One day about 1.6 million years ago, a young boy died an unfortunate death. Unfortunate at the time because he died at the age of only about 12 years old. Fortunately, not nearly as long ago, a mesquite tree began to grow from with the cranium of that boy bringing with it traces of fossilized bone as it penetrated the ground surface. Fortunately, a crew of paleoanthropologists decided to survey on the west side of Lake Turkana to see if they could finally find some hominid fossils on this side of the lake. That death over a million and a half years ago provides a fortunate opportunity for us to look at more than a few pieces of a skull or a few teeth, but at a nearly complete skeleton of that boy. A series of fortunate occurrences and we have more than 90% of a single skeleton of someone who lived a very long time ago. This is a relative of ours without a doubt. The skeleton is that of ourselves with a few minor differences. This boy had he matured to be an adult would have stood about six feet in height. He would have been tall, lean, muscular, and very much a biped. In fact, he walked and ran with better mechanics than we do today. The mechanics of his femur, femur head, pelvis, and lower back are superior to those of today. We have had to sacrifice some of that efficiency of walking and running to give birth to children with larger brains.

This boy is known as the Turkana Boy because he was found next to Lake Turkana in Kenya. The following pictures are his story:

The skeleton on the left and closeup view of the femur and pevlis articulation. The femur head is longer than that of today making for a better mechanics for bipedal movement. The femur is thicker than ours adding support. There is an added lower vertibra that also adds greater support; the loss of that vertibra may explain the lower back pain many of us suffer today...all for a larger brain!

The Turkana Boy's cranium on the left compared to that of an adult Homo ergaster individual on the right.