Meganthropus

Meganthropus Temporal range: Early Pleistocene–Middle Pleistocene PreꞒ Ꞓ O S D C P T J K Pg N ↓
Illustration of the skull based on affinities with Ponginae
Scientific classification
Domain:	Eukaryota
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Mammalia
Order:	Primates
Suborder:	Haplorhini
Infraorder:	Simiiformes
Family:	Hominidae
Genus:	†Meganthropus
Species:	†M. palaeojavanicus
Binomial name
†Meganthropus palaeojavanicus von Koenigswald, 1950
Synonyms
†Homo erectus palaeojavanicus †Pithecanthropus dubius

Meganthropus is an extinct genus of non-hominin hominid ape, known from the Pleistocene of Indonesia. It is known from a series of large jaw and skull fragments found at the Sangiran site near Surakarta in Central Java, Indonesia, alongside several isolated teeth. The genus has a long and convoluted taxonomic history. The original fossils were ascribed to a new species, Meganthropus palaeojavanicus, and for a long time was considered invalid, with the genus name being used as an informal name for the fossils.

In the mid-2000s the taxonomy and phylogeny for the specimens were uncertain, and most paleoanthropologists considered them related to Homo erectus in some way. However, the names Homo palaeojavanicus and even Australopithecus palaeojavanicus were used as well, indicating the classification uncertainty.

After the discovery of a robust skull in Swartkrans in 1948 (SK48), the name Meganthropus africanus was briefly applied. However, that specimen is now formally known as Paranthropus robustus and the earlier name is a junior synonym. Some of these finds were accompanied by evidence of tool use similar to that of Homo erectus; this is why Meganthropus was often linked with that species as H. e. palaeojavanicus. In 2019, a study of tooth morphology found Meganthropus a valid genus of non-hominin hominid ape, most closely related to Lufengpithecus.^[1]