TELANTHROPUS CAPENSIS

original species designation given to a fossil hominid jaw found by John T. Robinson at Swartkrans, S.Af., in 1949. Since then, other hominid specimens have been uncovered there, so that the site's remains now include a large number of fossilsincluding teeth, jaws, craniums, leg bones, and other skeletal fragments. There was considerable debate among paleontologists over the years about the classification of the Telanthropus jaw. Some thought that it was representative of a separate genus, more modern than the South African Australopithecus of more than 2.3 million years ago but within that general group, and some thought that it should be classified with those species that came later. The debate was finally ended in the mid-1970s, and it has since been believed that the fossil jaw is of a South African specimen of Homo erectus (the species from which Homo sapiens is thought to have evolved) that lived from about 1.2 million years ago.