Australopithecus anamensis, "MRD"

"In February, 2016, a remarkably complete cranium of a 3.8-million-year-old Australopithecus anamensis specimen was found by Dr. Haile-Selassie and his team at the Woranso-Mille study area in the Afar region of Ethiopia.

The first piece of the specimen—the upper jaw—was found by a local Afar worker. As the team searched for more fragments, Haile-Selassie had a strong intuition that this would turn out to be a significant discovery. Then, Haile-Selassie saw something globular less than ten feet away from where he was standing. Getting closer, he realized that it was a tiny braincase and hoped that it would fit with the jaw. He picked it up and sure enough, the two pieces seamlessly clicked together like puzzle pieces. The specimen was named “MRD,” short for its collection I.D., MRD-VP-1/1.

In the years following this discovery, a research team, consisting of experts from across the globe, launched a joint effort to properly date the specimen and conduct extensive comparative analyses with other previously discovered and examined specimens. The team’s combined findings led to the assignment of the specimen to A. anamensis, the oldest known taxon within the Australopithecus genus. Additionally, due to the cranium’s rare near-complete state, the researchers identified never-before-seen facial features in the species, which was previously only known through jaw and tooth fragments.

MRD provided our first glimpse of the face of Lucy’s ancestor and reshaped our understanding of human origins, indicating that A. anamensis and A. afarensis coexisted for about 100,000 years.
“It was a eureka moment and a dream come true.”—Dr. Yohannes Haile-Selassie "