JENA, GERMANY—Courthouse News Service reports that an international team of researchers has discovered stone tools between two and 1.8 million years old in the Ewass Oldupa of Tanzania, the western area of Oldupai Gorge, a 28-kilometer-long gorge known for its hominin fossils. The artifacts have been recovered from low-lying sediments and are the oldest stone tools found in the gorge so far. The tools include pebbles and cobblestones, sharp sharp flakes and multifaceted pebbles. Fossils of wild cattle, pigs, hippos, panthers, lions, hyenas, primates, reptiles and birds have also been unearthed in the layers, along with evidence that the habitat has changed over the course of 200,000 years. The habitats included systems of rivers and lakes, fern meadows, woodland, palm trees, dry steppes and evidence of natural combustion. The repetition of the Oldowan tool in these layers indicates that the hominins moved in and out of the area during and with the shift of the environment during periods of volcanic activity. “We see that we have a lot of flexibility and versatility, even if ecosystems change,” said team member Michael Petraglia of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History. “I think in part, it’s the beginning of our own genus, and in part it’s our legacy.” Read the original scientific article on this research Nature communication. Go to ‘The Bone Collector’ to read an 800,000 year old bone tip from Olduvai.
