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The skeletal remains of the famous hominid “Lucy” were found at this spot.
On November 24, 1974, paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson spotted something odd poking out from a dry gully within the archeological site around Hadar, Ethiopia. There, a thin arm bone was visible against the dry, dusty earth. Johanson kept looking and soon found additional skeletal remains—a femur here, some ribs there—scattered nearby.
By the end of the excavation, Johanson and his colleagues had unearthed about 40 percent of a roughly 3.2 million-year-old skeleton. These bits of bone were the only pieces they could work with while puzzling together the identity of “Lucy,” the now world-famous hominid. Though officially named AL 288-1, Lucy was given her more popular moniker as a nod to the Beatles song that was played repeatedly during the camp’s celebrations honoring her discovery.
By studying her remains, the researchers were eventually able to determine that Lucy is a member of the Australopithecus afarensis species, a hominid that went extinct about 2.9 million years ago. After reading the clues hidden in the fragments of her skeleton, they also concluded that the ancient female walked upright and died when she was only a young adult.
Lucy’s skeleton was not the only hominid unearthed at Hadar. The fossilized skull of Selam, a three-year-old hominid that died about 3.3 million years ago, was discovered during a later dig. Other hominid remains have been found spread throughout the sedimentary rocks as well.
An ocean in the making, in the Ethiopian desert
Researchers have taken particular interest in the Afar Rift because of new studies indicating that changes observed there mimic those that occur in ocean formation thousands of miles below sea-level. Indeed, it is now believed that within the next million years the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden will both pour into the Depression and meet, creating a new ocean in what is now desert.
Scientists also hope that by studying the Rift they might gain insight into processes that have, up until this point, been shrouded in mystery. Activity in underwater mantle usually occurs too deep in the ocean to be monitored by current technology, and already the data from the 2005 eruptions have challenged theories as to how oceans were created
In fact, plate tectonics is not a spectator activity. The Afar Depression, for example, pulls apart at the staggering rate of less than an inch per year. Given 30 million years, however, even slow progressions such as this one can produce dramatic results.
The Arabian and African Plates meet in the Afar Desert in Northern Ethiopia, and in 2005 a 10-day period of seismic activity led to a 35 mile rift that is over 20 feet wide at certain points. The eruption of Dabbahu, a volcano at the northern edge of the rift, signaled the start of a series of volcanic breaches in the Earth’s crust that shot magma and clouds of ash into the sky and sent earthquakes throughout the region.
Source: The Atlas obscura guide to Ethiopia
The Ethiopian Herald July 24/2021
