Homo iwoelerueensis

"Homo iwoelerueensis", the Iwo Eleru Man/skull, is a naked species of hominin that lived in Nigeria during the Late Pleistocene/Early Holocene.

## History

The Iwo Eleru, actually called Ihò Eleru, is a rock shelter from west Nigeria. The skull was discovered by Thurstan Shaw and team (1965) among artifacts. The skull was associated with a skeleton buried in a shallow grave. The skeleton was excavated and encased in plaster, with the skull separated and prepared away from the postcrania. It was initially dated to 9265 BC based on charcoal remains surrounding the skeleton. However, Katerina Harvati, Chris Stringer et al. (2011) used uranium-theorium dating to find 11.7-16.3 ka as a suggested date. These dates suggest a Latest Pleistocene/Earliest Holocene age.

The suggested species name was never given a formal description so it is technically a nomen nudum.

## Description

The cranial vault is relatively long and low with a moderately-recessed frontal. The brow are somewhat developed for a man and lacks a pronounced nasal root. The remaining nasal area suggests the nasal bridge is relatively flat. X-ray evidence suggests little frontal sinus development. The upper face is not included minus a small amount of fragments. The maxillary-molar area are identified, including the infraorbital foramen, with the remainders suggesting the upper face was large. The mandible is well-developed and appears masculine, but no pronounced chin is present. Minus 2 lower premolars, the teeth are disarticulated and is is unsure where the original teeth were placed. The anterior teeth have attrition and most of the crown has been eroded through wear. This individual was likely over 30 years of age based on tooth wear. Postcrania are generally crushed and fragmented, with the humeral shafts being robust and the cortical thick. The shafts of the radius and femur are robust. The remains suggest a medium height and build, likely no taller than 165 centimeters.

Don Brothwell and Thurstan Shaw (1971) state the sloping frontal is more pronounced in the Iwo Eleru specimen than in later Neolithic and recent sub-Saharan samples. However, the occipital structure, nasal root and frontal are more comparable to proto-Western Africans. Chris Stringer (1974) said it shares surprising similarities with Solo Man and Omo II. A 2011 study states a neurocranial morphology transitional of Homo neanderthalensis/Homo erectus and Homo sapiens, finding a more complicated transition in Africa, with late-surviving archaic forms and possibly a seep population substructure, where the Iwo Eleru skull could fit. Some argue it is an archaic hybrid or a relict population, Christoper Stojanowski (2014) says it was a hybrid of archaic Africans, that it is of a relict archaic population replaced by modern Homo sapiens during the Holocene and that it diverged from other North African populations during a wave of aridness in the Sahara that made it impassable until the African humid period.

Peter J. Waddell (2014) argues it is a descendant 200-400,000-year-old lineage who may have gone extinct due to human. He suggests a distinct lineage that endedin West Africa ~12,000 years ago with no living descendants. He suggests a distinct species to be named "H. iwoelerueensis"; probably a distinct species of near-modern human. Jeffrey H. Schwartz uses this species name (misspelled H. "iwoeleruensis"), stating a similar hypothesis with a 10,000 year extinction date. Fred L. Bookstein suggests not to name a new species until more evidence arises.

## References

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iwo\_Eleru\_skull
* https://arxiv.org/pdf/1501.00019.pdf
* https://www.kli.ac.at/webroot/files/file/Workshop%20booklets/32AWTB\_program\_final.pdf