Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion General Science Discussion Forum HOLY GRAIL of paleoanthropology ... "DISCOVERED"

Sierra College professor Hank Wesselman helped discover in Ethiopia what is thought to be the "missing link" between ape and man. Sacramento Bee/Jay Mather

Some people visit Egypt to explore the pyramids. Others travel to Russia to see the Kremlin.

Hank Wesselman, an anthropology professor at Sierra and American River colleges, has made multiple visits to what may be his favorite destination -- Ethiopia.

A researcher, Wesselman has worked with an international team of scientists for the past 11 years in that nation's Middle Awash Valley, surveying the ancient eroded landscapes of eastern Africa's Great Rift Valley, seeking answers to the mystery of human origins.

"The Middle Awash Valley is a very special place," Wesselman, 64, said recently during an interview at Sierra's Natural History Museum.

"It's one of the places where humankind was born -- a place where nature has favored the preservation of fossils, allowing us to find them and understand what happened millions of years ago," he said.

Wesselman has conducted research in eastern Africa since the early 1970s, when he was a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley. He initially visited Ethiopia as a member of the Omo Research Expedition directed by F. Clark Howell, now an emeritus professor of anthropology at UC Berkeley.

Since 1994, Wesselman has worked with the Middle Awash Research Project, an international team composed of about 20 scientists and directed by professor Tim White of UC Berkeley and Berhane Asfaw of the National Museum of Ethiopia.

This spring, in a paper published in Nature, a respected British journal, the team said it had found fossil evidence for the evolutionary relationships between the three earliest human species, spanning several million years, but all in one place: Ethiopia's Middle Awash Valley.

Releasing the results of 10 years of research, the team said the oldest fossils included those from the following species:

? Ardipithecus kadabba, which lived nearly 6 million years ago.

? Its descendant, Ardipithecus ramidus, which lived about 4.4 million years ago,

? Its descendant, Australopithecus anamensis,which lived in the valley between 4 million and 4.2 million years ago.

"These three forms reveal the existence of a succession of species, ancestors and their descendants, within our uniquely human lineage that begins almost 6 million years in the past, culminating with the appearance of our own species, Homo sapiens, 160,000 years ago, and we've got all the intermediate links ? ," Wesselman said.

Ardipithecus, the earliest form that appears about 6 million years ago, Wesselman said, is most likely the famous "missing link" that Charles Darwin predicted would eventually be found -- the link between apes and humans.

It's a theory that has found support among a number of other scientists.

"Now, it is no longer missing," Wesselman said. "This has been the Holy Grail of anthropology for 150 years, and we've got it. And not only that, we've got its descendants as well -- a long line of eight or nine species from start to finish, becoming ever more human before our eyes."

As a paleoanthropologist, Wesselman's specialty is "reconstructing" the environment in which humans' early ancestors lived.

"My own discoveries include almost 2,000 fossilized bones representing more than 30 species of small mammals, more than 20 of which will probably be named as new species," he said. "These include the bones and teeth of such creatures as rabbits and bats, shrews and mice and rats, creatures that tend to be very habitat-specific.

"My studies have allowed me to bring to life the ancient environments in which our earliest ancestors lived, thrived and died, leaving us their bones to puzzle over and study, giving us an expanded sense of where we came from, who we are and where we are headed," he said.

Wesselman, a Granite Bay resident, has taught at Sierra College in Rocklin and American River College in Sacramento since 1991.

He holds a doctorate in anthropology from UC Berkeley and is widely respected by his peers.

He has been criticized by some, however, for mixing science with the supernatural.

Wesselman, who calls himself "a shaman in training," has written several mystical books with a scientist's perspective. Some of the books focus on his "out-of-body experiences" that, he says, have shown him a new world dimension.

"Hey, listen, there's a part of me that still doesn't know what to do with these experiences," Wesselman told The Bee in 1995, after he had published "Spiritwalker," his first book about what he calls his "expanded awareness."

At Sierra College, Wesselman may be best known for teaching "Magic, Witchcraft and Religion," an anthropological class that probes religion and magic in the lives of traditional people.

"Dr. Wesselman is one of our top scientists at Sierra College," said Richard Hilton, a professor of geology there. "He's a very intelligent, dignified and thoughtful man. His science is his passion.

"He loves to do his (research) work" and the follow-up writing, Hilton said. "But I haven't read his mystical books, so I'd rather not comment on those."

Sierra College recently was awarded a $100,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to help fund Wesselman's research in Africa. Hilton said the grant paid for scientific equipment and a car that Wesselman drives in Ethiopia.

When he isn't teaching, Wesselman frequently travels, leading seminars and workshops all over the country and sometimes abroad.

He also does research in some of the world's major universities and museums -- including the British Museum in London and the Natural History Museum in Paris. Last fall, he was an associate researcher at UC Berkeley, working in Addis Ababa at the National Museum of Ethiopia, where all of his discoveries are housed.

"More scientific publications are currently in preparation," Wesselman said, "and will be released within the next year or two. Paleoanthropology is one of the most widely watched fields in science. And do we have a story to tell."

Smiling broadly, he added, "In my field, nobody ever retires. We do it until we die."