2023-09-13 20:39:05
Introduction
Selam Place of discovery
Selam (DIK-1/1) is the nickname given to a fossil (A fossil (derived from the noun of the Latin verb fodere: fossil, literally…) of a hominid of the species (In the life sciences, the species (from the Latin species, “type”…) Australopithecus afarensis, whose skeleton was discovered in December 2000 at Dikika in Afar in Ethiopia.
Description
Selam (meaning “peace” in Amharic) is a little girl who died at an estimated age of 3 years. One of the particularities of Selam is the state and number (The notion of number in linguistics is covered in the article “Number…) of the fragments found: the skull (The skull is a bony or cartilaginous structure of the head, characteristic of…) is almost complete as well as the torso and the scapulas and important parts of the legs have also been brought to light (The day or the day is the interval which separates sunrise from sunset; it’s here…).
The study of the volcanic layers which covered the fossil made it possible to evaluate its age: Selam would have lived approximately 3.31 to 3.35 million years ago and is therefore the oldest skeleton of a hominid child found nowadays.
Analyse
The skeleton confirms the knowledge already acquired about australopithecines concerning their mode of bipedal locomotion, however swaying and not allowing them to run upright, as well as the fact that they moved in trees. This mode of locomotion was well suited to the environment of the time, which included marshes (where fossils of crocodiles and hippos were discovered ) with forests and meadows.
Discovery
Selam’s skull
Selam was discovered on December 10, 2000 by Ethiopian paleoanthropologist Zeresenay Alemseged of the Max Planck Institute. April 23, 1858 in Kiel, Germany…) of anthropology, near the village of Hadar on the hill of Dikika 1 , located to the south of the river Aouach. This area northeast of Ethiopia is rich in fossils of all kinds. The site where Selam is discovered is four kilometers from the place where Lucy was discovered 26 years earlier, which means that the press has nicknamed Selam “the Baby (Baby onomatopoeia designates the human being at a young age. In…) of Lucy” (although she is older than the latter by around 120,000 years).
The skull is the first part of the skeleton that was discovered. The skeleton was then found in a matrix of sediments (sandstone) and which required clearing work lasting more than five years, still unfinished when the discovery was announced.
The good preservation of the skeleton is explained by the fact that the body was quickly covered with sediment during a flood, which allowed its conservation for more than 3 million years. It is unclear whether Selam was already dead at the time of the flood.
Its discovery was announced on September 20, 2006 by Scientific American and its description published the next day in Nature.
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