Nature 316, 788 - 792 (29 August 1985); doi:10.1038/316788a0

Early Homo erectus skeleton from west Lake Turkana, Kenya

Frank Brown^*, John Harris^†, Richard Leakey^‡ & Alan Walker^§

^*Department of Geology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah 84112, USA
^†Los Angeles County Museum, Los Angeles, California 90007, USA
^‡National Museums of Kenya, Box 40658, Nairobi, Kenya
^§Department of Cell Biology and Anatomy, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland 21205, USA

The most complete early hominid skeleton ever found was discovered at Nariokotome III, west Lake Turkana, Kenya, and excavated in situ in sediments dated close to 1.6 Myr. The specimen, KNM-WT 15000, is a male Homo erectus that died at 12 1 years of age, as judged by human standards, but was already 1.68 m tall. Although human-like in many respects, this specimen documents important anatomical differences between H. erectus and modern humans for the first time.

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