50 - The Femur and Tibia of a New, Small-bodied Hominin from Member 1 (Hanging Remnant) of the Swartkrans Formation, South Africa

Poster Board Number: 50
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Abstract Body : Since paleontological work began at Swartkrans in 1948, the site has yielded hundreds of hominin fossils, mainly of Paranthropus robustus but also a few of early Homo, and possibly those of Australopithecus africanus. However, the bulk of that large sample comprises craniodental remains, with (mostly fragmentary) postcranial materials being much less abundant at the site. In that context, our announcement here of the first-ever, articulating nearly complete femur and complete tibia of an adult hominin (SWT1/HR-2), excavated from the Hanging Remnant stratum of Member 1 (Swartkrans Formation), dating to between 2.3 and 1.8-million-years, represents an important addition to our understanding of hominin postural and locomotor behavior in Early Pleistocene South Africa. In this announcement, we provide estimates of element dimensions, the crural index, and live body stature and mass to indicate that SWT1/HR-2 represents one of the smallest known adults in the hominin fossil record. We discuss the paleobiological implications of this finding in relation to our taxonomic diagnosis of the specimen.