Dmanisi hominins

Dmanisi hominins are early Homo fossils found at Dmanisi, Georgia, dating to about 1.8 million years ago. They document one of the earliest known hominin populations outside Africa.

Dmanisi Skull 5: A Dmanisi fossil combining a small braincase with a large face and jaw. Its unusual proportions anchor debate over how much variation the Dmanisi sample contains.
Hominin cranial capacity: The internal volume of a hominin skull, commonly used as an estimate of brain size. Dmanisi crania show that early Homo outside Africa could have relatively small brains.
Early Homo: The earliest members of the genus Homo, known from fossils dating back more than two million years. Dmanisi fossils are central evidence for the range and diversity of early Homo.
Hominin species problem: The difficulty of defining species boundaries from fragmentary, variable hominin fossils. Researchers disagree on whether the Dmanisi fossils represent one species or more.
Homo floresiensis: An extinct small-bodied hominin species known from fossils on the Indonesian island of Flores. Both cases challenge simple expectations linking brain size, body size, and geographic range.
Dmanisi Skull 1: A well-preserved Dmanisi cranium discovered in 1991. It was the first of the major Dmanisi crania to be discovered.
Hominin dental morphology: The form and arrangement of teeth used to compare hominin fossils. Dental differences help assess variation among the Dmanisi individuals.
Homo erectus: A widespread early human species known from Africa and Eurasia. Dmanisi fossils have often been compared with, or classified within, early Homo erectus.
Paleoanthropological lumping and splitting: Competing approaches that combine or divide fossil specimens into species. The Dmanisi sample is a prominent test of how much anatomical variation one species can contain.
Homo naledi: An extinct hominin species known from fossils in South Africa’s Rising Star cave system. Its mosaic anatomy, like Dmanisi’s, complicates tidy narratives of human evolution.

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