Woranso-Mille

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Woranso-Mille is a paleontological excavation area in the western center of the Afar region in Ethiopia , approximately 360 kilometers northeast of Addis Ababa . The area has been known as a fossil leader since the 1970s , but will not be explored in more detail until 2003 under the direction of Yohannes Haile-Selassie .

The Burtele foot , scientifically described in 2012, comes from the excavation site Burtele 2 , which may belong to a previously unknown species of hominini . Furthermore, the fragments of several pine trees were assigned to the species Australopithecus deyiremeda, which they established .

Historical background

Woranso-Mille is located south of the road from Bati to Mille and north of the road from Mille to Chiffra, 35 to 40 kilometers west of the city of Mille. In the early 1970s, a team of young geologists and paleontologists, including Yves Coppens , Donald Johanson , Jon Kalb and Maurice Taieb , began to map the badlands in the Afar Triangle , recording potential fossil sites. The result of these explorations by this International Afar Research Expedition was, among other things, the localization of the Hadar and Gona fossil sites . Several hundred vertebrate fossils were also collected in the area known today as Woranso-Mille in 1971 and 1973 ; but only finds of were carefully documented and published Cercopithecidae in the then - which is about a quarter of Ahmado accounted recovered bones - the area described.

Only after Yohannes Haile-Selassie had been granted an excavation license by the Ethiopian Ministry of Culture in autumn 2002 did further studies in this area begin in 2003. Potentially profitable locations were delimited in advance using aerial photographs and satellite photographs .

Finds

During the first excavation period in 2003/04, a hominine humerus fragment and - two meters away from it - a presumably also hominine upper incisor were discovered. In 2005, more hominine bones were recovered - including the partial skeleton KSD-VP-1/1 of Australopithecus afarensis , which was first described in 2010 - as well as more than 600 other fossils of predominantly land-living vertebrates, including big cats , crawling cats and bears , horned bearers , pigs , reedbucks , horses and Giraffe-like as well as colobus and colobus monkeys and some remains of carp fish ( barbus ). The partial skeleton - called Kadanuumuu ("Big Man") because of its estimated size of almost two meters - is considered a particularly revealing find because the shoulder blade as well as parts of the pelvis and one leg have been preserved; from their construction it could be deduced that “Big Man” could walk upright almost like an anatomically modern person ( Homo sapiens ) during his lifetime . For the fossils emerging on the surface as a result of soil erosion, an age of at least 3.5 million years was determined using the 40 Ar- 39 Ar method and an age of approximately 3.8 to 3.6 million years using biostratigraphic analyzes.

Another of the most important finds is the skull MRD-VP-1/1 of Australopithecus anamensis, discovered in February 2016, with a partially preserved upper jaw, which was ascribed an age of around 3.8 million years.

The early Pliocene research area Woranso-Mille is considered important insofar as other excavations suggest that the evolutionary transition from Australopithecus anamensis to Australopithecus afarensis took place between around 3.8 and 3.5 million years ago fossil but so far has hardly been documented.

Should the Burtele's foot belong to a hominine species - as suspected by its discoverers - it would be the first fossil discovered to date to prove that 3.4 million years ago, in addition to Australopithecus afarensis , a second species of hominini existed in East Africa , and should be Australopithecus deyiremeda as an independent species, even a third species.

literature

  • Jon Kalb : Adventures in the Bone Trade. The Race to Discover Human Ancestors in Ethiopia's Afar Depression. Copernicus Books, New York 2001, ISBN 0-387-98742-8

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Yohannes Haile-Selassie et al .: Preliminary geology and paleontology of new hominid-bearing Pliocene localities in the central Afar region of Ethiopia. In: Anthropological Science. Volume 115, No. 3, 2007, pp. 215–222, DOI: 10.1537 / ase.070426 , full text (PDF) ( Memento from May 28, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ^ Yohannes Haile-Selassie et al .: A new hominin foot from Ethiopia shows multiple Pliocene bipedal adaptations. In: Nature . Volume 483, 2012, pp. 565-569, doi: 10.1038 / nature10922
  3. ^ Jon Kalb: Recent Geologic Research in Ethiopia. In: Geology. Volume 2, No. 6, 1974, p. 266, doi : 10.1130 / 0091-7613 (1974) 2 <266: RGRIE> 2.0.CO; 2
  4. ^ Jon Kalb et al .: Geology and stratigraphy of Neogene deposits, Middle Awash Valley, Ethiopia. In: Nature. Volume 298, 1982, pp. 17-25, doi: 10.1038 / 298017a0
  5. ↑ Stephen R. Frosta and Eric Delson : Fossil Cercopithecidae from the Hadar Formation and surrounding areas of the Afar Depression, Ethiopia. In: Journal of Human Evolution. Volume 43, No. 5, 2002, pp. 687-748, doi: 10.1006 / jhev.2002.0603
  6. ↑ Yohannes Haile-Selassie et al.: An early Australopithecus afarensis postcranium from Woranso-Mille, Ethiopia. In: PNAS . Volume 107, No. 27, 2010, pp. 12121–12126, doi : 10.1073 / pnas.1004527107 , full text (PDF; 321 kB)
    A picture of the skeleton can be found on the Nature website : Rex Dalton: Africa's next top hominid . Ancient human relative could walk upright. doi : 10.1038 / news.2010.305
  7. ↑ Yohannes Haile-Selassie et al .: A 3.8-million-year-old hominin cranium from Woranso-Mille, Ethiopia. In: Nature. August 28, 2019, doi: 10.1038 / s41586-019-1513-8
    A face for Lucy's ancestors. On: mpg.de from August 28, 2019
  8. ^ Yohannes Haile-Selassie et al .: New Hominid Fossils From Woranso-Mille (Central Afar, Ethiopia) and Taxonomy of Early Australopithecus. In: American Journal of Physical Anthropology. Volume 141, 2010, pp. 406-417, doi: 10.1002 / ajpa.21159
  9. ^ Lucy had neighbors: A review of African fossils. On: eurekalert.org June 6, 2016