Wednesday, September 20, 2006

The oldest child...

The National Geographic web site has a story about a 3.3 million-year-old infant skeleton found in the Dikika region of Ethiopia by a team of researchers led by Zeresenay Alemseged of the Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology's Department of Human Evolution, in Germany. The site features some video and additional photographs, as well as a link to a much more detailed report about the find, and its implications for understanding development at that period of our past. Here's a shot of the skeleton which, unlike Lucy, has an almost complete cranium!


(Copyright: National Geographic Society;
source: http://www9.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/dikikababy/gallery7.html.)


This story has been a long time coming, since the first remains were originally found about five years ago, so it's nice to finally have a relatively detailed and well-illustrated report on the finds!

Added 20/09/2006, 15:03: The remains are also the subject of two new papers in Nature. Both can be accessed from this webpage which provides additional information.

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