Fossils from the 'Missing Years' in Africa

Researchers say they have identified animal fossils from 27 000 000 years ago in what is now Ethiopia. The remains are from the middle of a time called the "missing years" or the "dark period ." This is because scientists have so little information about the mammals that lived then. The period began 32 million years ago. Africa and Arabia were a single continent, a huge island known as Afro - Arabia. The period ended 24 000 000 years ago, after a land bridge formed with Eurasia.

John Kappelman is an anthropologist at the University of Texas in Austin and leader of the American and Ethiopian search team. Mr Kappelman says 8 000 000 years is a long time to lack information about a continent. He says scientists have only been able to guess what happened to African mammals during that period. The remains found in the Chilga area of Ethiopia offer important evidence.

The remains include teeth, skull pieces and other bones. The scientists found them in a farming area about 2000 meters above sea level, in the highlands of Ethiopia. Satellite pictures helped the researchers decide where to dig. The fossils came from about 70 different digs. The magazine Nature published the findings. The scientists say the fossils come from before large numbers of animals began to arrive in Africa from Europe and Asia. The fossils also show that some animals existed millions of years before scientists had thought.

The researchers found several kinds of ancient proboscideans. These are animals with trunks. Modern elephants are proboscideans. Scientists have long thought elephants began in Africa. They say this discovery proves that theory. The ancestors weighed about 1000 kilograms, a lot smaller than African elephants today.

John Kappelman says the elephant ancestors were one of the few African mammals that survived the invasion of mammals from Eurasia. He says elephants got their start in Africa during the eight - million - year period, and then spread around the world. The researchers also found the remains of an ancient animal with two horns on its head, called the arsinoithere. The scientists were excited, because this is the youngest set of such remains yet discovered. The animal is much larger than its ancestors. Earlier forms were about the size of pigs. But the arsinoithere found at Chilga was about two meters tall and weighed more than two tons.

They were similar to the modern rhinoceros. The two are not related. In fact, scientists thought arsinoitheres had disappeared from the Afro - Arabian continent once rhinos arrived from Eurasia. One researcher says it now appears they did not compete for survival. Scientists say they expect more discoveries to come about the mammals that lived during the so - called missing years.
By : Alis