The Upper Limb of Homo naledi: New material from the Lesedi Chamber, Rising Star System, South Africa
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11 avril 2018
- handle: 10670/1.buygc1
- hal: hal-02196928
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/
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Upper limb Limb, Upper Upper extremities Extremity, Upper Pectoral limbs Limb, Pectoral Thoracic limbs Extremities, Upper Upper limbs Limb, Thoracic Arms (Anatomy) Thoracic limb Upper extremity Pectoral limbCiter ce document
Elen Feuerriegel et al., « The Upper Limb of Homo naledi: New material from the Lesedi Chamber, Rising Star System, South Africa », HAL-SHS : archéologie, ID : 10670/1.buygc1
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The upper limb of Homo naledi has previously been described from fragmentary material discovered in the Dinaledi Chamber in the Rising Star cave system, Cradle of Humankind, South Africa. Recent work at Rising Star has led to the recovery of additional fossil material attributed to H. naledi from a new fossil site within the system called the Lesedi Chamber. The new fossil material preserves the upper limb elements from a partial skeleton of a single individual (LES 1). Crucially, the upper limb material from Lesedi preserves functionally significant aspects of morphology missing from the Dinaledi assemblage, including a well-preserved proximal humerus, a complete clavicle, and proximal ulna. The primitive humeral morphology of the Dinaledi material is replicated within the Lesedi material. Curvature analysis of the Lesedi clavicle revealed that the claviculae of H. naledi are similarly primitive, supporting previous interpretations of the H. naledi shoulder as being more superiorly positioned than modern humans, and closer to the hypothesized Australopith condition. Multivariate analysis of the LES 1 proximal ulna demonstrate the overall similarity of the LES 1 ulna to the KNM-BK 66 ulna from Baringo (provisionally attributed to H. erectus). While KNM-BK 66 fell closer than LES 1 to the australopith centroid along major components of variation, both ulnae clustered more with australopiths and Neandertals than with modern humans. These new findings support the presence of Homo naledi in multiple depositional contexts within the Rising Star System and provide a clearer picture of the upper limb morphology of this species.