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''Homo rudolfensis'' (also ''Australopithecus rudolfensis'') is an extinct species of the Hominini tribe known only through a handful of representative fossils, the first of which was discovered by Bernard Ngeneo, a member of a team led by anthropologist Richard Leakey and zoologist Meave Leakey in 1972, at Koobi Fora on the east side of Lake Rudolf (now Lake Turkana) in Kenya. The scientific name ''Pithecanthropus rudolfensis'' was proposed in 1978 by V. P. Alekseyev〔В.П. Алексеев. Палеоантропология земного шара и формирование человеческих рас. М., Наука, 1978г〕 who later (1986) changed it to ''Homo rudolfensis'' for the specimen Skull 1470 (KNM ER 1470). It remains an open question whether the fossil evidence is sufficient for postulating a separate species, and if so whether this species should be classified as within the ''Homo'' or ''Australopithecus'' genus. On 8 August 2012, a team led by Meave Leakey announced the discovery of a face and two jawbones belonging to ''H. rudolfensis''. == KNM-ER 1470 == The fossil KNM-ER 1470 was the center of much debate concerning its species. The skull was at first incorrectly dated at nearly three million years old, predating the ''Homo habilis'' species. Since then, the estimate has been corrected to 1.9 million years, but the differences in this skull, when compared to others of the ''Homo habilis'' species, are said to be too pronounced, leading to the presumption of a ''Homo rudolfensis'' species, contemporary with ''Homo habilis''. It is not certain whether ''H. rudolfensis'', ''H. habilis'' or some, as of yet undiscovered, third species was ancestral to the later ''Homo'' line. In March 2007, a team led by Timothy Bromage, an anthropologist at New York University, reconstructed the skull of KNM-ER 1470. The new construction looked very ape-like (possibly due to an exaggerated rotation of the skull) and the cranial capacity based on the new construction was reported to be downsized from 752 cm³ to about 526 cm³, although this seemed to be a matter of some controversy. Bromage said his team's reconstruction included biological knowledge not known at the time of the skull's discovery, of the precise relationship between the sizes of eyes, ears, and mouth in mammals.〔 A newer publication by Bromage has since further downsized the cranial capacity estimate from 752 cm³ to 700 cm³. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Homo rudolfensis」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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