%0 Journal Article
%A Carretero, José Miguel
%A Haile Selassie, Yohannes
%A Rodríguez García, Laura
%A Arsuaga Ferreras, Juan Luis
%T A partial distal humerus from the Middle Pleistocene depositsat Bodo, Middle Awash, Ethiopia
%D 2009
%@ 0918-7960
%U https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/44368
%X The Bodo partial distal humerus with an approximate age of 0.6 million years is one of thevery few postcranial remains from the African Middle Pleistocene. Despite its fragmentary status,comparisons of the Bodo humerus with other fossil hominid and modern human samples reveal someinsights into African hominids of this time period. The Bodo partial humerus displays distal humeralfeatures very common in the European Middle and Late Pleistocene hominids, such as a relativelywide olecranon fossa and relatively thin lateral and medial pillars adjacent to the fossa. In Africa, thepostcranial fossils from the Middle and Late Pleistocene exhibit a surprising amount of morphologicaldiversity. The presence of ‘typically’ Neandertal traits in some, but not all, Homo ergaster, H. Rhodesiensis,and early H. sapiens, together with the greater similarity of some African specimens than othersto recent humans, highlights the problem of interpreting the anatomical variation that characterizesAfrican fossil humans. An analysis of frequency–based patterning can help us understand this strikingvariation. Populations of Middle Pleistocene African hominids, such as the one represented by theBodo specimen studied here, may have been variable, and their skeletons may have contained a mosaicof modern and non–modern human traits.
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