# data[].attributes.body
The first evidence of this species was found in Tanzania and Kenya in the continent of Africa.

# data[].attributes.body
'Erectus' The one who stand Erect. Compared to Homo Habilis, they had more developed brain.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Sign up for our news briefing, including a daily special Russia-Ukraine edition

We use your sign-up to provide content in ways you've consented to and to improve our understanding of you. This may include adverts from us and 3rd parties based on our understanding. You can unsubscribe at any time. More info

Scientists have discovered that the last known members of the Homo erectus species were killed in a "mass death" event between 117,000 and 108,000 years ago - almost 300,000 years later than what was previously thought. Homo erectus is a direct ancestor of modern humans and was the first species to walk fully upright.

The new study has revealed how an isolated group of the extinct humanoid species made its last stand on the island of java in Indonesia about 110,000 years ago, the date providing researchers with a clearer insight into when and why out ancient ancestors perished.

Remains found in the 1930s were used and analysed to discover the tantalisingly close date of which the Homo erectus finally fell.

These remains were found at a bone site just above the Solo River at Ngandong, Central Java.

The site contained 12 skull caps and two lower leg bones belonging to Homo erectus.

At the time, few methods were available to accurately date the site, and the fossils were estimated to be anywhere between 550,000 to 27,000 years old.

Radiocarbon and uranium series dating were not yet developed, making it hard for the finds to penetrate any historical significance.

An international team of researchers recently reignited excavations around the village of Ngandong after renewed interest in, and question marks over, the plight of Homo erectus.

Russel Ciochon, from the University of Iowa, said: "The fossils are part of a mass death event that occurred upriver, which coincided with changing environmental conditions as open woodlands transitioned to a rainforest.

JUST IN: Archaeology discovery: How bizarre 'entranceway' was found

"This site is the last known appearance of Homo erectus found anywhere in the world.

"We can't say we dated the extinction, but we dated the last occurrence of it. We have no evidence Homo erectus lived later than that anywhere else."

Homo erectus was the first early human species to leave Africa around 1.9 million years ago.

Mr Ciochon is one of several researchers who returned to the original site to reassess the site itself and the Homo erectus remains found there.
DON'T MISS
Archaeology breakthrough: Stone-age 'chewing gum' reveals human DNA [LATEST]
Ancient discovery hidden for thousands of years baffles archaeologists [UPDATE]
Archaeologists find 500-year-old anchors which could belong to Cortes [ANAYLSIS]

Using a series of dating techniques, the team was able to refine the age of the bones to an age of 117,000 and 108,000 years old.

This makes them the latest known Homo erectus fossils in the world.

Researchers believe the individuals, all adults, were killed in a "mass death" event upstream and were subsequently washed down the river during a flood and deposited where they were eventually found, over 100,00 years later.

There are several theories as to why the group died, including a volcanic mudflow.

Author of the study, Kira Westaway, from Macquarie University, Australia, told Newsweek: "At present we don't know what this event could have been but the carcasses and bones that were lying on the landscape were incorporated into floodwaters and deposited downstream at the site of Ngandong where the river narrows slightly.

"It's likely that the fossils got caught in a log jam, build up of large woody debris in the channel, to form a sort of 'carcass jam' and then were buried in the river sediments."

Researchers used five dating techniques on sediments and fossil animal bones from the area, combining 52 age estimates for the analysis which took 13 years to complete.

Research leader on human evolution at London's Natural History Museum, Professor Chris Stringer, said: "This is a very comprehensive study of the depositional context of the famous Ngandong Homo erectus partial skulls and shin bones, and the authors build a strong case that these individuals died and were washed into the deposits of the Solo River about 112,000 years ago.

"This age is very young for such primitive-looking Homo erectus fossils, and establishes that the species persisted on Java for well over one million years."

The new study suggests Homo erectus reached Java more than 1.5 million years ago, this disproving the notion that Homo erectus and Homo sapiens would have lived together on the island as erectus arrived at least 35,000 yeas before sapiens.

