Omo remains

The Omo remains are a collection of hominin bones discovered between 1967 and 1974 at the Omo Kibish sites near the Omo River, in Omo National Park in south-western Ethiopia. The bones were recovered by a scientific team from the Kenya National Museums directed by Richard Leakey and others. The remains from Kamoya's Hominid Site (KHS) were called Omo I and those from Paul I. Abell's Hominid Site (PHS) Omo II.

Parts of the fossils are the earliest to have been classified by Leakey as Homo sapiens. In 2004, the geological layers around the fossils were dated; and the authors of the study concluded that the "preferred estimate of the age of the Kibish hominids is 195 ± 5 ka [thousand years ago]", which would make the fossils the oldest known Homo sapiens remains. Because this discovery is the earliest thus far, Ethiopia is the current choice for the cradle of Homo sapiens".

The bones include two partial skulls, four jaws, a legbone, around two hundred teeth and several other parts. The two specimens, Omo I and Omo II, differ in morphological traits. The Omo II fossils indicate more archaic traits. Studies of the postcranial remains of Omo I indicate an overall modern human morphology with some primitive features. The fossils were found in a layer of tuff, between a lower, older geologic layer named Member I and a higher, newer layer dubbed Member III. The Omo I and Omo II hominin fossils were taken from similar stratigraphic levels over Member I.

Because very limited fauna and few stone artifacts were found at the sites when the original Omo remains were discovered, "the reliability of the dates and the provenance of the Kibish hominids" was "repeatedly questioned." In 2008 new bone remains were discovered from Awoke's Hominid Site (AHS). The AHS fossil's tibia and fibula were unearthed from Member I, the same layer from which the other Omo remains derive.

About 30 years after the original finds, a detailed stratigraphic analysis of the area surrounding the fossils was done. The Member I layer was argon-dated to 195,000 years ago and the (higher layer) Member III to 105,000 years ago. Numerous recent lithic records verify the tool technology from Members I and III to the Middle Stone Age.

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