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A one-million-year-old hominid distal ulna from Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania
Leslea J Hlusko1, Whitney B Reiner1, Jackson K Njau2,3
1Human Evolution Research Center and Department of Integrative Biology, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, 94720.
Objective:
Our aim was to recover new evidence of the evolution of the hominid lineage.
Methods:
We undertook paleontological fieldwork at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, in one of the richest paleoanthropological sites in the world, documenting the evolution of our lineage and its environmental contexts over the last 2 million years.
Results:
During field work in 2012, the Olduvai Vertebrate Paleontology Project discovered the distal end of a hominid ulna (OH 82) on the north side of Olduvai Gorge a few meters west of the Third Fault, eroding from Bed III sediments that are ∼1 million years in age.
Discussion:
The size and morphology of this distal ulna falls within the normal range of variation seen in humans, although at the larger end of the distribution.
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