Turkana Boy

In 1984, the Kenyan fossil hunter Kamoya Kimeu, working with Richard Leakey's team at Nariokotome on the west shore of Lake Turkana, spotted a fragment of skull in the earth. Over several seasons the team excavated a nearly complete skeleton of a boy of the species Homo erectus, about 1.6 million years old. It is the most complete early human skeleton ever found, and is known as the Turkana Boy or Nariokotome Boy. He was about 8 to 12 years old when he died, and already about 1.6 metres (5 ft 3 in) tall; he might have reached about 1.85 metres as an adult.

His body looked far more like ours than like Lucy's. He had long legs, a narrow torso and a barrel chest, a build suited to walking and running long distances and to shedding heat in a hot, open habitat. His brain was about 880 cubic centimetres, around two-thirds of the modern adult average. His skeleton also raises questions: scientists still debate how fast Homo erectus children grew, and whether his age at death was nearer 8 or 12. A tooth abscess that infected his jaw may have killed him, though that cause is not certain.