Encyclopedia of Evolution.pdf - Online Reading Center

duplication, gene
prominent brow ridges that were characteristic of apes but
not of humans (except for Neandertals). The estimated size
of the brain was larger than that of any ape and smaller than
the range of modern humans.
Two years later, he found a femur (upper leg bone). The
fact that the femur was found only 15 meters away from
the tooth and skullcap, and from the same layer, suggested
to Dubois that they were from the same species, perhaps the
same individual. The femur bent inward, which is a characteristic
of animals that walk upright. The length of the femur,
moreover, suggested that this species had relatively long
legs and short arms, which characterizes humans, not apes.
Dubois was convinced that he had found the remains of a
species that was intermediate between humans and apes and
walked erect: In the article in which he announced his discoveries,
he called it Anthropopithecus erectus, the humanape
that walked upright. Later he changed the genus name to
Pithecanthropus, which was the name that the German evolutionist
Haeckel (see Haeckel, Ernst) had used to describe
the hypothetical ape-man that he was sure had to have
existed. For the next several decades, scientific articles and
books referred to Java man as Pithecanthropus erectus. After
anthropologists determined that Java man was very similar to
Peking man and that it belonged in the human genus, both
were subsumed into the species Homo erectus.
While not every scientist accepted Dubois’s conclusions,
many did. Dubois himself began to doubt that the specimens
really were an intermediate between apes and humans. The
more he studied the Southeast Asian gibbon, the more he came
to believe that Java man was just a large gibbon. In his later
years, Dubois kept the Java man specimens hidden underneath
the floorboards of his house. This reduced, but did not eliminate,
the credibility of his discoveries. To this day creationists
claim that Homo erectus fossils can be ignored because their
discoverer lost confidence in them (see creationism). Many
other specimens of Homo erectus, and of related species such
as Homo ergaster, have been found that leave no doubt
about either the existence or the characteristics of this hominin
species. Dubois died December 16, 1940.
Further Reading
Lewin, Roger, Carl Swisher, and Garniss H. Curtis. Java Man: How
Two Geologists’ Discoveries Changed Our Understanding of the
Evolutionary Path to Modern Humans. New York: Scribners,
2000.
Shipman, Pat. The Man Who Found the Missing Link: Eugene
Dubois and His Lifelong Quest to Prove Darwin Right. Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002.
duplication, gene See DNA (raw material of evolution).