Floris bath 1

Florisbad-1 skull cast (Hall of Human Origins, National Museum of Natural History )

Florisbad 1 is the name of a partially preserved fossil skull that was discovered in 1932 in the Florisbad site near Brandfort in what was then the Orange Free State ( South Africa ). The fossil is also known as Florisbad Skull in the English-speaking world . In the first description of the find, Thomas F. Dreyer named the skull after the financier for Dreyer's research, RE Helme, as "Homo helmei"; the anatomist Matthew Robertson Drennan suggested the name "Homo florisbadensis" two years later.

Initially dated to an age of 40,000 years, the fossil was determined to be 259,000 ± 35,000 years old in 1996. Due to its anatomical features, the skull is considered to be a very early archaic Homo sapiens , that is, a close relative of the ancestors of anatomically modern humans .

Almost the entire roof of this skull has been preserved , especially the frontal bone , on both sides the parietal bone , the nasal bone , the right cheekbone with a fragment of the right upper jaw and the right upper wisdom tooth (M³) as well as fragments of the left upper jaw. A volume of 1200 to 1400 cubic centimeters has been reconstructed for the skull. The skull has a distinctive bulge above the eye , which is less pronounced than in the similarly old fossils Kabwe 1 from Northern Rhodesia and Saldanha 1 from South Africa.

The wisdom tooth is - compared to the teeth of people living today - quite large, its dimensions correspond to those of Homo erectus . However, there are still populations of Homo sapiens in Africa that have teeth of comparable size.

literature

G. Philip Rightmire: Florisbad and Human Population Succession in Southern Africa. In: American Journal of Physical Anthropology. Volume 48, No. 4, 1978, pp. 475–486, doi: 10.1002 / ajpa.1330480406 , full text (PDF with a picture of the skull)
John Francis Thackeray : Homo sapiens helmei from Florisbad, South Africa. In: The Digging Stick. Volume 27, No. 3, 2010, pp. 13-14, full text (PDF)

Individual evidence

↑ Thomas F. Dreyer: A human skull from Florisbad, Orange Free State, with a note on the endocranial cast by CU Ariens Kappers. In: Proc. Konink. Akad. Wetenschappen, Amsterdam. Volume 38, 1935, pp. 119-128.
^ Matthew Robertson Drennan: The Florisbad Skull and Brain Cast. In: Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa. Volume 25, No. 1, 1937, pp. 103-114, doi: 10.1080 / 00359193709519748
↑ Chris Stringer : The Origin of Our Species. Penguin / Allen Lane, London 2011, p. 45, ISBN 978-1846141409 .
^ Rainer Grün et al .: Direct Dating of Florisbad Hominid. In: Nature . Volume 382, 1996, pp. 500-501, doi: 10.1038 / 382500a0 .
^ Bernard Wood : Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Human Evolution. Wiley-Blackwell, 2011, ISBN 978-1-4051-5510-6 .
↑ Patricia Smith et al .: The late Middle Pleistocene upper third molar from Florisbad: metrics and morphology. In: Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa. Volume 70, No. 3, 2015, pp. 233-244, doi: 10.1080 / 0035919X.2015.1065930

[1] Thomas F. Dreyer: A human skull from Florisbad, Orange Free State, with a note on the endocranial cast by CU Ariens Kappers. In: Proc. Konink. Akad. Wetenschappen, Amsterdam. Volume 38, 1935, pp. 119-128.

[2] Matthew Robertson Drennan: The Florisbad Skull and Brain Cast. In: Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa. Volume 25, No. 1, 1937, pp. 103-114, doi: 10.1080 / 00359193709519748

[3] Chris Stringer : The Origin of Our Species. Penguin / Allen Lane, London 2011, p. 45, ISBN 978-1846141409 .

[4] Rainer Grün et al .: Direct Dating of Florisbad Hominid. In: Nature . Volume 382, 1996, pp. 500-501, doi: 10.1038 / 382500a0 .

[5] Bernard Wood : Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Human Evolution. Wiley-Blackwell, 2011, ISBN 978-1-4051-5510-6 .

[6] Patricia Smith et al .: The late Middle Pleistocene upper third molar from Florisbad: metrics and morphology. In: Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa. Volume 70, No. 3, 2015, pp. 233-244, doi: 10.1080 / 0035919X.2015.1065930