Oldest human fossils confirmed by ANU
16 February 2005
by Richard
Conan-Davies
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According to an ANU earth scientist the oldest human fossils are 195,000 years old, about 40,000 years older than previously thought. Fossilised human skulls called Omo I & II were recovered from sediments in 1967 of the Kibish Formation in Omo Valley in Ethiopia. But the exact age was not determined until now. Professor Ian McDougall , a geochronologist from the Australian National University (ANU) led a team from the Univeristy of Utah to this discovery analysing the sediments that surrounded the skulls. By dating mineral crystals in volcanic ash layers above and below layers of river sediments that contained the early human bones they concluded the fossils were much older than a 104,000-year-old volcanic layer and very close in age to a 196,000-year-old layer. Their work is to be publish in the Journal Nature . |
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