Ancient Skull Found in Ethiopia

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Fossil hunters in Ethiopia have unearthed an ancient skull which they

say could be a " missing link " between Homo erectus and modern people.

The cranium was found in two pieces and is believed by its

discoverers to be between 500,000 and 250,000 years old.

 

The project's director, Dr Sileshi Semaw, said the fossilised

specimen came from " a very significant time " in human evolutionary

history.

 

It was found at Gawis in Ethiopia's north-eastern Afar region.

 

Stone tools and fossilised animals including two types of pigs,

zebras, elephants, antelopes, cats, and rodents were also found at

the site.

 

The skull appeared " to be intermediate between the earlier Homo

erectus and the later Homo sapiens, " Sileshi Semaw, an Ethiopian

research scientist at the Stone Age Institute at Indiana University,

US, told a news conference in Addis Ababa.

 

'Wealth of information'

 

The palaeoanthropologist said most fossil hominids were found in

pieces, but the near-complete skull provided a wealth of information.

 

" [it] opens a window into an intriguing and important period in the

development of modern humans, " he explained.

 

Little is known about the period during which African Homo erectus

supposedly evolved into our own species Homo sapiens.

 

The fossil record from Africa for this period was sparse and most of

the specimens poorly dated, project archaeologists said.

 

The face and cranium of the fossil are recognisably different from

those of modern humans, but the specimen bears unmistakable

anatomical evidence that it belongs to the modern human ancestral

line, Dr Semaw said.

 

Scientists conducting surveys in the Gawis River drainage basin found

the skull in a small gully.

 

Over the last 50 years, Ethiopia has been a key site for

archaeologists hunting for fossil human ancestors.

 

Gawis is situated near Hadar, where palaeoanthropologist Donald

Johanson found the 3.2-million-year-old remains of " Lucy " , the

partial skeleton of a hominid belonging to the species

Australopithecus afarensis, in 1974.