Marcia S. Ponce de León

TL;DR: The discovery of six hominid specimens from Chad, central Africa, 2,500 km from the East African Rift Valley, suggest that the earliest members of the hominids clade were more widely distributed than has been thought, and that the divergence between the human and chimpanzee lineages was earlier than indicated by most molecular studies.

TL;DR: Newly excavated postcranial material from Dmanisi comprising a partial skeleton of an adolescent individual, associated with skull D2700/D2735, and the remains from three adult individuals shows that the postc Cranial anatomy of the D manisi hominins has a surprising mosaic of primitive and derived features.

TL;DR: The results suggest that there has been gene flow between some Native Americans from both North and South America and groups related to East Asians and Australo-Melanesians, the latter possibly through an East Asian route that might have included ancestors of modern Aleutian Islanders.

TL;DR: The Dmanisi sample, which now comprises five crania, provides direct evidence for wide morphological variation within and among early Homo paleodemes, implying the existence of a single evolving lineage of early Homo, with phylogeographic continuity across continents.

TL;DR: The Dmanisi specimens are the most primitive and small-brained fossils to be grouped with this species or any taxon linked unequivocally with genusHomo and also the ones most similar to the presumedhabilis-like stem.