An article published in the journal “Evolutionary Anthropology” reports a research on hominins of the Middle Pleistocene period that proposes the species Homo bodoensis as a classification for a series of hominin fossils discovered in Africa and some discovered in some areas of Europe. A team of researchers led by paleoanthropologist Mirjana Roksandic of the University of Winnipeg, Canada, reached this conclusion after reassessing fossils discovered over the years in Africa and Eurasia. A consequence of this proposal is the elimination of the species Homo heidelbergensis and Homo rhodesiensis with their often inconsistent definitions. A series of fossils attributed to the species Homo heidelbergensis would be Neanderthals.

The Middle Pleistocene, which last year formally received the name of Chibanian, is an important period for the evolution of humanity. Between 781,000 and 126,000 years ago, it’s a crucial period because it’s the one in which the species Homo sapiens emerged and Neanderthals emerged in Europe. The history of humanity proved to be really complex with migrations, interbreedings between different species, and the discovery in recent years of fossils attributed to other species of hominins. There are several cases in which attributions and even definitions of the proposed species have been contested, also based on the analysis of DNA obtained from particularly well-preserved fossils. Dr. Mirjana Roksandic’s team proposes a taxonomy review that should clarify the situation.

In particular, the species Homo heidelbergensis and Homo rhodesiensis are under observation, as they have been under discussion since they were proposed due to the difficulty of defining them with consistency. For this reason, after re-examining fossils of Chibanian hominins found in Africa and Eurasia, Dr. Mirjana Roksandic’s team proposed the elimination of these two species. According to the researchers, the fossils attributed to them are attributed to the new species Homo bodoensis and to the Neanderthal species, of which they recognize the nomenclature Homo neanderthalensis.

The name Homo bodoensis was chosen because the partial skull taken as a holotype for the new species is classified as Bodo 1, as it was discovered at the Bodo D’ar site in Ethiopia in 1976. According to this new classification, this species describes most of the humans who lived in Africa and some of Southeast Europe and the Middle East in the Chibanian. It also describes the direct ancestors of Homo sapiens.

According to the researchers, replacing the previous classifications with Homo bodoensis would help recognize the variability and geographic distribution of Chibanian hominins and describe the unique morphology of hominins from that period from Africa to the eastern Mediterranean. In a strictly biological sense, Homo bodoensis is not a species but a group of hominins distributed over a vast geographical area at the center of migrations and interbreedings between populations. However, the researchers believe this is a more homogeneous and consistent classification than the species proposed in previous years.

New discussions will surely arise from the proposal of this reclassification of the Chibanian hominins. That’s inevitable given that it’s a matter of putting an order in a history that is difficult to reconstruct with precision because fossils are often fragmentary and only a small part of them is so well preserved that they can still find DNA inside them. New fossil discoveries and new DNA samples from the ones in an excellent state of preservation may also influence the reconstruction of the complex history of humanity.