What: Neanderthal skeleton (50,000 years)
Characteristics: adult male, severely curved
spine, bent knees, jutted head, large brow ridge, complete in burial, Neanderthal
Publication: L'Homme Fossile de La
Chapelle-aux-Saints by Marcellin Boule (1911)
Fiction: La Guerre u Feu by
Boex brothers
Reevaluation: osteoarthritis by William Straus
and A.J.E. Cave (1955)
2. Piltdown man:
When: Feb.14,1912
Who: Charles Dawson
Where: Piltdown, UK
What: fake fossil of ancient human (500,000
years)
Characteristics: mix of a "human skull
of medieval age, a 500-year-old lower jaw of an orangutan and chimpanzee fossil
teeth"
Exposed: 1953
3. Taung child:
When: 1924
Who: Raymond Dart
Where: Taung, South Africa
What: skull of a child (2,500,000 years), Australopithecus
africanus
Characteristics: the position of the forman
magnum indicates its bipedal
4. Peking man:
When: Dec.2, 1929
Who: Wenzhong Pei
Where: Zhoukoudian, Beijing, China
What: human-like skull(750,000 years), Homo
erectus
Characteristics: heavy brows and large chinless
jaws
5. Lucy:
When: Nov.24, 1974
Who: Tom Gray and Donald Johanson
Where: Hadar, Ethiopia, Africa
What: partial skeleton of an old female hominin
(3,250,000 years), Australopithecus afarensis
Characteristics: fragments including jaw,
cranial, spine, ribs, humerus, radial, ulnar, pelvic, femur, tibia
Publications: Lucy, the beginnings of
humankind by Donald Johanson, 1981; The quest for human
origins by Donald Johnson, 2009
6. Flo:
When: 2003
Who: Thomas Sutikna
Where: Lian Bua, Island of Flores, Indonesia
What: Small female skeleton (18,000 years),Homo
floresiensis
Characteristics:adult female, 3 feet tall, 35-65
pounds, small cranium about the size of chimpanzee's
7. Sediba:
When: Aug.15, 2008
Who: Matthew Berger and Lee Berger
Where: Malapa Nature Reserve, South Africa
What: human like skull(2,000,000 years), Australopithecus
sediba
Characteristics: link between ape and human?
Though it's a fast way to pick up some legacies
in paleoanthropology, I am disappointed with little scientific discussions
about the famous skeletons.
