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USF couple's 3.3-million-year-old 'baby'

The two geologists help date the age of an apelike girl's almost-complete skeleton that was found in East Africa.

By BRADY DENNIS
Published September 27, 2006

TAMPA - A recent article in the journal Nature revealed a remarkable discovery in East Africa of the nearly-intact skeleton of a young girl who died 3.3-million years ago.

The girl, thought to be about 3 years old when she died, is one of the most complete human ancestral fossils ever found.

The geologists who helped figure out the fossil's age recently began teaching at the University of South Florida. Oh, and they're also married.

"It's a bit overwhelming," said USF geology professor Jonathan Wynn, 37, who co-authored the Nature article. "To find something preserved in that sort of detail is really rare. It's really exciting."

The skeleton first was identified in 2000 in Ethiopia's Dikika region, encased in a block of sandstone. The painstaking process of excavation has taken more than five years.

Wynn joined the project in 2002 and has made numerous trips to the site. His primary contributions were mapping sediments in the area and determining the age of fossils. His wife, volcanologist Diana Roman, also analyzed samples of volcanic ash to determine the age of fossils, though she has not traveled to the site.

Wynn said evidence suggests the girl might have perished in a flash flood and her body buried quickly beneath sediment, which would have helped preserve her remains intact. Usually, such a toddler would have been devoured by scavengers.

Zeresenay Alemseged, of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, led the international team and has called the serendipitous discovery "something you find once in a lifetime."

Scientists named the fossil Selam, which means "peace" in Ethiopia's official Amharic language. She is part of the species Australopithecus afarensis, which lived in Africa between about 4-million and 3-million years ago.

Others nicknamed her "Lucy's baby," after the famous prehistoric female "Lucy," discovered in Ethiopia in 1974. However, the child appears to have lived at least 100,000 years earlier.

Scientists this month said the newfound skeleton revealed evidence of a species in transition. There are indications that the species walked upright, like modern humans. But gorilla-like arms and shoulders suggest it also might have had the ability to climb and swing through the trees.

"Lucy's baby" isn't the lone focus of the project, said Wynn, who most recently worked as a research fellow at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland and as an assistant professor at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania.

He said his research has revealed that the region, now a stark wasteland with very little vegetation, was once lush and green, a place populated with lakes, woods and wildlife such as crocodiles, elephants, wildebeests and white rhinos.

And the work is not finished. Wynn plans to return to Ethiopia in October to begin another stint at the site. This time, his wife will also make the trip.

Wynn says the couple will help search for the remains of people quite a bit younger than "Lucy's baby." The earliest stone tools ever found - about 2.6-million years old - were discovered nearby.

USF's newest husband and wife team will travel halfway around the earth in search of clues as to who made them.

"I'd love to find fossils of humans who might have made those tools," Wynn said.

[Last modified October 1, 2006, 09:11:41]