Meganthropus
Sign in to saveMeganthropus is an extinct genus of pongine hominid ape, known from the Pleistocene of Indonesia. It is known from a series of large jaw and skull fragments found at the Sangiran site near Surakarta in Central Java, Indonesia, alongside several isolated teeth. The genus has a long and convoluted taxonomic history. The original fossils were ascribed to a new species, Meganthropus palaeojavanicus, and for a long time was considered invalid, with the genus name being used as an informal name for the fossils.
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Encyclopedic overview
16 sectionsContents
- Fossil finds
- ''Meganthropus'' A/Sangiran 6
- ''Meganthropus'' B/Sangiran 8
- ''Meganthropus'' C/Sangiran 33/BK 7905
- ''Meganthropus'' D
- ''Meganthropus'' I/Sangiran 27
- ''Meganthropus'' II/Sangiran 31
- ''Meganthropus'' III
- Scientific interpretation
- ''H. erectus''
- Australopithecine
- Non-hominin hominid
- See also
- Sources
- References
- External links
Meganthropus is an extinct genus of pongine hominid ape, known from the Pleistocene of Indonesia. It is known from a series of large jaw and skull fragments found at the Sangiran site near Surakarta in Central Java, Indonesia, alongside several isolated teeth. The genus has a long and convoluted taxonomic history. The original fossils were ascribed to a new species, Meganthropus palaeojavanicus, and for a long time was considered invalid, with the genus name being used as an informal name for the fossils.
In the mid-2000s the taxonomy and phylogeny for the specimens were uncertain, and most paleoanthropologists considered them related to Homo erectus in some way. However, the names Homo palaeojavanicus and even Australopithecus palaeojavanicus were used as well, indicating the classification uncertainty.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Meganthropus” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.