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The article focuses on the discovery of a complete 3.3-million-year-old skeleton of a three-year-old Australopithecus afarensis female in Dikika, Ethiopia by Zeresenay Alemseged. There is controversy regarding the posture and locomotion of A. afarensis. Although some parts of the specimen are missing, the preserved parts include the face, the brain case and the base of the cranium.

Provides background and analysis of a study which pushes the date for the onset of tool manufacture back to at least 2.5 million years ago. The evidence from Gona in Ethiopia; The comparison to results reported by Kimbel and others in the `Journal of Human Evolution'; The paper by Semaw and others in the January 23, 1997 issue of `Nature.'

Discusses the discovery in the Awash Valley of Ethiopia of the fossil remains of Australopithecus ramidus. Designation as the oldest hominid species; Background information; Geological context; Paleogeographic reconstruction of area; Characterization of remains; Implications to theories on human evolution.

Competing Interests: The authors declare no competing interest.

The Omo-Turkana Basin, including the hominin fossil sites around Lake Turkana and the sites along the lower reaches of the Omo River, has made and continues to make an important contribution to improving our murky understanding of human evolution. This review highlights the various ways the Omo-Turkana Basin fossil record has contributed to, and continues to challenge, interpretations of human evolution. Despite many diagrams that look suspiciously like comprehensive hypotheses about human evolutionary history, any sensible paleoanthropologist knows that the early hominin fossil record is too meager to do anything other than offer very provisional statements about hominin taxonomy and phylogeny. If history tells us anything, it is that we still have much to learn about the hominin clade. Thus, we summarize the current state of knowledge of the hominin species represented at the Omo-Turkana Basin sites. We then focus on three specific topics for which the fossil evidence is especially relevant: the origin and nature of Paranthropus; the origin and nature of early Homo; and the ongoing debate about whether the pattern of human evolution is more consistent with speciation by cladogenesis, with greater taxonomic diversity or with speciation by anagenetic transformation, resulting in less taxonomic diversity and a more linear interpretation of human evolutionary history., (Copyright © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.)