Ninety years ago the first non-human representative of the hominin lineage was discovered at Taung, in South Africa, proving that as Darwin predicted, the genus Homo first emerged in Africa. Since that time, following the discovery in the 1960s of “early Man” at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, the human fossil record from Africa, covering nearly the last 2.5 million years, has increased in not only raw amount, but also in the preservation quality of the paleontological and cultural assemblages, anatomical diversity, morphodimensional variation, sex- and age-related individual representativeness of the remains, and resolution of the reconstructed geochronological, paleoenvironmental, paleoecological and technocultural contexts.
As a whole, this unique heritage now represents the most cogent evidence for the tempo and mode of human biocultural evolution. Nonetheless, a number of taxonomic and related phylogenetic and evolutionary issues continue to be critically important to paleoanthropology. Together with the major questions of the origin and most probable direct ancestor of the genus Homo, fundamental topics currently under debate include the number of species (co)existing during the Early Pleistocene; early Homo adaptive radiation under increasingly fluctuating climatic and environmental conditions; the origins and evolution of technology; the taxonomic status of the “habilines”; the relationships of African H. erectus/ergaster with the “habilines”, on the one hand, and the taxon likely representing the evolutionary link towards H. sapiens, i.e. H. heidelbergensis/rhodesiensis, on the other; and the appearance and spread of modern humans.
These and other related scientific issues will be discussed on 26-27 September 2014 at Toulouse, France, in the symposium The African Human Fossil Record (see Program). This exceptional public event, open to researchers and students in paleoanthropology and prehistory as well as to the nonprofessional audience, will present thirteen talks provided by eminent specialists discussing human ancestry, life-history, diet and behaviour of early Homo, the chrono-regional patterns of human evolution across the African Pleistocene, and the appearance and genotypic, phenotypic, and techno-cultural variation of our own genus and species.
The panel of speakers includes (in alphabetical order):
T.E. Cerling (Salt Lake City)
R.J. Clarke (Johannesburg)
C.M. Dean (London)
F. d’Errico (Bordeaux)
F.E. Grine (Stony Brook)
S. Harmand-Lewis (Stony Brook & Nanterre)
J. Hawks (Madison)
J.-J. Hublin (Leipzig)
W.H. Kimbel (Tempe)
M.G. Leakey (Nairobi & Stony Brook)
F. Spoor (London & Leipzig)
C.B. Stringer (London)
B.A. Wood (Washington)
A key-event of the symposium will be the award ceremony at the Muséum d’histoire naturelle of Toulouse in honour of M.G. Leakey (Nairobi & Stony Brook) and her public talk Fieldwork in Africa, an historical perspective.
The symposium begins on Friday 26 September 2014 at the Salle du Sénéchal of Toulouse (17 rue de Rémusat; see the Venue link on this website), at 8:00 (registration); plenary lectures will take place starting at 9:00. On Saturday 27, the plenary lectures will begin at 10:30 (see detailed program).
Results from ongoing paleoanthropological research dealing with the African fossil record will be presented in a poster session to be held on Saturday 27 September, 8:30-10:30.
We sincerely hope this scientific event will be of interest to you. We look forward to meeting you in Toulouse!
The Scientific Organizers