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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

Listen to The World interview with Zeresenay Alemseged

Streaming video from Nature Magazine
'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
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Comment from: gundan [Member] “…thanks zeru blessed be your soul keep digging….”….Hagos
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Comment from: Ra'Oeil ራዕይ [Member] She was unveiled yesterday in a lecture theatre in the basement of the National Museum in Addis Ababa by proud paleontologist Zeresenay Alemseged (the one on the right) who led the team that found most of her skeleton about five years ago.
At the end of his presentation, he turned to the audience of journalists and academics and politicians and asked 'So what shall we name her'.
It seemed to be a genuine request. He hadn't decided and wanted us to make the historic decision there and then. He had a few pointers.
The name had to be as good and universally easy to say as Lucy – the name of what, until yesterday, was Ethiopia's most famous early human remain. (They both date from the same era, making them Australopithecus afarensis.) It had to be the name of a girl. It had to be Ethiopian. And he wanted it to express a sense of peace – earlier he had talked about how he had had to employ armed guards on the dig because of ongoing hostilities in Afar.
That didn't really leave us much to play with. 'Selam' (Amharic for peace) said one of the journalists. The Culture Minister made a quick argument for using the Afar word for peace instead. But after few more impromptu speeches from the floor, it was agreed that 'Selam' would mean peace to most Ethiopians without causing any offence.
So that was that. She was Selam – Ethiopia's latest claim to being the cradle of the human race. It was only then that Dr Zeresenay admitted that Selam was also his wife's name and he was relieved everyone had made the right choice.
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Comment from: Thunder [Visitor] “I know my peasant fathers much better than you do I am sure.”
“To your surprise I am living with them trying to pay back without running away for a green pasture.”
“From your reaction, I can see that you are such an immature potato head creature whom I can teach a lesson on any field of science you mention.”
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