Turkana Boy

English

Turkana Boy

Alternative forms

• Turkana boy

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.

Proper noun

Turkana Boy

1. (archaeology) 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.
   • 1995, Ian Tattersall, The Fossil Trail, Cambridge University Press, page 118:

     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.

   • 1999, Barry Bogin, Patterns of Human Growth, Cambridge University Press, 2nd Edition, page 202,

     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.

   • 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.

Synonyms

• Nariokotome Boy
• KNM-WT 15000 (fossil designation by National Museums of Kenya)

Translations

fossilised skeleton of a Homo ergaster youth

• French: please add this translation if you can
• German: please add this translation if you can
• Italian: please add this translation if you can