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Middle Awash Project
The Middle Awash Project is an international research expedition conducted in the Afar region of Ethiopia with the goal of determining the origins of humanity. The project has the approval of the Ethiopian Culture Ministry and a strong commitment to developing Ethiopian archaeology, paleontology and geology research infrastructure. This project has discovered over 260 fossil specimens and over 17,000 vertebrate fossil specimens to date ranging from 200,000 to 6,000,000 years in age. Researchers have discovered the remains of four hominin species, the earliest subspecies of homo sapiens as well as stone tools. All specimens are permanently held at the National Museum of Ethiopia, where the project’s laboratory work is conducted year round. Geography The Middle Awash Project takes place in a semi arid, rather remote part of the Afar rift. Between 5.8 and 4.4 Ma, the region was grassland and wetland. Today, the rift is a basin divided by fault lines and filled with volcanoes. A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jon Kalb (cropped)
Jon Kalb August 17, 1941 (Houston, Texas) - October 27, 2017 (Austin, Texas) was a research geologist with the Vertebrate Paleontology Laboratory (Texas Memorial Museum), University of Texas at Austin. He received a pre-doctoral fellowship from the Carnegie Geophysical Laboratory in 1968, a graduate fellowship from Johns Hopkins University in 1969, and a BSc from American University in 1970. Early experience As a teenager Kalb began his career with a Mexican-American expedition searching for early shipwrecks off the coast of the Yucatan. He later joined famed treasure hunter and marine archeologist Bob Marx exploring reefs in the Caribbean. Sidelined by injuries from diving, Kalb was sent to the west coast of South America by the Smithsonian to collect marine fauna. He then joined a team of geologists with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in northwest Colombia mapping a potential route for a sea-level canal, which led him to prospect for gold on the Guinean Shield for the Guy ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Michele Gortani
Michele Gortani (16 January 1883 – 24 January 1966) was an Italian geologist, entomologist, and politician. He was a specialist on the Carnian Alps where he grew up and worked for much of his life. Gortani was born in Friuli to engineer Luigi and Angela Grassi in Lugo, Spain where his father then worked. He was educated at Udine before joining Bologna University, graduating in 1904. He was keenly interested in the Alpine region of Carnia, taking an interest in flora, paleontology, and entomology. He published on the fossils of Carnia while still a student in 1902. He worked as a geological assistant at Perrugia University in 1905 and at Bologna from 1906 to 1910, and Turin (1911–1913). He married Maria Gentile Mencucci from Zuglio in 1911. He became a professor at Pisa University in 1913 and also became a deputy in the Italian parliament in the same year. He volunteered in the Alpini (Alpine troops) during World War I and was court-martialled for criticising the Italian Army ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ardipithecus Kadabba
''Ardipithecus kadabba'' is the scientific classification given to fossil remains "known only from teeth and bits and pieces of skeletal bones", originally estimated to be 5.8 to 5.2 million years old, and later revised to 5.77 to 5.54 million years old. According to the first description, these fossils are close to the common ancestor of chimps and humans. Their development lines are estimated to have parted 6.5–5.5 million years ago. It has been described as a "probable chronospecies" (i.e. ancestor) of '' A. ramidus''. Although originally considered a subspecies of ''A. ramidus'', in 2004 anthropologists Yohannes Haile-Selassie, Gen Suwa, and Tim D. White published an article elevating ''A. kadabba'' to species level on the basis of newly discovered teeth from Ethiopia. These teeth show "primitive morphology and wear pattern" which demonstrate that ''A. kadabba'' is a distinct species from ''A. ramidus''. The specific name comes from the Afar word for "basal family ances ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ardipithecus Ramidus
''Ardipithecus ramidus'' is a species of australopithecine from the Afar region of Early Pliocene Ethiopia 4.4 million years ago (mya). ''A. ramidus'', unlike modern hominids, has adaptations for both walking on two legs (bipedality) and life in the trees (arboreality). However, it would not have been as efficient at bipedality as humans, nor at arboreality as non-human great apes. Its discovery, along with Miocene apes, has reworked academic understanding of the chimpanzee-human last common ancestor from appearing much like modern day chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas to being a creature without a modern anatomical cognate. The facial anatomy suggests that ''A. ramidus'' males were less aggressive than those of modern chimps, which is correlated to increased parental care and monogamy in primates. It has also been suggested that it was among the earliest of human ancestors to use some proto-language, possibly capable of vocalizing at the same level as a human infant. This is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Australopithecus Anamensis
''Australopithecus anamensis'' is a hominin species that lived approximately between 4.2 and 3.8 million years ago and is the oldest known ''Australopithecus'' species, living during the Plio-Pleistocene era. Nearly one hundred fossil specimens of ''A. anamensis'' are known from Kenya and Ethiopia, representing over twenty individuals. The first fossils of ''A. anamensis'' discovered, are dated to around 3.8 and 4.2 million years ago and were found in Kanapoi and Allia Bay in Northern Kenya. It is usually accepted that '' A. afarensis'' emerged within this lineage. However, ''A. anamensis'' and ''A. afarensis'' appear to have lived side by side for at least some period of time, and it is not fully settled whether the lineage that led to extant humans emerged in ''A. afarensis'', or directly in ''A. anamensis.'' Fossil evidence determines that ''Australopithecus anamensis'' is the earliest hominin species in the Turkana Basin, but likely co-existed with ''afarensis'' towards the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Australopithecus Garhi
''Australopithecus garhi'' is a species of australopithecine from the Bouri Formation in the Afar Region of Ethiopia 2.6–2.5 million years ago (mya) during the Early Pleistocene. The first remains were described in 1999 based on several skeletal elements uncovered in the three years preceding. ''A. garhi'' was originally considered to have been a direct ancestor to ''Homo'' and the human line, but is now thought to have been an offshoot. Like other australopithecines, ''A. garhi'' had a brain volume of ; a jaw which jutted out ( prognathism); relatively large molars and premolars; adaptations for both walking on two legs (bipedalism) and grasping while climbing (arboreality); and it is possible that, though unclear if, males were larger than females (exhibited sexual dimorphism). One individual, presumed female based on size, may have been tall. ''A. garhi'' is the first pre-''Homo'' hominin postulated to have manufactured tools—using them in butchering—and may be counted ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Homo Sapiens Idaltu
Herto Man refers to the 154,000 - 160,000-year-old human remains (''Homo sapiens'') discovered in 1997 from the Upper Herto member of the Bouri Formation in the Afar Triangle, Ethiopia. The discovery of Herto Man was especially significant at the time, as it fell within a long gap in the fossil record between 300 and 100 thousand years ago, and at its description in 2003, it represented the oldest dated ''H. sapiens'' remains. In the original description paper, these 12 (at minimum) individuals were described as falling just outside the umbrella of "anatomically modern human". Thus, Herto Man was classified into a new subspecies as "''H. s. idaltu''" ( aa, Idaltu "elder"). It supposedly represented a transitional morph between the more archaic "'' H. (s.?) rhodesiensis'' and ''H. s. sapiens'' (that is, a stage in a chronospecies). Subsequent researchers have rejected this classification. The validity of such subspecies is difficult to justify because of the vague definitions of "sp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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