> well into the last million years when a broader geographic range of sites start to become important.
I think statistics for Eurasian fossils began to pick up after 1.5 mY ago, and stays on par with the African one for any large time period, and after 500 kY leads the African one. At least if one too quantify the list from here, for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_human_evolution_fossils
It is not complete, of course, but I think it represents the trend reasonably well
Certainly within the last 350,000–500,000 years, the European record is disproportionately large due to exploration and recovery biases. I expect much more to come from Africa and Asia broadly from those periods. For the earlier time periods, a big factor in all parts of the world is more intensive current habitation and development, which means roads, houses, and commercial properties are being built into Pliocene or Pleistocene deposits. Better education and awareness of possible discoveries in these places is so important, and makes a big difference—recent discoveries from Kantis, Kenya, and continuing work in the Sangiran area of Indonesia are great examples.
> well into the last million years when a broader geographic range of sites start to become important.
I think statistics for Eurasian fossils began to pick up after 1.5 mY ago, and stays on par with the African one for any large time period, and after 500 kY leads the African one. At least if one too quantify the list from here, for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_human_evolution_fossils
It is not complete, of course, but I think it represents the trend reasonably well
Certainly within the last 350,000–500,000 years, the European record is disproportionately large due to exploration and recovery biases. I expect much more to come from Africa and Asia broadly from those periods. For the earlier time periods, a big factor in all parts of the world is more intensive current habitation and development, which means roads, houses, and commercial properties are being built into Pliocene or Pleistocene deposits. Better education and awareness of possible discoveries in these places is so important, and makes a big difference—recent discoveries from Kantis, Kenya, and continuing work in the Sangiran area of Indonesia are great examples.