An examination of Homo naledi early juveniles recovered from the Rising Star cave system, South Africa

Abstract

Background

Six Homo naledi early juveniles were recovered from U.W. 101 (Dinaledi Chamber), U.W. 102 (Lesedi Chamber), and U.W. 110 in the Rising Star cave system.

Aim

This paper develops the information for the H. naledi early juvenile life stage, as defined by a combination of deciduous and permanent dentition, and the eruption of the first permanent molar.

Subjects and methods

The growing number of young individuals recovered from the Rising Star cave system allows us to gain a better understanding of their variation, or lack thereof, and provides a basis to estimate broad ranges for age at death of the individuals. The individuals are identified and described through craniodental remains and spatial associations.

Results and conclusion

Our results show that the teeth are remarkably consistent across the localities in their metric and non-metric traits, and our analyses refine previous estimations on dental eruptions with the first permanent molar erupting first in the sequence among permanent teeth.

Keywords:

• early juvenile
• Homo naledi
• deciduous
• dentition
• Rising Star

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Bernhard Zipfel for access to the fossils at the University of the Witwatersrand.

Disclosure statement

The authors have no relevant conflicts of interest to disclose. This article was submitted to the Human Origins & Survival Section of Annals of Human Biology (AHB) for which one of the authors is the Section Editor. This Section Editor reclused themselves from handling this article and it was assigned to another AHB Editor for independent and anonymous peer-review. In no way was this author involved in the editorial process for this article.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded in part by Louisiana State University Office of Research and Economic Development (JKB) and by a Ben Barres Spotlight Award from eLife and from the MJC Foundation (DB).