Infant hominid, Selam, helps probe into dawn of humanity

0 Comments | AFP, September, 2006

PARIS (AFP) — Palaeontologists, reporting an extraordinarily rare fossil find, say they have uncovered a nearly complete skeleton of a hominid child who lived at a key stage in primate evolution more than three million years ago. The fossilised remains of the child, estimated to have died at the age of three and who was probably a female, shed light on a hotly disputed branch of the human tree known as Australopithecus afarensis.

The best-known A. afarensis is the famous fossil Lucy, recovered in Ethiopia in 1974 and who, for more than 20 years, was the earliest known member of the hominid family. Hominids are primates who split from apes between five and seven million years ago. They are considered the forerunners of anatomically modern humans, who appeared on the scene...