Gawis_cranium
Gawis cranium
Hominin fossil
The Gawis cranium is a portion of a fossil hominin skull discovered on February 16, 2006 near the drainage of Gawis, a tributary of the Awash River in the Afar Depression, Ethiopia. Despite the presence of volcanic ash layers that are key to dating, the cranium is only generally dated between 200,000 and 500,000 years ago due to taphonomic issues.
The 2006 discovery was reported by Sileshi Semaw, director of the Gona Project, which is based at the Stone Age Institute and Indiana University Bloomington's CRAFT research center.