HUMAN EVOLUTION SERIES 2 : 3D RECONSTRUCTION AND ANIMATION OF Homo habilis

 

Homo habils pair walking on grassland 3D reconstruction and animation created by me in 3Ds Max

Homo habilis pair cutting and chopping meat with stone tool cutter and throwing stone to wild dogs to keep away from meat peices: Imaginary reconstruction and animation created by me in 3DS max

Homo habilis;

Thia species was named Homo habilis,meaning "Handy man" ,beacause some of its fossils are associated with early stone tools.

Homo habilis is the earliest member of genus Homo to appear in the fossil records.The species is characterized by slightly larger brain ,smaller molars and premolars, and more human-like feet than those of earlier hominins.

Discovery :

 Louis S.B. Leakey

Famous palaeoanthropologists Louis and Mary Leakey discovered Homo habilis in 1960. Along with their son Jonathan, they unearthed the first fossils at Olduvai Gorge in the Great Rift Valley of Tanzania, East Africa.

Leakey, Mary

The couple had already found fossils of another primitive hominin species and some early stone tools at the site. The new finds provided evidence of an intriguing new Homo species. Louis and Mary Leakey were looking for the maker of the stone tools they had found. First, they found a rather bizarre heavily built creature with a very flat, upright face not at all like modern humans. It quickly got the nickname Nutcracker Man. They thought this must be the toolmaker.’

‘But the Leakeys then started finding the remains of something that had smaller, more human-like teeth and perhaps a larger brain. They also found hand fossils, which was interesting because the hand is what you use to interact with stone tools. So, they decided this second find was the toolmaker.’

The Nutcracker Man was described as the species Paranthropus boisei and the larger-brained fossil was described as Homo habilis.

Olduvai Gorge : archaeological site, Tanzania

Olduvai Gorge

Olduvai Gorge, paleoanthropological site in the eastern Serengeti Plain, within the boundaries of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area in northern Tanzania. It is a steep-sided ravine consisting of two branches that have a combined length of about 30 miles (48 km) and are 295 feet (90 metres) deep. Deposits exposed in the sides of the gorge cover a time span from about 2.1 million to 15,000 years ago. The deposits have yielded the fossil remains of more than 60 hominins (members of the human lineage), providing the most continuous known record of human evolution during the past 2 million years, as well as the longest known archaeological record of the development of stone-tool industries. Olduvai Gorge was designated part of a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1979. Although Olduvai Gorge has often been called the “Cradle of Mankind,” a different World Heritage site called the “Cradle of Humankind” is located in South Africa. Compare Sterkfontein, Swartkrans, and Kromdraai.

View of Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, where Homo habilis was first found. The location’s name comes from ‘Oldupai’, a Maasai word meaning ‘place of the wild sisal’

Where did Homo habilis live?

Important Homo habilis fossils have been discovered in Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia and South Africa. Lake Turkana in northern Kenya yielded a particularly significant collection of fossils.

Unlike our ancient ancestor Homo erectus, Homo habilis didn’t migrate out of Africa, so its fossils aren’t found elsewhere in the world.

What did Homo habilis look like?

Side view of a Homo habilis skull (KNM-ER 1813) found at Koobi Fora, Kenya

Homo habilis had several rather human attributes. These include a large, thin skull and larger front teeth and smaller back teeth than more ancient human relatives, or hominins. Its finger bones suggest the ability to form a precision grip, a key human trait.It was bipedal, meaning the species walked upright on two legs like us. But long arms and relatively short legs suggest it still had some capacity for cautious tree climbing like more ancient hominins.

How big was Homo habilis’ brain?

Cranium casts of Paranthropus boisei OH5 (left) and Homo habilis OH24 (right), which were both discovered at Olduvai Gorge,

Homo habilis’ brain size is of interest, as a large brain in relation to body size is a human characteristic. It’s also thought to be indicative of mental abilities.

Fred led research published in 2015 that digitally reconstructed the braincase of skull bones found at Olduvai Gorge. The fossils included a broken lower jawbone.

‘We showed that the jaw was very primitive, but the brain was actually larger than expected,’ says Fred. The reconstruction suggests that Homo habilis’ brain could be up to 800cm3 in size - much larger than any australopith and similar to early Homo erectus.Except for one specimen called KNM-ER 1805, which had a small one, Homo habilis fossils don’t have the sagittal crest that more ancient hominins tend to have. This bony ridge on the top of the skull results from powerful chewing muscles being attached to a relatively small skull. Its absence suggests Homo habilis didn’t habitually eat tough food. Side view of a Homo habilis skull (KNM-ER 1813) found at Koobi Fora, Kenya. This species had a cranial capacity ranging from about 500 to 800cm3 - a brain size ranging from that of Australopithecus to early Homo erectus.

