Selam, the Dikika child
A three-year-old australopith is preserved almost whole, with the world's oldest hominin hyoid bone.
- When
- Known to
- ± 50 thousand years
- Era
- Pliocene, Cenozoic
Selam is a juvenile Australopithecus afarensis, roughly three years old at death and about 3.3 million years old, recovered from Dikika in Ethiopia and freed from sandstone over years of work with a dental drill. Because so little of an early hominin child's skeleton is otherwise known, it is uniquely informative about growth: the lower body is already adapted to walking while the shoulder blade resembles a gorilla's, suggesting climbing remained part of life. Its preserved hyoid bone, related to the voice box, is more ape-like than human.