Turkana Boy, also called Nariokotome Boy, is the name given to fossil KNM-WT 15000, a nearly complete skeleton of a Homo ergaster youth who lived 1.5 to 1.6 million years ago.
This specimen is the most complete early hominin skeleton ever found. It was discovered in 1984 by Kamoya Kimeu on the bank of the Nariokotome River near Lake Turkana in Kenya, according to the Wiki entry on the subject.
“Estimates of the individual’s age at death range from seven to 11 years old,” Wiki says.
Although the specimen is largely considered male due to the shape of the pelvis, the sex is ultimately indeterminate due to its prepubescent age.
Estimates of the age at death depend on whether the maturity stage of the teeth or skeleton is used, and whether that maturity is compared to that of Homo sapiens or to chimpanzees.
A key factor is that, while modern humans have a marked adolescent growth spurt, chimpanzees do not. While initial research assumed a modern human type of growth, more recent evidence from other fossils suggests this was less present in early Hominids.
This affects the estimation of both the age and the likely stature of the specimen as a fully grown adult.
Alan Walker and Richard Leakey in 1993 estimated the boy to have been about 11–12 years old based on known rates of bone maturity. Walker and Leakey said that dental dating often gives a younger age than a person’s actual age.
Christopher Dean of University College London, in a 2009 Nova special, estimated that the Turkana Boy was eight years old at death.
It was suspected that Turkana Boy suffered from a congenital disorder, either of dwarfism or scoliosis.
This was because the rib bones appeared asymmetrical to the spine and the reason was attributed to skeletal dysplasia.
However, in 2013, a study showed that when the rib bones were rearranged, they became symmetrical against the spine, and that an unusual structure of the vertebrae was characteristic of the early hominins.
However, the fossil definitely showed lumbar disc herniation, an injury implicated with the specimen’s death. The specimen also had a diseased mandible.
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