Turkana Boy en · PROPN
Etymology
Named after Lake Turkana, Kenya, near which the fossil was discovered in 1984 by Kenyan palaeontologist Kamoya Kimeu, on the bank of the Nariokotome River.
Meanings
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The nearly complete fossilised skeleton of a Homo ergaster youth (estimated 7–11 years old at death) who lived 1.5 to 1.6 million years ago.
As Homo erectus is no chimpanzee, Turkana boy’s true age at death was probably between seven and 11 years. What is clear is that the Turkana boy followed a pattern of growth that is neither that of a modern human nor that of a chimpanzee.
1999, Barry Bogin, Patterns of Human Growth, 2nd edition, Cambridge University Press, page 202:The prime importance of the Turkana Boy is that he represented the earliest kind of human we know of whose general body proportions matched those of living people.
1995, Ian Tattersall, The Fossil Trail, Cambridge University Press, page 118:2009, Richard Dawkins, The Greatest Show on Earth, Simon & Schuster (Free Press), page 197, The most famous specimen of Homo ergaster, and one of the most complete pre-human fossils ever found, is the Turkana Boy, or Nariokotome Boy, discovered by Kamoya Kimeu, star fossil-finder of Richard Leakey's team of palaeontologists. The Turkana Boy lived approximately 1.6 million years ago and died at the age of about eleven.
Forms
| Spelling | Features | Labels | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Turkana boy | alternative | lexicographic |
Synonyms
Nariokotome Boy · KNM-WT 15000
Translations (3)
fr garçon du Turkana (fossilised skeleton of a Homo ergaster youth) · de Nariokotome-Junge (fossilised skeleton of a Homo ergaster youth) · de Turkana-Junge (fossilised skeleton of a Homo ergaster youth)