Treasure on the Nariokotome

By Jamie Murphy

Paleoanthropologists uncover the remains of a strapping hominid

The find initially seemed unimpressive. Kamoya Kimeu, head of Anthropologist Richard Leakey's proficient fossil collecting team, last summer discovered a hominid skull fragment that was 1 1/2 in. square on a rocky slope above northwest Kenya's Nariokotome River. But over a month's time, the expedition crew, under the joint leadership of Leakey, director of the National Museums of Kenya, and Alan Walker, professor of cell biology and anatomy at the Johns Hopkins University medical school, began to turn up other whisky-colored skeletal pieces in the nearby sandy debris: first a rib, then a scapula, then a hip. As the collection grew, it became astonishingly clear that they had underestimated their initial discovery. Kimeu had, in fact, struck paleontological gold.

At press conferences in Washington and Nairobi, Leakey and Walker last week announced that they had unearthed the remains of a male specimen of Homo erectus. The hominid, given a catalog number of WT 15000, was one of a group that was directly ancestral to man and is known to have used fire and lived in caves as well as on the plains of Africa. Members of the species migrated as far as Asia, where the cranium of the so-called Java Man was discovered in 1891 and the Peking Man in 1927.

Kimeu's specimen died on the marshy periphery of what is now the Nariokotome 1.6 million years ago. Not only is the find one of the oldest examples of its species, it is the most nearly complete skeleton of an early human ancestor that has ever been discovered.

Thus far, more than 70 bones and fragments have been attributed to WT 15000. No two are duplicates and all are of the same stage of maturity, indicating that they belonged to the same individual. The only missing pieces of the skeletal puzzle are the hominid's left arm and hand, the right arm from the elbow down, and most of both feet. Leakey hopes to unearth those fragments next summer. The only other known near complete Homo erectus was discovered in 1975 by Leakey across Lake Turkana from the present dig. But that hominid had suffered from a degenerative bone disease, and therefore the find was useless as an archetype of the species.

While WT 15000 has the beetled brow, small cranium (700 to 800 cubic centimeters, about half that of modern man) and short forehead associated with virtually all human precursors, his size surprised the scientists. From the development of his teeth, they knew that the hominid died in his youth, about age twelve. But the length of his thigh bones and the size of his vertebrae indicate that he stood about 5 ft. 4 in. tall and may have weighed as much as 150 lbs. This was the size hitherto postulated by scientists for a full-grown Homo erectus.

"He was a strapping youth," says Leakey. "We used to think of our ancestors as rather puny and rather fragile. This shows them to be much stronger and better built than we ever imagined." Full grown, Leakey says, the boy might have reached 6 ft. Added Walker: "He's bigger than most human populations around the world today." Walker concedes that he does not know for sure if the specimen is a freak, but in a limited sample from a larger population, odds strongly favor the selection of the most common denominator.

Just as startling as the hominid's size is its anatomical similarity to modern man. Says Leakey: "Those who want to have a funny-looking thing as an ancestor 1 1/2 million years ago will be disappointed. He's very human. That's what's so exciting. There were real people wandering about then." --By Jamie Murphy. Reported by Jay Branegan/Washington and Maryame Rollers/Nairobi

With reporting by Jay Branegan/Washington, Maryame Vollers/Nairobi