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Nature 449, 291-292 (20 September 2007) | doi:10.1038/449291a; Published online 19 September 2007

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Palaeoanthropology: Homing in on early Homo

Daniel E. Lieberman1

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Newly described fossils from Georgia in Eurasia and from Kenya shed more light on the earliest members of the genus Homo. These finds indicate that there was considerable variability in their size and shape.

The fossil record of human evolution is like a pointillist painting: one sees a different picture close up from when one stands back. For years, students of human evolution have tended to prefer standing back when considering the evolution of the genus Homo from the genus Australopithecus, by contrasting what came before with what came after.

  1. Daniel E. Lieberman is in the Departments of Anthropology, and Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA.
    Email: danlieb@fas.harvard.edu

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