Hominid Species Time Line

Page 28

Homo heidelbergensis
600,000 to 250 thousand years ago.

Remains of this species were first discovered in a sand pit near Heidelberg, Germany in 1907, associated with fossils that date it about 500,000 years ago.  This new species designation was at first regarded with skepticism by the scientific community, because the remains consisted only of partial jaws and teeth.  Professor Otto Shoetensack of nearly Heidelberg University was nevertheless convinced that a new species name was justified because the teeth were so unusual. That is, while the jaws were large and primitive looking, the teeth were quite modern in size and shape.  In the past 30 years, many new discoveries have revived and validated this species classification and provided a great deal of new information.

H. heidelbergensis, like H. antecessor before it, was likely descended from Homo ergaster. H. heidelbergensis had a larger brain capacity larger than either—1100-1400 cm—and has been consistently found associated with more advanced tools.  This was a tall species, averaging 6 feet in height, and was more robust and muscular than modern humans.  There is evidence that it hunted and butchered the large mammals of the period—elk, bison, horses, rhinos, and even mammoths.  A collection of wooden spears was found at Schöningen in northern Germany, dating to 300,000 years ago and giving us unprecedented information about wooden tools used by early humans.  H. heidelbergensis thus fits our clichés of powerful humans pursuing large, dangerous game animals through ancient European landscapes

Beginning in 1997, a Spanish team has recovered more than 5,000 bones from a pit at a site in the Sierra de Atapuerca region of Spain, near the place where H. antecessor was found.  These remains are dated to around 350,000 years ago.  An estimated 28 individuals have been found there, together with remains of some extinct mammals.

The well-preserved skull at above left was found in Germany and is believed to be that of a woman who lived approximately 250,000 years ago.  She has a large cranium with a high forehead and less massive brow ridges than in older Homo species; the eye sockets are also larger and more angular.

The badly damaged skull shown in the top center is from Steinheim, Germany and is of approximately the same age.  In contrast to the skull on the left, it has massive brow ridges more reminiscent of older Homo species, even of H. erectus.

The skull at far right of roughly 200,000 years in age is from southern Africa and was originally classified as Homo erectus.  This skull, and several other finds like it, have obvious Neanderthal-like features, leading to a theory that Neanderthals are a species or subspecies descended from H. heidelbergensis.

These specimens remind us that an extraordinary degree of variation may exist within a single human species.  These individual specimens may also represent different trends in development in different regions and may therefore constitute “intermediate forms” in those developments.

References:

Homo heidelbergensis on TalkOrigins.org