When a 30-year war between Ethiopia and Eritrea came to an end in 1991, it brought not just peace and independence for the people of Eritrea but a chance for geologist Ernesto Abbate of the University of Florence to resume his long-suspended excavations in the region. That exploration has now paid off. Abbate recently discovered a 1-million-year-old hominid skull near the village of Buia in Eritrea, not far from the Red Sea coast.
The fossil, found with two teeth and fragments of a pelvis, is the first intact hominid skull found from the period between 1.4 million and 600,000 years ago. But even more remarkable is the skull's shape. It blends features of Homo erectus-a tool-using hominid predating modern humans-with those of Homo sapiens. The find, which Abbate calls Buia man, although the sex of the individual is not known, marks the earliest known appearance of an individual with Homo ...
