lunes, 16 de diciembre de 2013

Nairobi suburb could hold remains of very early man

Palaeontologists from the National Museums of Kenya have found fossil remains of at least three individuals.

Kandis River in Ongata Rongai, half an hour’s drive from Nairobi, would be the unlikeliest place palaeontologists would head for to look for 3 million-year-old fossils.

But they have been at the dry river bed for three years now searching for the counterpart of Lucy, a 3.2 million-year-old female Australopithecus afarensis discovered in 1974 at Hadar in the Awash Valley of Ethiopia’s Afar depression by Donald Johanson.
Lucy was nicknamed after the famous Beatles song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds of the late 1960s.
So far, fossil remains of this species of our early ancestors have only been found in the Great Rift Valley in Ethiopia and Lake Turkana. The Kandis site is the first outside the Rift Valley.
Dr Emma Mbua, head of the Department of Earth Sciences at the National Museums of Kenya, has found fossil remains of at least three individuals: Two baby teeth found in 2011, a canine tooth and an elbow of a possible male adult found in 2012.[...] theeastafrican.co.ke

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