First Early Hominin from Central Africa (Ishango, Democratic Republic of Congo)

Abstract

Despite uncontested evidence for fossils belonging to the early hominin genus Australopithecus in East Africa from at least 4.2 million years ago (Ma), and from Chad by 3.5 Ma, thus far there has been no convincing evidence of Australopithecus, Paranthropus or early Homo from the western (Albertine) branch of the Rift Valley. Here we report the discovery of an isolated upper molar (#Ish25) from the Western Rift Valley site of Ishango in Central Africa in a derived context, overlying beds dated to between ca. 2.6 to 2.0 Ma. We used µCT imaging to compare its external and internal macro-morphology to upper molars of australopiths, and fossil and recent Homo. We show that the size and shape of the enamel-dentine junction (EDJ) surface discriminate between Plio-Pleistocene and post-Lower Pleistocene hominins, and that the Ishango molar clusters with australopiths and early Homo from East and southern Africa. A reassessment of the archaeological context of the specimen is consistent with the morphological evidence and suggest that early hominins were occupying this region by at least 2 Ma.

Molar crown inner structural organization in Javanese Homo erectus

“…As shown by other studies, the EDJ shape analysis rather distinctly discriminates among the hominin taxa, even in the case of isolated teeth (e.g., Skinner et al, ; Crevecoeur et al, ). However, while the molars from the Kabuh Formation of the Sangiran Dome clearly share a number of features with the modern condition, the lack of adequate information from larger comparative fossil samples, either from Africa and continental Asia, currently prevents any reliable conclusion about the meaning of such similarities in an adaptive evolutionary perspective.…”

“…High resolution virtual tooth imaging coupled with 3D structural (including tissue proportions) and GM analyses of the enamel‐dentine junction have the potential for allowing more accurate inter‐taxic comparisons than those uniquely based on outer enamel morphology (e.g., Macchiarelli et al, ; Smith and Hublin, ; Smith and Tafforeau, ; Skinner et al, , b; Smith et al, ; Macchiarelli et al, ; Zanolli and Mazurier, ; Crevecoeur et al, ). However, the interpretation of the evidence for a certain degree of similarity recorded in this study between late Lower‐Early Middle Pleistocene Javanese H. erectus and modern human figures remains open.…”

Late Stone Age human remains from Ishango (Democratic Republic of Congo): New insights on Late Pleistocene modern human diversity in Africa

“…This valley is known for its early evidence for harpoons (Brooks et al, 1995;Yellen et al, 1995) and for the recent discovery of Plio-Pleistocene early hominin evidence (Crevecoeur et al, 2014). The site was first identified by Damas during his 1935Damas during his -1936…”

Sedimentology and paleoenvironments of a new fossiliferous late Miocene-Pliocene sedimentary succession in the Rukwa Rift Basin, Tanzania

“…The search for fossiliferous strata documenting this important time interval reaches beyond just South Africa and the Eastern Branch of the EARS, as demonstrated by fossil discoveries in the Lake Chad Basin of Central Africa that extend the record of human evolution back to ~7 Ma ago (Brunet et al, 2002(Brunet et al, , 2005. However, despite decades of paleontologic exploration, only a handful of fossiliferous Miocene-Pleistocene sedimentary deposits have been documented from the Western Branch (Albertine Rift) of the EARS (Pickford et al, 1993;Bromage et al, 1995;Crevecoeur et al, 2014). These rare Western Branch sites are largely limited to the northern part of the rift branch between Lake Albert and Lake Edward, where lower Miocene to Pleistocene deposits have been described from both the DRC and Uganda.…”

“…These rare Western Branch sites are largely limited to the northern part of the rift branch between Lake Albert and Lake Edward, where lower Miocene to Pleistocene deposits have been described from both the DRC and Uganda. In particular, the Semliki Valley to the south of Lake Albert in Uganda (Pickford et al, 1993), and Ishango on the north side of Lake Edwards (Crevecoeur et al, 2014), have both produced abundant faunal remains which together form part of a fairly extensive succession of fossiliferous lower Miocene-Pleistocene fluvio-lacustrine strata in this region (Roller et al, 2010). To date, the only significant fossil locality of this age in the southern portion of the EARS is in the northern Malawi Rift Basin, a segment of the Western Branch of the East African Rift System (Beltzer and Ring, 1995;Roller et al, 2010).…”