Field Research Middle Awash Project

Former Museum Director Dr. Bruce Latimer and Curator Dr. Yohannes Haile-Selassie have been participating in fieldwork activities conducted by the Middle Awash project in Ethiopia since 1991. They have been part of the many discoveries that the Middle Awash project has underscored.

Dr.Yohannes Haile-Selassie working in the field

Both museum members have played major roles in the discovery and interpretation of Homo sapiens idaltu, a 160,000 years old earliest modern human subspecies, Australopithecus afarensis, Lucy’s species, Australopithecus garhi, a 2.5 million years old early human ancestor, Ardipithecus ramidus, a 4.4 million year old ancestor (Dr. Yohannes Haile-Selassie recovered a partial skeleton of this species), and Ardipithecus kadabba, a 5.8 million year old early hominid.  Dr. Yohannes Haile-Selassie discovered and named the latter species.

Both museum members are still actively participating in the interpretation of Ardipithecus ramidus and the late Miocene faunal remains from the site are being compiled in a monograph to be edited by Dr. Yohannes Haile-Selassie and his colleague Middle Awash chief Geologist Dr. Giday WoldeGabriel.

Woranso-Mille Project

The Woranso-Mille Paleontological Site was discovered in 2004 in the deserts of Ethiopia's Afar Region by a team co-led by Museum Curator Yohannes Haile-Selassie and then Museum Director Bruce Latimer.  It is located in the Central Afar region, about 325 miles northeast of the capital Addis Ababa and 25 miles east of a small town called Mille.  During its first-year of full-fledged field season, the project collected more than 600 fossil specimens of various animals including 12 specimens representing an early human ancestor from 3.8 million years ago.  One of the 12 fossil specimens was the partial skeleton of a single individual, a find extremely rare in early hominid fossil hunting.  It represents one of four partial skeletons of early human ancestors older than 3 million years currently known in the history of paleoanthropology.  During the initial excavation of the partial skeleton, the team recovered numerous complete body parts such as the tibia (lower leg), the pelvis (hip bone), and the scapula (shoulder blade).

Excavation and survey resumed in 2006 and resulted in the recovery of additional bones from the excavation and about 400 additional fossil specimens of various vertebrates including 11 early hominid remains. The fieldwork will continue on a yearly basis, including the most recent 2009 field season. More information about the 2009 field season is available on these pages: Chapter 1 and Chapter 2.

The Woranso-Mille project is oriented towards becoming a multidisciplinary project with participants from the United States, Ethiopia, and other countries. In addition to Drs. Latimer and Haile-Selassie, project scientists thus far include Dr. Alan Deino, geochronologist from the Berkeley Geochronology Center, Berkeley, California, Dr. Beverly Saylor, a gelogist at Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland Ohio, Dr. Gary Scott, paleomagnetism expert from the Berkeley Geochronology Center, Berkeley, California, and Dr. Mohammed Umer, a geologist from the Addis Ababa University, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.  The project also plans to train graduate students from the United States, Ethiopia, and Turkey, and help in the infrastructural development of the Paleoanthropology Laboratory of the Ethiopian National Museum.

This research was financially supported by the National Science Foundation, The Leakey Foundation, The Wenner-Gren Foundation, and The National Geographic Society.