Interviewee: Chris Stringer. Human origins expert Chris Stringer talks about the earliest Homo species and his view of their relationships with apes and humans. (DNAi Location: Applications > Human origins > Our family tree > Video > The earliest humans? )

And here, creatures which have been called the earliest humans, Homo rudolfensis and Homo habilis. And certainly in terms of brain size, they are a step up from the australopithicines. But again, looking at them in detail when we have parts of their skeletons, when we look at their teeth and faces, they, for many of us, are not totally convincing as the first humans. Some people still see them as only a halfway house between australopithicines and humans. And some people have argued that actually, the line to the first humans should be drawn somewhere here, and these creatures actually are still more closely related to the australopithicines than they are to later humans.

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