What tools did Homo habilis use?

A collection of Oldowan tools found at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania. They date back to about 1.8 million years ago.

Homo habilis used simple stone tools made from chipped pebbles and flakes of stone. They’re often called Oldowan tools because the first such artefacts came from Olduvai Gorge. Some scientists prefer the term Mode 1 tools.

This type of tool was in use from about 3.0 million to 1.3 million years ago during the early Stone Age, known scientifically as the Lower Palaeolithic.

Though simple, Oldowan stone tools marked a significant shift in the technology available to early humans, enabling them to do new things such as butcher large animals.

Was Homo habilis really the ‘handy man’?

Homo habilis certainly did use stone tools. However, experts have now dated the oldest known stone tools to 3.3 million years ago. This is far older not only than the oldest evidence of Homo habilis but the entire Homo genus. So it’s no longer clear that Homo habilis or even other early humans were the first users of stone tools.

Homo habilis stone tools

This is supported by a discovery at Nyayanga, a site on the shore of Lake Victoria in Kenya, reported in 2023. Scientists unearthed the remains of the early human relative Paranthropus alongside early stone tools. The artefacts are thought to be up to three million years old - the oldest known example of Oldowan technology anywhere in the world.

Homo habilis stone tools of different size and shape

This discovery also reignites the possibility that the Nutcracker Man, Paranthropus bosei, was the original maker of the tools attributed to Homo habilis at Oldupai Gorge.

What did Homo habilis eat?

Evidence suggests Homo habilis had quite a varied diet and ate fruit, leaves, woody plants and some meat. They didn’t make a habit of eating very tough foods such as nuts, hard tubers or dried meat. The thick enamel of their teeth meant they could if they had to though - possibly when their preferred foods weren’t available.

Examples of large animal bones bearing butchery marks suggests Homo habilis was using tools to prepare meat. But since several species lived at the same time, it’s hard to say definitively that Homo habilis made the marks. Chemical analysis proves their diet did include meat though.

Did Homo habilis hunt?

Homo habilis were probably scavengers rather than hunters.As their grassland environment got cooler and drier, this may have driven them to start scavenging for food. Sharp tools would have been a great help for picking meat from carcasses left behind by predatory animals.

What did Homo habilis eat?

Evidence suggests Homo habilis had quite a varied diet and ate fruit, leaves, woody plants and some meat. They didn’t make a habit of eating very tough foods such as nuts, hard tubers or dried meat. The thick enamel of their teeth meant they could if they had to though - possibly when their preferred foods weren’t available.

Examples of large animal bones bearing butchery marks suggests Homo habilis was using tools to prepare meat. But since several species lived at the same time, it’s hard to say definitively that Homo habilis made the marks. Chemical analysis proves their diet did include meat though.

Did Homo habilis hunt?

Homo habilis were probably scavengers rather than hunters.

As their grassland environment got cooler and drier, this may have driven them to start scavenging for food. Sharp tools would have been a great help for picking meat from carcasses left behind by predatory animals.

Important Homo habilis fossils

Cast of a reconstructed cranium from Olduvai Gorge. The original fossil - OH24, nicknamed Twiggy - was crushed flat.

Jonny’s Child (OH 7)

A 1.8-million-year-old partial skeleton of a boy with a much larger brain than the average australopithecine. This is the type specimen, or official specimen, for the species Homo habilis. It consists of part of a lower jawbone and teeth, an isolated molar tooth, two parietal bones - which form the sides and top of the skull - and 21 finger, hand and wrist bones. Jonathan Leakey and his mother, Mary, discovered the fossils at Olduvai Gorge in 1960.

OH 62 (partial skeleton)

A 1.8-million-year-old specimen discovered in Tanzania in 1986 by Tim White. The skeleton’s relatively long arms and short legs revealed that the species’ proportions were more ape-like than previously thought.

KNM-ER 1813 (cranium)

Some very significant fossils have been discovered in Koobi Fora in Kenya’s Lake Turkana basin. These include KNM-ER 1813 - a 1.9-million-year-old skull with a cranial capacity, or brain size, of 510cm3, which is not much larger than the average australopithecine brain. It was found by Kamoya Kimeu in 1973.

Homo habilis probable pictures reconstructed by me in 3Ds Max software: