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nazret.com is proud to name Dr. Zeresenay Alemseged as Person of The Week for his discovery of "Lucy's baby".

Photo: Courtesy of Meskel Square

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'Lucy's baby' found in Ethiopia

The 3.3-million-year-old fossilised remains of a human-like child have been unearthed in Ethiopia's Dikika region.

The female Australopithecus afarensis bones are from the same species as an adult skeleton found in 1974 which was nicknamed "Lucy".

Scientists are thrilled with the find, reported in the journal Nature.

They believe the near-complete remains offer a remarkable opportunity to study growth and development in an important extinct human ancestor.

Read Full Report from BBC News

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Lucy (Dinknesh) is coming to America

Ethiopia's pride in 'Lucy' find
By Pallab Ghosh
Science correspondent, BBC News, Addis Ababa

A tropical storm beats against the national museum in Addis Ababa. The violent thunder and lashing rain contrasts with the serene activity within.

Zeresenay Alemseged and the skull of "Lucy's baby"

Inside a solitary figure is cleaning up a 3.3-million-year-old skull.

Dr Zeresenay Alemseged has spent five years removing sandstone, grain by grain, from his precious find.

Illuminated by a single focussed beam of light, this is intricate, delicate work: one mistake and crucial scientific detail could be lost forever.

Alemseged showed me that what has emerged are the delicate features of a creature that was part ape and part human.

"What you have here is the backbone and the thoracic and all the ribs, the shoulder blades the collar bones. But in addition, what you have here is a compete face and the sandstone impression of the brain of a 3.3-million-year-old infant."

Early sound

Six years ago Alemseged set off toward the north-eastern deserts of Ethiopia. Working in the blistering heat, his team discovered what he thought was the skull of a creature that was one of the first apes to have walked on two feet.

Unable to contain his excitement, the scientist called his friend Tefera Ghedamu.

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"He said I think I got it! And he knew exactly what he'd got. He's a very cautious person, a very shy person - but then he knew and told himself, ' this is the bone'," Ghedamu recalls.

Alemseged had found the most complete skeleton to date of a species called Australopithecus afarensis , thought to be an important pre-cursor to the first true humans.

Not only was it in a fantastic state of preservation but the specimen was that of an infant. This combination makes the find a gold mine for those studying human evolution.

It will now be available for other specialists to study; but already Alemseged has made a number of startling discoveries. Although the baby afarensis toddled on two feet like a human child, it also had many important ape-like features.

"The shoulder blades are very gorilla-like and it may ignite old questions about whether afarensis could climb trees or not. But what was really exciting was to find the tongue bone. We will, based on this bone, be able to understand what the voice box was like and about the kind of sound this creature made," he explains.

Initial thoughts suggest the bone is ape-like and that the creature probably sounded like a chimp.

'On the cusp'

What really excites Alemseged, however, is his study of the ape-girl's brain.

He believes it is still developing. Slow and gradual development in an extended childhood is a uniquely human feature - probably to enable our higher functions to fully develop.

Alemseged is the first Ethiopian team leader to make such a find

So, according to Alemseged, this infant and her like may have been the first to show real human-like characteristics

"It's the earliest girl ever found with a mix of features that are ape-like and human-like at the same time, and this puts her in a special position to play a pivotal role. She is on the cusp of humanity," he says.

The creature is the latest of many recent fossil finds important to the understanding of human evolution - the most famous of which was the first Australopithecus afarensis specimen - and adult nicknamed "Lucy" - in 1974.

It has prompted the Ethiopia's culture minister, Mahmud Dirr Gade, to invite more scientists to come to the African nation to help unearth humankind's origins.

"We welcome researchers to delve into the secrets and mystery of the creation of man in Ethiopia; the 'home of humanity'," he tells me.

Home grown

Zeresenay Alemseged is the first Ethiopian to lead a research team that has made such an important discovery.

He is a bright young scientist who has studied in the US and Europe and is currently attached to the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.

Human anthropology is a cut-throat field, even for those who have established themselves and have the backing of big funding bodies.

So, according to Tefera Ghedamu, it is especially remarkable that an outsider like Alemseged has worked his way up and to win the respect of the scientific community - and the pride of his nation.

"From my angle, from an ordinary Ethiopian's point of view, they think it is quite a heritage. They are proud that the discovery has been made in Ethiopia and they are proud that it's been made by one of their own," he says.

Story from BBC NEWS:

BBC News

Published: 2006/09/20 17:05:38 GMT

About Scientist Zeresenay Alemseged
Born 4 June 1969 in Axum, Ethiopia
BSc. in Geology (AAU 1987-1990)
1993-1994 M.Sc. in paleontology from the University of Montpellier II and Paris VI, France.
1995-1998 Ph.D. in paleoanthropology and paleoenvironment from the University of Paris VI and the Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle et Paris VI.
Source: MPG.de

"Lucy," the celebrated skeletal remains of a female hominid who lived 3.2 million years ago will leave Ethiopia next year for her first-ever foreign exhibition, officials said.

Beginning in September 2007, Lucy will enjoy top billing among 200 other Ethiopian exhibits that will tour museums in 10 US cities for four years, they said Wednesday.

"Lucy has been in Ethiopia over the last 30 years," said Gezahgen Kebede, Ethiopia's honorary consul in Houston in the US state of Texas, where the exhibition begins at the Houston Museum of Natural Sciences.

"It is time for us to share her with the whole world because she is the origin of mankind," he told AFP.

A full-scale model of "Lucy," the celebrated skeletal remains of a female hominid who lived 3.2 million years ago, is seen at a prehistoric museum in Bidon, France. Lucy will leave Ethiopia next year for her first-ever foreign exhibition, officials said.(AFP/File) Pictured Right

The trip will be Lucy's first overseas visit for exhibition purposes since she was discovered by American paleontologists Donald Johanson and Tom Gray in 1974 in Ethiopia's northern Afar region.

Named after the Beatles' song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," she was taken once to the United States for lab tests but has remained in the country since, stored in a special vault with a replica on display at the National Museum of Ethiopia in Addis Ababa.

Gezahgen said he hoped the traveling exhibit would help alter the image of the Horn of Africa nation, which is perhaps better known to the outside world for famine, floods and other human suffering than science.

"The idea is to promote Ethiopia in a positive way," he said. "We have a lot of attractions but it is not well known abroad, where images of drought and poverty are still dominant."

Lucy, part of a hotly disputed branch of the human tree known as Australopithecus afarensis, was for more than 20 years, the earliest known member of the hominid family.

Hominids are primates who split from apes between five and seven million years ago and are considered the forerunners of anatomically modern humans, who appeared on the scene about 200,0000 years ago.

Once thought by some to be our ancestor, A. afarensis is now widely considered to be a failed branch of the human tree, for many experts suspect the hominid was anatomically far closer to apes than humans.

Source: AFP

Updated October 10 2006

Marcus Samuelsson on CBS TV

Chef's African Cuisine on CBS News
Chef Marcus Samuelsson has had an amazing journey. He was born in Ethiopia, adopted and raised in Sweden, and now lives in New York. Samuelsson shares his unique culture and cuisine with Julie Chen.

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Ethiopian Chocolate Rum Cake anyone?
Marcus Samuelsson will show you the receipe in his new book.

Heat and spice marry in the continent's cuisine, which is finding fresh appreciation in America

Baltimore Sun

Read Original Story from Baltimore Sun

Moroccan and Ethiopian restaurants long have been favored by adventurous eaters, and every metropolis worth its injera bread has one whose authenticity has the blessing of local immigrants.

But the launch of a line of African spices and the publication of a new cookbook by chef Marcus Samuelsson mean that lesser-known tastes of Africa are within easier reach.

"We don't know enough about Africa when it comes to food," said Samuelsson, an Ethiopian orphan raised in Sweden who made his mark in Scandinavian cuisine at Aquavit, his celebrated restaurant in New York.

He made a culinary tour of Africa in the spring of 2005 - a kind of home-cooking homecoming - that produced The Soul of A New Cuisine, a coffee-table cookbook that will be released in October.

Starred Review. Born Ethiopian, raised Swedish, and now one of New York City's top chefs, Samuelsson (Aquavit: And the New Scandinavian Cuisine) has written an exotic yet accessible book that will hasten the coming of the African fusion cookery he envisions. His 204 recipes and 258 color photos are enriched with personal and political history; as in his many condiments and sauces, the balance is right. While he stresses the diversity and bounty of the second-largest continent, he repeatedly describes African cuisine as poor people's cooking, crafted with simple tools and necessarily emphasizing starches, vegetables and big flavors. Whether it's rosemary for Honey Bread or turmeric, ginger and cinnamon in his Vegetable Samosas, herbs and spices are always sauteed in oil or tossed in a hot dry pan, to intensify and mellow. He even proposes toasting the cinnamon for the whipped cream accompanying his Ethiopian Chocolate Rum Cake. The recipe for the cake is typical: the batter is prepared in a single bowl, mixed with a spoon, and bakes up moist and gingerbread-like, with great keeping properties. Toasting the cinnamon takes seconds and is impressive in the complexity it delivers. (Oct.) Source: Amazon.com

Updated Sep 21 2006

Contact made with Irish man held in Ethiopia

21 September 2006 13:51

The father of the Irish aid worker abducted in Ethiopia has said he understands direct contact was made with his son by Red Cross officials overnight.

Donal Ó Súilleabháin, 41, from Co Sligo, was travelling with six other colleagues when they were abducted by an armed group in the southern town of Godé at about 10am on Monday.

Five of the seven aid workers were subsequently released, but Mr Ó Súilleabháin and an Ethiopian colleague are still being held.

More on RTE News

Irish man kidnapped in Ethiopia

An Irish man is one of two international Red Cross workers kidnapped in eastern Ethiopia, it has been confirmed.

Donal O`Suilleabhain, 41, from Colgagh, County Sligo, was working as a water engineer for the aid agency in the remote Ogaden region when he was taken away at gunpoint on Monday.

An Ethiopian national, also working with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) engineers, was also abducted.

None of the staff suffered any physical harm during the incident, according to the Irish Government.

Irish Foreign Affairs Minister Dermot Ahern said he was deeply concerned about the incident and urged that humanitarian workers in the region be respected.

He has personally been in contact with Mr O`Suilleabhain`s family in Sligo, and said all possible consular assistance is being offered.

Patrick Megevand, of the ICRC, said it had been in contact with the abductors and was trying to mediate for their release.

Ethiopian government spokesman Zemedkun Teckle told the Associated Press that police and security were investigating and trying to track down the kidnappers.

Ogaden is largely inhabited by ethnic Somalis and has been troubled by a low-level conflict between the army and rebels known as the Ogaden National Liberation Front.

"No-one is sure at this time who the perpetrators are. We do not know if it is ONLF or not," said the government spokesman.

The armed kidnapping has forced the humanitarian agency to halt its activities in the region for the first time in 11 years.

Source: UTV

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