The Florisbad Skull is an important human fossil of the early Middle Stone Age, representing either late Homo heidelbergensis or early Homo sapiens. It was discovered in 1932 by T. F. Dreyer at the Florisbad site, Free State Province, South Africa.
The Florisbad skull was the first human fossil found in Africa directly associated with either stone tools or extinct animals. Dreyer and Dutch neurologist Cornelius Ubbo Ariëns Kappers described the skull in 1935.
Dreyer lent the skull to South African anthropologist Matthew Robertson Drennan for study, who published a paper soon after. Drennan believed that, while the face resembled the Zambian Kabwe 1 (the "Rhodesian Man", classified as a primitive stock of modern human), the braincase better aligned with . He was also influenced by the opinion of South African archaeologist Astley John Hilary Goodwin, who identified a Mousterian-like stone tool culture at the site and around South Africa — a culture which is associated with European Neanderthals. Drennan opted to classify the Florisbad Skull as " H. florisbadensis (helmei)", characterising it as an ancient African Neanderthal variant. In 1936, Dreyer published a correction after comparing the Florisbad braincase with that of a modern South Africa bushman, and reconsidered it as an early representative of the Bushman Race. Nonetheless, in 1937, Drennan reaffirmed that the Florisbad Skull measurements, "cry out for a Neanderthal interpretation."
That same year, Scottish anatomist Alexander Galloway criticised Drennan's focus on skull measurements over anatomical landmarks. He instead compared the Florisbad Skull to the "ferocious appearance" of the male Aboriginal Australian skull, as well as the South African Middle Pleistocene Boskop Man (at the time considered to be an ancestor of South African bushmen), remarking that, "there are so many features which are common to all three that two-thirds of the Florisbad features are encountered in the modern Australian skull and two-thirds in the Boskop." He considered the Florisbad Skull a proto-Australian, along with specimens such as Rhodesian Man and the Javan Solo Man. He also raised the possibility that it was an ancestor of the Javan Wajak crania, which British anatomist Arthur Keith had earlier characterised, "as an offshoot from the stem which afterwards diverged into Australian and Negro types." In 1958, South African palaeontologist Ronald Singer compared the Florisbad Skull with the recently discovered South African Saldanha Man, and similarly grouped them with the Rhodesian Man as ancestors of modern bushmen.
In 1978, American biological anthropologist G. Phillip Rightmire made his own reconstruction of the Florisbad Skull without speculating on the dimensions of missing pieces, and found that it is substantially distinct from any living population. He did not believe the Florisbad Skull, or any other "archaic H. sapiens", were ancestral to one specific population. He classified it as part of the same stock as Kabwe 1 (at this point, H. sapiens rhodesiensis) and possibly the Ethiopian Omo remains.
Clarke (1985) compared it to Laetoli Hominid 18 and Omo remains, which are now considered early anatomically modern human ( H. sapiens) fossils. The difficulty of placing the fossil in either H. heidelbergensis or H. sapiens prompted McBrearty and Brooks (2000) to revive the designation H. helmei. In 2016 Chris Stringer argued that the Florisbad Skull, along with the Jebel Irhoud and Eliye Springs specimens, belong to an archaic or "early" form of Homo sapiens. The Florisbad Skull was also classified as Homo sapiens by Hublin et al. (in 2017), in part on the basis of the similar Jebel Irhoud finds from Morocco. Scerri et al. (2018) adduce the fossil as evidence for "African multiregionalism", the view of a complex speciation of H. sapiens widely dispersed across Africa, with substantial hybridization between H. sapiens and more divergent hominins in different regions."Other early H. sapiens fossils from Florisbad in South Africa (~260 ka), Omo Kibish (~195 ka) and Herto (~160 ka), both in Ethiopia, are morphologically diverse. This diversity has led some researchers to propose that fossils such as Jebel Irhoud and Florisbad actually represent a more primitive species called 'H. helmei', using the binomen given to the Florisbad partial cranium in 1935. ...However, we view H. sapiens as an evolving lineage with deep African roots, and therefore prefer to recognize such fossils as part of the diversity shown by early members of the H. sapiens clade." Lahr and Mounier (2019) also classify the Florisbad Skull as an example of early H. sapiens, which they suggest arose between 350,000 and 260,000 years ago from the merging of populations in East and South Africa.
The fossil skull is a fragment; preserved are the right side of the face, most of the frontal bone, and some of the maxilla, along with portions of the roof and sidewalls. A single, upper right, third molar was also found with the adult skull.
The skull also showed extensive porotic hyperostosis as well as a large number of healed lesions, including pathological drainage or vascular tracts. There are also a couple of large puncture marks and scratch-like marks which may reflect hyena chewing.
Based on enamel samples from the tooth found with the skull, the fossil has been directly dated by electron spin resonance dating to around between (between 294,000 and 224,000 years old)..
The wider Florisbad site has also produced a large and diverse fauna. The assemblage including micro-vertebrates from Pedetes, rabbits, rodents and reptiles has informed researchers on the paleoenvironment of the interior of South Africa in the Middle Pleistocene. The large mammal component of the site suggests an open grassland with a body of water in the immediate vicinity. Although many specimens are dated by comparisons of faunal assemblages, this method does not prove to have accurate chronological resolution for much of the last million years.
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