Skull discovery could fill origins gap
Reuters UK
March 24
Skull discovery could fill origins gap
ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) -- A hominid skull discovered in Ethiopia could fill the gap in the search for the origins of the human race, a scientist said on Friday.
The cranium, found near the city of Gawis, 500 km (300 miles) southeast of the capital Addis Ababa, is estimated to be 200,000 to 500,000 years old.
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, told a news conference in Addis Ababa.
It was discovered two months ago in a small gully at the Gawis river drainage basin in Ethiopia's Afar region, southeast of the capital.
Sileshi said significant archaeological collections of stone tools and numerous fossil animals were also found at Gawis.
"(It) opens a window into an intriguing and important period in the development of modern humans," Sileshi said.
Read the entire story at http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/NewsArticle.aspx?type=scienceNews&storyID=2006-03-24T160257Z_01_L24749576_RTRIDST_0_SCIENCE-ETHIOPIA-FOSSIL-DC.XML
For photos and more about the Stone Age Institute, go to http://www.stoneageinstitute.org/
For more on anthropology at Indiana University, go to http://www.research.iu.edu/centers/craft.html and http://www.indiana.edu/~anthro/flash.html
