August 29, 2019

Andrew Campbell 

Recently the journal Nature reported the discovery of the oldest skull by Professor Yohannes Haile-Selassie in Miro Dora, Ethiopia. He was jumping up and down at seeing the cranium, feeling extremely happy to realize his dream.

In fact, a local worker found the upper jaw of the new fossil in the Afar region of Ethiopia in February 2016. It was extremely lucky that Prof. Haile-Selassie could find the rest of the fossil, 3.9-million-year-old and assigned to anamensis.

In 1974, at the same area of Ethiopia, researchers discovered the first afarensis skeleton, a 3.2-million-year-old ape-like skull, and named it "Lucy" after the Beatles song, Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds.
Paleoanthropologists believed the newly-found fossil to be the ancestor of “Lucy.”
 

On the other hand, from the skull fragment, the scientists are sure that the existence of the two species must have overlapped for at least 100,000 years.
 

Photo:Webshot.