Homo sapiens idaltu

Learn more about Homo sapiens idaltu

iArchaic Humans
Fossil range: Pleistocene

Scientific classification

Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Mammalia
Order:	Primates
Family:	Hominidae
Subfamily:	Homininae
Genus:	Homo
Species:	H. sapiens
Subspecies:	H. s. idaltu

Trinomial name

†Homo sapiens idaltu
White et al, 2003

Homo sapiens idaltu (roughly translated as "elderly wise man") is an extinct subspecies of Homo sapiens that lived almost 160,000 years ago in Pleistocene Africa. Its fossilized remains were discovered in the Middle Awash site of Ethiopia's Afar Triangle in 1997 by Tim White, but first unveiled in 2003. The fossils were found at Herto Bouri, a region of Ethiopia under volcanic layers. By using radioisotope dating, the layers date between 154,000 and 160,000 years old. Three well preserved craniums are accounted for, the best preserved is from an adult male (BOU-VP-16/1) having a brain capacity of 1450 cm³. The other craniums include another partial adult male and a six year old child.

These fossils differ from those of early forms of H. sapiens such as Cro-Magnon found in Europe and other parts of the world in that their morphology has many archaic features not typical of H. sapiens (although modern human skulls do differ across the globe). The name idaltu is the Afar word for "elder". Despite the archaic features, these specimens are postulated to represent the direct ancestors of modern Homo sapiens sapiens, which according to the recent "Out of Africa" theory developed shortly after this period (Khoisan mitochondrial divergence dated not later than 110,000 B.P.) in Eastern Africa, and as such, to be the oldest representative of the H. sapiens species found so far.