Dr. Yohannes Haile-Selassie

Dr. Yohannes Haile-Selassie is a world-renowned expert on the origin of the human lineage and early human ancestors and is the principal investigator of the Woranso-Mille paleontological project, conducting fieldwork in the Afar region of Ethiopia. He has published numerous papers in internationally recognized scientific journals, such as Science, Nature, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, as well as technical journals. His discoveries have been featured as Science magazine’s breakthrough of the year in 2009 (Ardipithecus ramidus), Discover magazine’s top 100 science discoveries in 2015 (Australopithecus deyiremeda), and most recently, he was named as one of Nature’s 10 of 2019 that showcased the 10 people who mattered to Science in 2019. Dr. Haile-Selassie speaks nationally and internationally on early human ancestors and has been featured in Time magazine, National Geographic, and in various documentaries on human origins. He was recognized as one of Cleveland Magazine's Most Interesting People of 2006. Dr. Haile-Selassie is an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Associate Fellow of the Ethiopian Academy of Sciences, Fellow of the Institute for the Science of Origins at Case Western Reserve University, and a member of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists and Society of Vertebrate Paleontology. 

Dr. haile-selassie’s major discoveries

2019

Australopithecus anamensis

In 2016, at a locality known as Miro Dora, Ali Bereino, a local Afar, found the first piece of what would be a complete cranium of Australopithecus anamensis. MRD-VP-1/1 is dated to 3.8 million-years-old and is one of the most complete crania of early hominins ever discovered and the first of A. anamensis. It revealed the face of A. anamensis to us for the very first time.

Papers describing the cranium and its geology and age were published in Nature. Photos from Cleveland Museum of Natural History. Reconstruction by John Gurche.

2015

Australopithecus deyiremeda

In 2015, the Dr. Haile-Selassie named a new hominin species - Australopithecus deyiremeda. This new species is found in similar aged sediments as specimens belonging to other hominin species (A. afarensis and an unnamed one) at Woranso-Mille, showing that multiple species of hominins co-existed at Woranso-Mille. Furthermore, this species confirms that A. afarensis was not the only potential human ancestor during the middle Pliocene of what is now the Afar region of Ethiopia. This species was described and named in the journal Nature.

2012

Burtele Foot

Foot bones are among the rarest elements in the hominin fossil record. The Burtele Foot consists of eight mostly intact bones of the right foot that reveals an unexpected mosaic of primitive and derived features - most significantly, an opposable big toe that suggests that it was not a habitual biped like Australopithecus afarensis and may have had a significant arboreal component to its locomotor repertoire. It is contemporaneous with A. afarensis and a million years younger than Ardi (Ardipithecus ramidus), found at the nearby site of Middle Awash, who also possessed an opposable big toe. Although it is not yet possible to assign the foot to a species, the Burtele Foot is the first conclusive evidence indicating that there were at least two species of hominins living in close proximity during the Middle Pliocene. The description and comparative analysis of the specimen was published in Nature.

2010

Australopithecus afarensis

In 2005, the first element of the partial skeleton, a proximal ulna fragment. Over the next four years, the team (including the Afar workers) excavated an area of 85 square meters and collected more than 400 pieces of bone, representing about 40% of the skeleton. Kadanuumuu is a large, male individual belonging to Australopithecus afarensis, the species to which the famous Lucy belongs, but it is at least 400,000 years older than Lucy. Many of its preserved parts, such as the complete shoulder blade, are not well represented in the hominin fossil record, which means it has provided us with new insights into how these early hominins lived and moved. A comprehensive volume describing Kadanuumuu was published by Springer as part of their Vertebrate Paleobiology and Paleoanthropology Series in 2016. The initial description of the skeleton was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.