Homo rudolfensis is a perfect example of the pitfalls of describing a species based on limited fossil evidence. Here are five hominins who contributed to the story of human evolution that you may be less familiar with, showing just how diverse the ancient human landscape has been. sapiens). The extended hominin family, including the genus Ardipithecus, goes back some 6 million years. In the human family tree, the genus Homo goes back about 3 million years and includes more than a dozen named hominin species (including modern humans, H. The work is hard and can be contentious.Įach scientific name bears a genus term followed by a species term. Researchers try to work out which ones represent novel species, sometimes from a single skull or just a finger bone. Only a handful have yielded any genetic evidence. Researchers have unearthed fossils from about 6,000 hominins in total. Take a moment to picture the whole spectrum of modern humans’ body sizes and shapes, and imagine trying to re-create that using the skeletons of just a handful of random individuals.

So, how many different types of humans have there been? It’s a big question, and anthropologists have yet to agree on an answer.Ī big part of the debate is that there are very few specimens for anthropologists to work from. As archaeological methodologies and available technologies become more sophisticated, we’re able to “see” the lives of these human populations with more and more nuance, making the world of the Paleolithic more like a living tableau than a frozen museum diorama. Populations moved, interacted, and sometimes even interbred. The environments of the Paleolithic, or Stone Age, were dynamic. We’re so used to the idea of being the only people around that it seems outlandish to think that not so long ago in our evolutionary history, multiple types of humans occupied various landscapes.

Chimpanzee hand bone vs human hand bone