The remains of the earliest known child have been
discovered in Ethiopia. ‘Daughter of Lucy’ discovered
(21/09/2006)
The remains of the earliest known child have been
discovered in Ethiopia.
The girl, who has been named ‘Selam’ (the word for peace in several Ethiopian languages), is the oldest fossil of a hominin child yet unearthed. The details of the discovery have been published today in the journal Nature, while a team from the National Geographic have produced an illustration of what she may have looked like.
The first piece of the fossil was found inside a block of sandstone at Dikika on 10th December 2000 by Tilahun Gebreselassie, who was with a team led by Dr Zeresenay Alemseged, the first Ethiopian to lead a research team that has made a discovery of this importance. It took a further five years to unearth the rest of the find, which includes the whole skull, the entire torso, important parts of the upper and lower limbs, and unerupted teeth still in the jaw - a detail which has led scientists to think that the individual may have been about three years old when she died, some 3.3 million years ago.
The almost complete skeleton belongs to the species Australopithecus afarensis, with anatomical features that lie between those of humans and other apes. It shows adaptations for walking upright on two legs and for climbing and swinging from trees, suggesting that the species existed around the time of the human family’s transition to bipedal, ground-based existence. The skeleton’s brain case also suggests the brain of the species had started to evolve towards that of modern humans. Also present is the hyoid, or tongue, bone, which has never been found before in a species older than Neanderthal man, and which reflects the structure of the voice box and gives an indication of what sounds the species might have produced.
The skeleton is from the same species as ‘Lucy’, the famous fossil of an adult found in Hadar, Ethiopia in 1974, which has led the new discovery to be nicknamed ‘little Lucy’ or ‘Lucy’s daughter’, although she is thought to have lived 150,000 years before Lucy.
"The Dikika fossil is now revealing many secrets about Australopithecus afarensis and other early hominins, because the fossil evidence was not there," said Dr Zeresenay.
“Her completeness, antiquity and age at death combined, make this find unprecedented in the history of palaeoanthropology, and open many new research avenues to investigate the childhood of early human ancestors.”
“In my opinion, afarensis is a very good transitional species for what was before four million years ago and what came after three million years.”
"[The species had] a mixture of ape-like and human-like features. This puts afarensis in a special position to play a pivotal role in the story of what we are and where we come from."
For more information: http://www.nature.com/nature/index.html
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