It proves that Homo erectus existed longer on Earth than any other species on our "Homo" branch of the evolutionary tree.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Archaeologists discover ancient Homo erectus was wiped out in 'mass death event'

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Sign up for our news briefing, including a daily special Russia-Ukraine edition We use your sign-up to provide content in ways you've consented to and to improve our understanding of you. This may include adverts from us and 3rd parties based on our understanding. You can unsubscribe at any time.

# data[].attributes.body
He was physically big and strong.He is commonly known as Neanderthal Man because his remains were first found at Neanderthal.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Temporal range: Middle to Late Pleistocene 0.43–0.04 Ma PreꞒ
Ꞓ
O
S
D
C
P
T
J
K
Pg
N
↓

# data[].attributes.body
The human species that was more intelligent than any of the earlier species. Also known as Cro-Magnon man.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Table of Contents

Table of Contents Quick Summary Ask Anything

Homo sapiens, the species to which all modern human beings belong. Homo sapiens is one of several species grouped into the genus Homo, but it is the only one that is not extinct. See also human evolution.

The name Homo sapiens was applied in 1758 by the father of modern biological classification ( see taxonomy), Carolus Linnaeus. It had long been known that human beings physically resemble the primates more closely than any other known living organisms, but at the time it was a daring act to classify human beings within the same framework used for the rest of nature. Linnaeus, concerned exclusively with similarities in bodily structure, faced only the problem of distinguishing H. sapiens from apes ( gorillas, chimpanzees, orangutans, and gibbons), which differ from humans in numerous bodily as well as cognitive features. ( Charles Darwin's treatise on evolution, On the Origin of Species, would come 101 years later.)
(Read Ray Kurzweil'sBritannica essay on the future of "Nonbiological Man.")
Since Linnaeus's time, a large fossil record has been discovered. This record contains numerous extinct species that are much more closely related to humans than to today's apes and that were presumably more similar to H. sapiens behaviorally as well. Following the ancestors of modern human beings into the distant past raises the question of what is meant by the word human. H. sapiens is human by definition, whereas apes are not. But what of the extinct members of the human tribe ( Hominini), who were clearly not H. sapiens but were nonetheless very much like them? There is no definitive answer to this question. Although human evolution can be said to involve all those species more closely related to H. sapiens than to the apes, the adjective human is usually applied only to H. sapiens and other members of the genus Homo (e.g., H. erectus, H. habilis). Behaviorally, only H. sapiens can be said to be "fully human," but even the definition of H. sapiens is a matter of active debate. Some paleoanthropologists extend the span of this species far back into time to include many anatomically distinctive fossils that others prefer to allocate to several different extinct species. In contrast, a majority of paleoanthropologists, wishing to bring the study of hominins into line with that of other mammals, prefer to assign to H. sapiens only those fossil forms that fall within the anatomic spectrum of the species as it exists today. In this sense, H. sapiens is very recent, having originated in Africa more than 315,000 years ago (315 kya).
(Read Yuval Noah Harari's Britannica essay on the future of "Nonconscious Man.")

Before about 1980 it was widely thought that distinctively hominin fossils could be identified from 14 to 12 million years ago (mya). However, during the 1970s geneticists introduced the use of molecular clocks to calculate how long species had been separated from a common ancestor. The molecular clock concept is based on an assumed regularity in the accumulation of tiny changes in the genetic codes of humans and other organisms. Use of this concept, together with a reanalysis of the fossil record, moved the estimated time of the evolutionary split between apes and human ancestors forward to as recently as about 5 mya. Since then the molecular data emerging from DNA sequencing and a steady trickle of new hominin fossil finds have pushed the earliest putative hominin ancestry back in time somewhat, to perhaps 8-6 mya.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Homo sapiens | Meaning, Characteristics, & Evolution | Britannica

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Homo sapiens, the species to which all modern human beings belong and the only member of the genus Homo that is not extinct. The name 'Homo sapiens' was applied in 1758 by the father of modern biological classification, Carolus Linnaeus. The earliest fossils of the species date to about 315 thousand years ago.