How old are the Hadar fossils found in Ethiopia’s lower Awash River valley?
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The Hadar fossils found in the lower Awash River valley are not of a single age; rather, the Australopithecus afarensis-bearing levels at the site range from 3.4 to 2.9 million years old.1
Within this range, the famous partial skeleton known as Lucy is dated to 3.2 million years ago. Additionally, the site has yielded remains of the human genus, Homo, which date to 2.3 million years ago. These fossils are critical to our understanding of human evolution, providing evidence that bipedalism preceded the development of larger brain sizes in hominins.12