Below the Au. anamensis level, the view on hominid evolution in the Middle Awash goes temporarily black. The yellowish green clay we were walking through was laid down between 4.4 and 4.3 million years ago, when this part of the CAC was a lake much like Yardi. Nothing was preserved in the clay but fish. Below this fish layer, however, lay the ultimate prize.We trudged out onto a cobbled, sunbaked pan, featureless but for a rough semicircle of basalt rocks. The cairn marked the spot where, on December 17, 1992, paleoanthropologist Gen Suwa of the University of Tokyo noticed an enigmatic molar peeking out of the ground. There was just enough detail on it to reveal it was hominid. A couple of days later near the same spot, fossil hunter Alemayehu Asfaw found a piece of a child’s jaw with a first molar tooth.That milk molar was like no other hominid baby tooth I’d ever seen, and I’d seen them all, White told me Gen and I just looked at each other We didn’t have to say anything This was something way more primitive.
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