This is a list of fossiliferous stratigraphic units in Ethiopia .
Meave G. Leakey is a British palaeoanthropologist. She works at Stony Brook University and is co-ordinator of Plio-Pleistocene research at the Turkana Basin Institute. She studies early hominid evolution and has done extensive field research in the Turkana Basin. She has Doctor of Philosophy and Doctor of Science degrees.
Tim D. White is an American paleoanthropologist and Professor of Integrative Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. He is best known for leading the team which discovered Ardi, the type specimen of Ardipithecus ramidus, a 4.4 million-year-old likely human ancestor. Prior to that discovery, his early career was notable for his work on Lucy as Australopithecus afarensis with discoverer Donald Johanson.
Chororapithecus is an extinct great ape from the Afar region of Ethiopia roughly 8 million years ago during the Late Miocene, comprising one species, C. abyssinicus. It is known from 9 isolated teeth discovered in a 2005–2007 survey of the Chorora Formation. The teeth are indistinguishable from those of gorillas in terms of absolute size and relative proportions, and it has been proposed to be an early member of Gorillini. However, this is controversial given the paucity of remains, and notable anatomical differences between Chororapithecus and gorilla teeth. The Kenyan ape Nakalipithecus has been proposed to be an ancestor of Chororapithecus or at least closely related. If correct, they would be the only identified fossil members of any modern non-human great ape lineage, and would push the gorilla–human last common ancestor from 8 million years ago to 10 million years ago. The teeth are adapted for processing tough plant fibres as well as hard, brittle food, and the formation is thought to represent a forested lakeside habitat.
Ardipithecus ramidus is a species of australopithecine from the Afar region of Early Pliocene Ethiopia 4.4 million years ago (mya). A. ramidus, unlike modern hominids, has adaptations for both walking on two legs (bipedality) and life in the trees (arboreality). However, it would not have been as efficient at bipedality as humans, nor at arboreality as non-human great apes. Its discovery, along with Miocene apes, has reworked academic understanding of the chimpanzee–human last common ancestor from appearing much like modern day chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas to being a creature without a modern anatomical cognate.
Euthecodon is an extinct genus of long-snouted crocodile. It was common throughout much of Africa during the Neogene, with fossils being especially common in Kenya, Ethiopia, and Libya. Although superficially resembling that of gharials, the long snout was a trait developed independently from that of other crocodilians and suggests a diet of primarily fish. Euthecodon coexisted with a wide range of other crocodiles in the areas it inhabited before eventually going extinct during the Pleistocene.
The Bouri Formation is a sequence of sedimentary deposits that is the source of australopithecine and Homo fossils, artifacts, and bones of large mammals with cut marks from butchery with tools by early hominins. It is located in the Middle Awash Valley, in Ethiopia, East Africa, and is a part of the Afar Depression that has provided rich human fossil sites such as Gona and Hadar.
Berhane Asfaw is an Ethiopian paleontologist of Rift Valley Research Service, who co-discovered human skeletal remains at Herto Bouri, Ethiopia later classified as Homo sapiens idaltu, proposed as an early subspecies of anatomically modern humans.
The Shungura Formation is a stratigraphic formation located in the Omo river basin in Ethiopia. It dates to the Late Pliocene to Early Pleistocene. Oldowan tools have been found in the formation, suggesting early use of stone tools by hominins. Among many others, fossils of Panthera were found in Member G of the formation.
Rimasuchus is an extinct genus of crocodile from the Miocene of Egypt and possibly Libya. Only one species - Rimasuchus lloydi - is currently known. It was previously thought to be a species of Crocodylus, but is now thought to be more closely related to the modern African dwarf crocodiles (Osteolaemus).
The Daka calvaria, otherwise known as the Dakaskull, or specimen number BOU-VP-2/66, is a Homo erectus specimen from the Daka Member of the Bouri Formation in the Middle Awash Study Area of the Ethiopian Rift Valley.
The greater Turkana Basin in East Africa determines a large endorheic basin, a drainage basin with no outflow centered around the north-southwards directed Gregory Rift system in Kenya and southern Ethiopia. The deepest point of the basin is the endorheic Lake Turkana, a brackish soda lake with a very high ecological productivity in the Gregory Rift.
Anna Katherine "Kay" Behrensmeyer is an American taphonomist and paleoecologist. She is a pioneer in the study of the fossil records of terrestrial ecosystems and engages in geological and paleontological field research into the ecological context of human evolution in East Africa. She is Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology in the Department of Paleobiology at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History (NMNH). At the museum, she is co-director of the Evolution of Terrestrial Ecosystems program and an associate of the Human Origins Program.
The Pisco Formation is a geologic formation located in Peru, on the southern coastal desert of Ica and Arequipa. The approximately 640 metres (2,100 ft) thick formation was deposited in the Pisco Basin, spanning an age from the Middle Miocene up to the Early Pleistocene, roughly from 15 to 2 Ma. The tuffaceous sandstones, diatomaceous siltstones, conglomerates and dolomites were deposited in a lagoonal to near-shore environment, in bays similar to other Pacific South American formations as the Bahía Inglesa and Coquimbo Formations of Chile.