Gawis cranium

Gawis cranium
	Homo sapiens/Homo heidelbergensis
Age	200,000 - 500,000
Place discovered	Ethiopia
Date discovered	February 16, 2006
Discovered by	Asahmed Humet

The Gawis cranium is a portion of a fossil

Afar Depression, Ethiopia. Despite the presence of volcanic ash layers that are key to dating, the cranium is only generally dated between 200,000 and 500,000 years ago due to taphonomic

issues.

The 2006 discovery was reported by Sileshi Semaw, director of the Gona Project, which is based at the Stone Age Institute and Indiana University Bloomington's CRAFT research center.

Discovery and significance

The hominin skull was discovered by

Homo sapiens

.

Significant archaeological collections of stone tools and numerous fossil animal specimens were also found at the site.

Gawis is in the Gona Research Project study area situated in the Awash River Valley. Immediately to the east of Gona, also located along the Awash and one of its tributaries is the site of Hadar, where in 1974 U.S. scientist Donald Johanson found the 3.2-million-year-old remains of an Australopithecus afarensis, known as Lucy. The Middle Awash project, site of many other hominin discoveries, is to the south.

In addition to the Gawis cranium, the Gona project area has yielded some of the world's oldest stone tools (2.6 million years old), as well as fossils of Ardipithecus ramidus—

hominin

—dated to approximately 4.5 million years ago.