Forbidden Archeology_ The Full Unabridged Edition - Michael A. Cremo [486]
In a study by Wood (1976), the ER 1481 and ER 1472 femurs came closer to the human mean in several key features than the Trinil I femur, which Day and Molleson said was anatomically modern and distinct from that of Homo erectus.
All of this suggests that it would not be correct to assign the anatomically modern ER 1481 and ER 1472 femurs to either Homo erectus or Homo habilis.
11.7.2 The Leap From Oh 62 to Knm-Wt 15000
The discoverers of OH 62 had to grapple with the evolutionary link between the new, more apelike Homo habilis and Homo erectus. “The juxtaposition of an otherwise relatively derived H. erectus postcranium at ~ 1.6 Myr (KNM-WT 15000) and a postcranially primitive H. habilis at ~ 1.8 Myr (OH 62) may imply an abrupt transition between these taxa in eastern Africa,” they stated (Johanson et al. 1987, p. 209). In paleoanthropology, the term “derived” is applied to a skeletal element that has supposedly undergone a significant and progressive morphological change relative to the same element in a supposedly ancestral form.
The H. habilis-H. erectus transition proposed by Johanson involves some rather extreme morphological changes, including a big change in size. Richard Leakey, applying normal human growth patterns, said that the Homo erectus boy, who was 5.6 feet tall, would probably have grown to over 6 feet tall as an adult. The female OH 62, on the other hand, was only about 3.25 feet tall, smaller than Lucy, who was about 3.5 feet tall.
How tall were the OH 62-type males? That is hard to say. Some presumably male Australopithecus afarensis individuals from the same Hadar, Ethiopia, site as Lucy may have been as much as 5 feet tall. On this basis, one might propose that an OH 62-type male might have been almost 5 feet tall. But, as we have seen, some workers say the size difference between the large and small Hadar specimens is too great to be accommodated within a single sexually dimorphic species. It seems likely, therefore, that the male companion to the 3.25-foot-tall OH 62 adult female was not much more than 4 feet tall. Altogether, an evolutionary leap from small, apelike OH 62 to big, humanlike KNM-WT 15000 in less than 200,000 years seems implausible.
Advocates of the much-debated punctuational model of evolution, however, can easily accept the transition. Unlike the traditional gradualists, punctuationalists assert that evolution proceeds by rapid episodes of change interrupted by long periods of stasis. The periods of change are so brief, say the punctuationalists, that intermediate forms are rarely preserved in the fossil record. Punctuationalism can, therefore, accommodate a variety of troublesome evolutionary anomalies, such as the habilis to erectus transition proposed by Johanson.
“The very small body size of the OH 62 individual,” said its discoverers, “suggests that views of human evolution positing incremental body size increase through time may be rooted in gradualistic preconceptions rather than fact” (Johanson et al. 1987, p. 209). But punctuational views may also be rooted in preconception rather than fact. The paleontological facts, considered in their entirety, suggest that various ape-man-like and humanlike beings, including some resembling modern humans, coexisted throughout the Pleistocene, and earlier.
In summary, the OH 62 specimen, seen as Homo habilis, delivers a triple blow to conventional ideas about human evolution. (1) OH 62 shatters the prevailing humanlike portrayal of Homo habilis, as presented in book and magazine illustrations, television shows, and museum exhibits. (2) The primitive morphology of OH 62 raises questions about the taxonomic status of very humanlike postcranial bones, such as the ER 1481 femur, which have been attributed to Homo habilis. To what kind of hominid should they now be assigned? It is possible they