Homo erectus’ last known appearance dates to roughly 117,000 years ago

Description

Homo erectus, a humanlike species that dispersed from Africa into parts of Europe and Asia
roughly 2 million years ago, eventually reached the Indonesian island of Java before dying
out. Scientists say they have now resolved a controversy over just how long ago the last
known H. erectus inhabited the Southeast Asian island.
New evidence narrows the timing of this hominid’s final stand on Java to between 117,000
and 108,000 years ago, says a team led by geochronologists Yan Rizal of Indonesia’s Bandung Institute of Technology and Kira Westaway of Macquarie University in Sydney. The scientists present their results December 18 in Nature.