A Late Pleistocene burial of a single individual from Rampura, India was discovered during a paleoanthropological survey of the Lower Narmada River Valley in June 2006. The find represents the first full skeleton from this time period in India. The present study focuses on the cleaning, reconstruction, and collection of morphological and paleobiological data from this specimen. The results of analyses of the morphology of the Rampura fossil will shed light on a pressing question in human evolutionary studies: that of the process of modern human origins. While it is well known that human ancestors occupied regions outside of Africa from the earliest Pleistocene, the relationship of these archaic populations to the earliest members of Homo sapiens is a subject of great debate. At issue is the question of whether early modern human populations from Africa interbred with, or replaced without admixture, existing archaic populations throughout the Old World. If the Rampura specimen is found to exhibit mixed Asian/African features, this suggests multidirectional dispersals from both regions and a mixing of populations with archaic/modern morphology in geographically intermediate areas such as South Asia. It also disproves assumptions that Asia was an "evolutionary dead end." If the specimen exhibits exclusively African morphology, this suggests a scenario of replacement of local archaic populations by dispersing modern humans from Africa.
