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'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".

Fossils

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.