科研人员在意大利拉丁姆（Latium）南部切普拉诺（Ceprano）发现了一具成年人颅盖骨化石，法国和意大利的古生物学家对其进行详细和深入的研究，所得结论发表在最新一期的《科学公共图书馆》《Public Library of Science》上。
科学家对这具被认为是欧洲最古老的人类颅盖骨（已经以其发现地Ceprano命名）有以下一些结论：
1）Ceprano的形态特征显示其与中更新世时期（Middle Pleistocene）欧洲地区以外的人种更相近，或者应该说是古欧洲人远亲，其分布范围也非常广泛。
2）这种形态特征的接近性表明他们在非洲和欧亚大陆扩散的时间发生在大约早/中更新世之交（Early/Middle Pleistocene boundary）（约距今78万年前），并可能是一种衍生出来的独立类群。
3）Ceprano的颅盖骨除了一些衍生出的特征外，其较原始的脑壳结构很可能是保留了该类群在非洲和欧亚大陆的祖先形态特征。
4）从这一角度考虑，Ceprano所处的位置很可能是早更新世智人与其亲戚类群或时代更近的衍生类群海德堡人（H. heidelbergensis）之间的“桥梁”，至少在系统发育学上应该是这样。
5）以上特征和结论与Ceprano最新的年代学结果相一致（约距今43万到38.5万年间），这段时期（中更新世时期）的欧洲古人类各类群被认为可变性非常大。（生物谷Bioon.com）
生物谷推荐原文出处：
PLoS ONE 6(4): e18821. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0018821
The Stem Species of Our Species: A Place for the Archaic Human Cranium from Ceprano, Italy
Aurélien Mounier1, Silvana Condemi1, Giorgio Manzi2,3*
1 Unité Mixte de Recherche 6578 – Unité d'Anthropologie Bioculturelle, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique/Université de la Méditerranée/Etablissement Fran?ais du Sang, Marseille, France, 2 Dipartimento di Biologia Ambientale, Sapienza - Universitá di Roma, Roma, Italia, 3 Istituto Italiano di Paleontologia Umana, Roma, Italia
Abstract
One of the present challenges in the study of human evolution is to recognize the hominin taxon that was ancestral to Homo sapiens. Some researchers regard H. heidelbergensis as the stem species involved in the evolutionary divergence leading to the emergence of H. sapiens in Africa, and to the evolution of the Neandertals in Europe. Nevertheless, the diagnosis and hypodigm of H. heidelbergensis still remain to be clarified. Here we evaluate the morphology of the incomplete cranium (calvarium) known as Ceprano whose age has been recently revised to the mid of the Middle Pleistocene, so as to test whether this specimen may be included in H. heidelbergensis. The analyses were performed according to a phenetic routine including geometric morphometrics and the evaluation of diagnostic discrete traits. The results strongly support the uniqueness of H. heidelbergensis on a wide geographical horizon, including both Eurasia and Africa. In this framework, the Ceprano calvarium – with its peculiar combination of archaic and derived traits – may represent, better than other penecontemporaneous specimens, an appropriate ancestral stock of this species, preceding the appearance of regional autapomorphic features.
