Homo gautengensis

Homo gautengensis is a species name proposed by anthropologist Darren Curnoe in 2010 for South African hominin fossils otherwise attributed to H. habilis, H. ergaster, or, in some cases, Australopithecus or Paranthropus.

Along with fossils such as the mandibles AL 666 from Ethiopia and UR 501 from Malawi (both probably exceeding 2.1 million years in age), a skull designated Stw 53 was once one of the primary contenders.

[2] Stw 53 was discovered in August 1976 near Krugersdorp, Transvaal in South Africa and was described in 1977 by palaeoanthropologists Alun R. Hughes and Philip V. Tobias as a skull probably from an early species of Homo.

[3] Though many palaeoanthropologists recognised the fossil as representing a species of Homo, possibly H. habilis, this has never been universally accepted, many instead seeing it as a specimen of Australopithecus africanus.

A few scholars believed that the region didn't preserve any species of Homo, arguing that the fossil material all belonged to australopithecines.

[4] Prior to Curnoe's description, it had already been suggested by other palaeoanthropologists, such as Frederick E. Grine and colleagues in 1993 and 1996 that Stw 53, and another skull, SK 847, represented a new species closely related to H.

[11] In 2011, palaeoanthropologist Lee R. Berger went as far as to state that "there is little reason to consider [H. gautengensis] a valid taxon", noting that the attribution of Stw 53 itself to Homo had been challenged on both anatomical and stratigraphic grounds.

[13] Antón and Middleton (2023) conducted a large analysis of hominin fossils and concluded that the Stw 53 skull cannot be allocated to Homo, SK 847 is H. aff.