ETHIOPIA: Paleoanthropologist Zeresenay Alemseged of the Leipzig Max Planck Insititute yesterday unveiled the remains of "Salam", which he called "the earliest and most complete infant body ever found", at the National Museum in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Salam, a three-year-old girl, lived about 3.3 million years ago in the Dikika area of the Afar region of Ethiopia, approximately 450km north of Addis Ababa. Salam is thus 150,000 years older than "Lucy", the previous oldest human ancestor found. Lucy's remains were discovered nearby in the Afar region in 1974 by Donald C Johanson and are housed in the museum where yesterday's announcement was made.
Salam is both older and, Dr Alemseged said, "more complete" than Lucy. He said Salam had the potential to become another "cultural icon" for Ethiopia alongside Lucy.
Salam was first discovered in December 2000 when an official from the Ethiopian ministry of culture found the child's skull. Dr Alemseged and his team have undertaken four expeditions to the area between 2000 and 2004 to piece together the remains of the skeleton. Since then he has been cleaning and ordering the remains in Leipzig.
Salam was named yesterday in Addis Ababa when Dr Alemseged asked those present at the announcement to suggest a name. The Ethiopian minister for culture and tourism, Mohammud Drir, proposed Salam, a girl's name meaning "peace" in Ethiopian and Arabic.
The Afar region, where Salam was found, is the site of periodic banditry and guerrilla fighting which meant expeditions had to be undertaken under armed guard. Lucy had been named after the Beatles' song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.
Salam, like Lucy, was a member of the Australopithecus afarensis species. The discovery marks the first time that scientists have been able to examine the development of the skull of any hominid older than three million years.
The size of Salam's brain at her death is estimated by Dr Alemseged at 330 cubic centimetres, comparable to a similarly aged chimpanzee. However, her brain was 63-88 per cent fully formed, compared with 90 per cent in the case of a chimpanzee. Consequently the discovery will "tell us a lot about how childhood originated", said Dr Alemseged, adding that "childhood is the basis of who we are".
He denied he had found the "missing link", saying "something will always be missing".
Salam will go on permanent display in the National Museum.
The findings are published in full in the scientific journal Nature today. A full report, including an artist's representation of Salam, whose unusual appearance, Dr Alemseged joked, might upset his wife, also coincidentally called Salam, will be published in National Geographic in November.