This Skull and jaw have been announced in Nature: "The earliest toothless hominin skull, NATURE, VOL 434, 7 APRIL 2005" but here it is described in detail. The paper is not available as a pdf yet, its only up on the journal website as an HTML file but it can be converted to a PDF and used until the proper PDF becomes available:
A fourth hominin skull from Dmanisi, Georgia (p NA)
David Lordkipanidze, Abesalom Vekua, Reid Ferring, G. Philip Rightmire, Christoph P.E. Zollikofer, Marcia S. Ponce de León, Jordi Agusti, Gocha Kiladze, Alexander Mouskhelishvili, Medea Nioradze, Martha Tappen
Published Online: 9 Oct 2006
DOI: 10.1002/ar.a.20379
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/abstract/113390792/ABSTRACTAbstract
Newly discovered Homo remains, stone artifacts, and animal fossils from Dmanisi, Republic of Georgia, provide a basis for better understanding patterns of hominin evolution and behavior in Eurasia ca. 1.77 million years ago. Here we describe a fourth skull that is nearly complete, lacking all but one of its teeth at the time of death. Both the maxillae and the mandible exhibit extensive bone loss due to resorption. This individual is similar to others from the site but supplies information about variation in brain size and craniofacial anatomy within the Dmanisi paleodeme. Although this assemblage presents numerous primitive characters, the Dmanisi skulls are best accommodated within the species H. erectus. On anatomical grounds, it is argued that the relatively small-brained and lightly built Dmanisi hominins may be ancestral to African and Far Eastern branches of H. erectus showing more derived morphology. Anat Rec Part A, 2006. © 2006 Wiley-Liss, Inc.
"The new cranium is almost complete (Fig. 4). There is a gap in the parietal on the left side, and the anterior portion of the foramen
magnum and the basioccipital are missing. On the left, the petrous temporal is broken out. The body of the sphenoid seems to have
been crushed, and this region is blocked with matrix containing bone fragments. The interior of the vault has been cleaned, and parts of
the posterior, middle, and, to a lesser extent, the anterior cranial fossae are intact. Much of the facial skeleton is in good condition. On
the right, there is some damage to the lower margin of the cheek. No teeth are present, and the maxillary alveolar processes are heavily
resorbed. There is little doubt that the edentulous lower jaw (D3900) recovered near the cranium must belong to the same individual. It
is well preserved; only the left ascending ramus is missing"
"Cranial capacity as measured with seed is close to 650 cm3. However, this result is dependent on restoring parts of the cranial base that
are missing, just anterior to the foramen magnum. CT reconstruction of the complete endocast yields an estimate of 625 ± 5 cm3."
"Apart from facial remodeling, D3444 and D3900 are similar to the crania and jaws discovered earlier. With the possible exception of the
D2600 mandible (Gabunia et al., [2002]), all of this material can be assigned to a single paleodeme (Rightmire et al., [2006]). D3444 is
likely an older adult and may be a male. Treated together, the Dmanisi skulls show several traits that appear to be primitive, in the sense
that they are present in species of Australopithecus and other Plio-Pleistocene African hominins (Table 3). These characters include low
cranial capacity, midfacial projection, flexion of the malar pillar, frontal constriction, inflation of the mastoid region, weak expression of an
occipital transverse torus, a shallow palate, a thickened vertical mandibular symphysis with little/no mental eminence, a sloping alveolar
planum, and internal transverse tori.
In many other aspects of their morphological bauplan, the Dmanisi hominins resemble H. erectus. Traits clearly diagnostic for this
species are an elevated nasal saddle and a bar-like supraorbital torus, sagittal keeling on the parietals, a low temporal squama with a
straight upper border passing downward toward asterion, flexion of the occiput, and a constricted foramen lacerum."
