Hominid Cranium- Scientists discover missing link to our ancestors

Scientists in northeastern Ethiopia said Saturday that they have discovered the hominid skull of small human ancestor at least 250,000 years old that could be a missing link between the extinct Homo erectus and modern man. The hominid cranium was found in two pieces and is believed to be between 500,000 and 250,000 years old. Sileshi Semaw, director of the Gona Paleoanthropological Research Project in Ethiopia said it came "from a significant period and is close to the appearance of the anatomically modern human".

The cranium which was found by scientists conducting surveys in the Gawis River drainage basin in a small gully, in Ethiopia’s north-eastern Afar region, five weeks ago had provided a wealth of information as most fossil hominids previously were found in pieces while cranium skull-a rare find - by contrast is near-complete.Several stone tools and fossilized animals including two types of pigs, zebras, elephants, antelopes, cats, and rodents were also found at the site. "The Gawis cranium provides us with the opportunity to look at the face of one of our ancestors. This fossil links us with the past by showing a face that is recognisably different and more primitive than ours," the archaeology project said in a statement.

The cranium dates to a time about which little is known the transition from African Homo erectus to modern humans. The fossil record from Africa for this period is sparse and most of the specimens poorly dated, project archaeologists said. Homo erectus, which many believe was an ancestor of modern Homo sapiens, is thought to have died out 100,000 to 200,000 years ago. The face and cranium of the fossil are recognisably different from that of modern humans, but it offers unmistakable anatomical evidence that it belongs in our ancestry, Dr Semaw said. "A good fossil provides anatomical evidence that allows us to refine our understanding of evolution. A great fossil forces us to re-examine our views of human origins. I believe the Gawis cranium is a great fossil," said Scott Simpson, a project paleontologist from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine at Cleveland, Ohio.

Homo erectus which first appeared in Africa between 1 million and 2 million years ago are believed to leave Africa about 2 million years ago and spread across Asia from Georgia in the Caucasus to China and Indonesia. Between 1 million and perhaps 200,000 years ago, one or more species existed in Africa that gave rise to the earliest members of our own species Homo sapiens between 150,000 and 200,000 years ago. "This is really exciting because it joins a limited number of fossils which appear to be evolutionary between Homo erectus and our own species Homo sapiens," said Eric Delson, a paleoanthropologist at Lehman College of the City University of New York, who was not involved in the discovery but has followed the project. Delson said the fossil found in Ethiopia "might represent a population broadly ancestral to modern humans or it might prove to be one of several side branches which died out without living descendants."

The research was supported by the Stone Age Institute, an independent, nonprofit center based north of Bloomington that is an outgrowth of the CRAFT Research Center. The Stone Age Institute researches human origins and the development of technology.