PLoS ONE (Jan 2013)

First partial skeleton of a 1.34-million-year-old Paranthropus boisei from Bed II, Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania.

  • Manuel Domínguez-Rodrigo,
  • Travis Rayne Pickering,
  • Enrique Baquedano,
  • Audax Mabulla,
  • Darren F Mark,
  • Charles Musiba,
  • Henry T Bunn,
  • David Uribelarrea,
  • Victoria Smith,
  • Fernando Diez-Martin,
  • Alfredo Pérez-González,
  • Policarpo Sánchez,
  • Manuel Santonja,
  • Doris Barboni,
  • Agness Gidna,
  • Gail Ashley,
  • José Yravedra,
  • Jason L Heaton,
  • Maria Carmen Arriaza

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0080347
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 8, no. 12
p. e80347

Abstract

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Recent excavations in Level 4 at BK (Bed II, Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania) have yielded nine hominin teeth, a distal humerus fragment, a proximal radius with much of its shaft, a femur shaft, and a tibia shaft fragment (cataloged collectively as OH 80). Those elements identified more specifically than to simply Hominidae gen. et sp. indet are attributed to Paranthropus boisei. Before this study, incontrovertible P. boisei partial skeletons, for which postcranial remains occurred in association with taxonomically diagnostic craniodental remains, were unknown. Thus, OH 80 stands as the first unambiguous, dentally associated Paranthropus partial skeleton from East Africa. The morphology and size of its constituent parts suggest that the fossils derived from an extremely robust individual who, at 1.338±0.024 Ma (1 sigma), represents one of the most recent occurrences of Paranthropus before its extinction in East Africa.