Gawis cranium

The Gawis cranium is a hominid skull discovered on February 16, 2006 near the drainage of Gawis, a tributary of the Awash River in the Afar Depression, Ethiopia. The skull is between 200,000 and 500,000 years old and appears to be an intermediate species between Homo erectus and Homo sapiens. Scientists suspect the skull could be a transitional fossil that fills a gap in human evolutionary origins.



Discovery and significance
The skull was discovered by Asahmed Humet, a member of the Gona Paleoanthropological Research Project. It was found in a small gully at the Gawis river drainage basin in the Afar Region, 300 miles northeast of Addis Ababa. The skull is a nearly complete cranium of what is believed to be a Middle Pleistocene human ancestor. While different from a modern human, the braincase, upper face and jaw of the cranium have unmistakeable anatomical evidence that belong to human ancestry.

Significant archaeological collections of stone tools and numerous fossil animals were also found at the site.

The discovery was reported by Sileshi Semaw, director of the Gona Project, who is based at the Stone Age Institute.

Gawis is in the Gona Research Project study area, which is in the Awash River Valley. Immediately to the east of Gona, also located along the Awash and one of its tributaries is the site of Hadar, where U.S. scientist Donald Johanson found the 3.2 million year old remains of Australopithecus afarensis (also known as "Lucy") in 1974. The Middle Awash, site of many other hominid discoveries, is to the douth.

In addition to the Gawis cranium, the Gona project area is where the world's oldest stone tools (2.6 million years old) were discovered, as well as fossils of Ardipithecus ramidus dated to approximately 4.5 million years ago.