Fossil evidence for the origin of Homo sapiens.

@article{Schwartz2010FossilEF,
  title={Fossil evidence for the origin of Homo sapiens.},
  author={Jeffrey H Schwartz and Ian Tattersall},
  journal={American journal of physical anthropology},
  year={2010},
  volume={143 Suppl 51},
  pages={
          94-121
        }
}
Our species Homo sapiens has never received a satisfactory morphological definition. Deriving partly from Linnaeus's exhortation simply to "know thyself," and partly from the insistence by advocates of the Evolutionary Synthesis in the mid-20th Century that species are constantly transforming ephemera that by definition cannot be pinned down by morphology, this unfortunate situation has led to huge uncertainty over which hominid fossils ought to be included in H. sapiens, and even over which of… 
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What constitutes Homo sapiens? Morphology versus received wisdom.
  • J. Schwartz
  • Biology
    Journal of anthropological sciences = Rivista di antropologia : JASS
  • 2016
TLDR
It is argued that many specimens regarded as AMS, and all those deemed AS, are not H. sapiens, and the features these AMS do share with ES suggest the existence of a sapiens clade.
Human Paleontology and Prehistory: Contributions in Honor of Yoel Rak
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This interaction explains the extraordinarily fast tempo of evolution within the genus Homo by invoking perfectly routine evolutionary processes; and it eliminates any need for special pleading in the hominid case, at least in terms of mechanism.
Human Evolutionary History
What have the revelations about Neanderthal DNA revealed about Homo sapiens?
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The current information supports the existence of both replacement and interbreeding events, and indicates the need to revise the two main explanatory models, the Multiregional and the Out-of-Africa hypotheses, about the origin and evolution of H. sapiens and its co-relatives.
Homo sapiens, Homo neanderthalensis and the Denisova specimen: New insights on their evolutionary histories using whole-genome comparisons
TLDR
The selective sweep that gave rise to Homo sapiens could, therefore, have initiated before the modern/archaic human divergence.
Resolving the “muddle in the middle”: The case for Homo bodoensis sp. nov.
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This work proposes the introduction of a new taxon, Homo bodoensis sp.
No known hominin species matches the expected dental morphology of the last common ancestor of Neanderthals and modern humans
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It is shown that no known fossil species is a suitable candidate for being the [N-MH]LCA and that all late Early and Middle Pleistocene taxa from Europe have Neanderthal dental affinities, pointing to the existence of a European clade originated around 1 Ma.
Hominin taxic diversity: Fact or fantasy?
  • B. Wood, Eve K Boyle
  • Geography, Environmental Science
    American journal of physical anthropology
  • 2016
TLDR
Not all new hominin taxa are created equally, but while taxic diversity may not be as prevalent as some have claimed, it is a feature of the hom inin clade from 4 Ma until c.40 ka years ago.
Homo erectus and Middle Pleistocene hominins: brain size, skull form, and species recognition.
First description of the Cro-Magnon 1 endocast and study of brain variation and evolution in anatomically modern Homo sapiens
TLDR
A decrease in absolute endocranial size since the Upper Palaeolithic was noticeable and non-allometric differences in the relative size and organization of different parts of the brain were found.
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