First Austrian-led expedition presents finds from the „Cradle of Humankind“
By Gerhard Weber The fossils found from Ethiopia are in Vienna for the first time for examination at the Department of Evolutionary Anthropology at the University of Vienna. An interdisciplinary and international research team led by the Department of Evolutionary Anthropology at the University of Vienna was on the road in the Somali region in eastern Ethiopia in the years 2000-2009 to search for the ancestors of mankind. For the first time in the history of Austria, it has been possible to make some finds of australopithecines and even earlier hominins. These date back to a time of over 5 million to 3 million years ago. Now an export permit has finally been obtained in order to be able to examine the finds in Vienna using state-of-the-art methods. It is particularly interesting that the fossils all come from a locally narrowly defined area of less than 100 km2, but cover exactly the period in which our first truly identifiable precursors, the australopithecines, developed. Such sites from the early Pliocene are very rare and it is hoped that the detailed examination of the finds will provide further information about the beginnings of the incarnation. The project was initiated in 2000 by the anthropologist Univ. Prof. Horst Seidler and continued for ten years. In the desert-like sediments around…
