Cleveland Museum of Natural
History Curator and Case Western Reserve University Adjunct Professor
Dr. Yohannes Haile-Selassie and his team of researchers have discovered a
"remarkably complete" cranium of a 3.8-million-year-old early human
ancestor from the Woranso-Mille paleontological site, located in the
Afar region of Ethiopia. Working for the past 15 years at the site, the
team discovered the cranium (MRD-VP-1/1), here referred to as "MRD," in
February 2016. In the years following their discovery,
paleoanthropologists of the project conducted extensive analyses of MRD,
while project geologists worked on determining the age and context of
the specimen. The results of the team's findings are published online in
two papers in the international scientific journal
Nature.
The 3.8-million-year-old fossil cranium (MRD) represents a time
interval between 4.1 and 3.6 million years ago when early human ancestor
fossils are extremely rare, especially outside the Woranso-Mille area.
MRD generates new information on the overall craniofacial morphology of
Australopithecus anamensis, a species that is widely accepted to have been the ancestor of Lucy's species,
Australopithecus afarensis.
MRD also shows that Lucy's species and its hypothesized ancestor, A.
anamensis, coexisted for approximately 100,000 years, challenging
previous assumptions of a linear transition between these two early
human ancestors. Haile-Selassie said, "This is a game changer in our
understanding of human evolution during the Pliocene."
Discovery of MRD-VP-1/1 ("MRD"):
The Woranso-Mille project has been conducting field research in the
central Afar region of Ethiopia since 2004. The project has collected
more than 12,600 fossil specimens representing about 85 mammalian
species. The fossil collection includes about 230 fossil hominin
specimens dating to between >3.8 and ~3.0 million years ago.
The first piece of MRD, the upper jaw, was found by Ali Bereino (a
local Afar worker) on February 10, 2016, at a locality known as Miro
Dora, Mille District of the Afar Regional State. The specimen was
exposed on the surface, and further investigation of the area resulted
in the recovery of the rest of the cranium. "I couldn't believe my eyes
when I spotted the rest of the cranium. It was a eureka moment and a
dream come true," said Haile-Selassie.
Location of the Discovery
MRD was found in the Woranso-Mille Paleontological Project study
area located in Zone 1, Mille District of the Afar Regional State of
Ethiopia. Miro Dora is the local name of the area where MRD was found.
It is about 550 km northeast of the capital, Addis Ababa, and 55 km
north of Hadar ("Lucy's" site).
Geology and Age Determination
In a companion paper published in the same issue of
Nature,
Beverly Saylor of Case Western Reserve University and her colleagues
determined the age of the fossil as 3.8 million years by dating minerals
in layers of volcanic rocks nearby. They mapped the dated levels to the
fossil site using field observations and the chemistry and magnetic
properties of rock layers. Saylor and her colleagues combined the field
observations with analysis of microscopic biological remains to
reconstruct the landscape, vegetation and hydrology where MRD died.
MRD was found in the sandy deposits of a delta where a river entered
a lake. The river likely originated in the highlands of the Ethiopian
plateau while the lake developed at lower elevations, where rift
activity caused the Earth surface to stretch and thin, creating the
lowlands of the Afar region. Debris flows and volcanic ejecta
occasionally descended into the otherwise quiet lake, which was
ultimately buried by basalt lava flows. This kind of volcanic activity
and dramatic landscape change is common in rift settings. "Incredible
exposures and the volcanic layers that episodically blanketed the land
surface and lake floor allowed us to map out this varied landscape and
how it changed over time," said Saylor.
Fossil pollen grains and chemical remains of fossil plant and algae
that are preserved in the lake and delta sediments provide clues about
the ancient environmental conditions. Specifically, they indicate that
the lake near where MRD finally rested was likely salty at times and
that the watershed of the lake was mostly dry, but that there were also
forested areas on the shores of the delta or alongside the river that
fed the delta and lake system. "MRD lived near a large lake in a region
that was dry. We're eager to conduct more work in these deposits to
understand the environment of the MRD specimen, the relationship to
climate change and how it affected human evolution, if at all," said
Naomi Levin, a co-author on the study from University of Michigan.
Significance of the Discovery
1. Among the most important findings was the team's conclusion that
Australopithecus anamensis and its descendant species, the well-known
Australopithecus afarensis,
coexisted for a period of at least 100,000 years. This finding
contradicts the long-held notion of an anagenetic relationship between
these two taxa, whereby one species disappears only by giving rise to a
new species in a linear fashion.
2.
Australopithecus anamensis is the oldest known member of the genus
Australopithecus.
The species was previously only known through teeth and jaw fragments,
all dated to between 4.2 and 3.9 million years ago. The similarities
between the preserved dentition of the 3.8-million-year-old MRD and the
previously known teeth and jaw fragments of A. anamensis led to a
positive identification of MRD as a member of A. anamensis.
Additionally, due to the cranium's rare near-complete state, the
researchers identified never-before-seen facial features in the species.
"MRD has a mix of primitive and derived facial and cranial features
that I didn't expect to see on a single individual," Haile-Selassie
said. Dr. Stephanie Melillo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary
Anthropology in Germany, co-author of the papers, further said, "A.
anamensis was already a species that we knew quite a bit about, but this
is the first cranium of the species ever discovered. It is good to
finally be able to put a face to the name."
Some characteristics were shared with its descendant species,
Australopithecus afarensis,
while others differed significantly and had more in common with those
of even older and more primitive early human ancestor groups, such as
Ardipithecus and Sahelanthropus.
3. The distinct differences between the 3.8-million-year-old MRD
specimen and a previously unassigned 3.9-million-year-old hominin
cranium fragment--commonly known as the Belohdelie frontal and
discovered in the Middle Awash of Ethiopia by a team of paleontologists
in 1981--also proved significant. The preserved features of the
Belohdelie frontal differed from those of MRD but were significantly
similar to those of the known cranial specimens of Lucy's species. As a
result, the new study confirms that the Belohdelie frontal belonged to
an individual of Lucy's species. This identification extends the
earliest record of
Australopithecus afarensis back to 3.9 million years ago, indicating a period of at least 100,000 years' overlap with its ancestor,
Australopithecus anamensis.
4. The 3.8-million-year-old MRD specimen was buried in a river delta
on the margin of a lake that formed in an actively rifted landscape
with steep hillsides and volcanic eruptions that blanketed the land
surface with ash and lava. There were forested areas on the shores of
the delta or along the edges of the river that flowed into the delta and
lake system, but the watershed that fed the river, delta and lake
system was mostly dry with few trees.
