Middle Awash
The Middle Awash is a fossil-rich region of Ethiopia’s Afar Rift, where researchers have recovered hominin remains spanning millions of years.
Ardipithecus ramidus: An early hominin species known from fossils about 4.4 million years old, including the partial skeleton nicknamed Ardi. The Middle Awash discovery of Ardi provided an unusually complete view of an early hominin.
Afar Rift: A tectonically active region where the African, Arabian, and Somali plates are pulling apart. The Middle Awash lies within this rift system, whose deposits preserve its fossil record.
Middle Awash Research Project: A long-running international research program investigating fossils and archaeology in Ethiopia's Middle Awash. Its field teams uncovered and contextualized many of the region's best-known hominin finds.
Hadar: A fossil site in Ethiopia's Afar region famous for Australopithecus afarensis remains, including Lucy. Hadar lies elsewhere in the Afar and offers a prominent comparison with Middle Awash discoveries.
Bipedalism: Locomotion using two legs, a defining feature of hominins. Ardi's Middle Awash anatomy informs hypotheses about how early hominins moved.
Ardi: A partial skeleton of Ardipithecus ramidus, dated to about 4.4 million years ago. This Middle Awash fossil preserves anatomy central to debates about early bipedalism.
Stratigraphy: The study of rock layers and their sequence, used to reconstruct geological history. Fossils' positions within Middle Awash layers help establish their relative ages.
Berhane Asfaw: An Ethiopian paleoanthropologist known for research on human evolution and fossil discoveries in Ethiopia. Asfaw helped lead Middle Awash research and reported several landmark discoveries.
Gona, Ethiopia: An archaeological and paleontological region in Ethiopia's Afar, known for early stone tools and hominin fossils. Gona's nearby record complements the Middle Awash's fossils with evidence of early toolmaking.
Human evolution: The evolutionary history of humans and their ancestors, reconstructed from biological and archaeological evidence. The region's successive fossils document multiple stages in this history.