A small fossilized skull of a hominid that lived 930,000 years ago has been found in a Kenyan archaeological site, Richard Potts, director of the human origins program at the US Smithsonian Institution, told a news conference in Nairobi on Friday.

He said a team he led uncovered the fossil last summer during a dig at Olorgesailie, in northwest Kenya.

"What we found was a partial skull of an early human that dated to what is otherwise a 400,000-year gap in the African human fossil record," he said.

The discovery would likely to fuel a scientific debate about whether different species of early humans coexisted or only one kind of human lived at any given time, scientists said.

Potts said his team discovered parts of the brain case, a complete brow ridge and other fragments from the skull of a fully grown individual, thought to be about the size of a modern-day teen.

No face bones were found, and traces of bite marks on the skull indicate mauling by a carnivore, Potts said. It's not known whether that happened before or after death.

The individual would have lived about 930,000 years ago, Potts said.

Around that time period, "the best-known fossil species in our family tree is that of Homo erectus," Potts said.

He said that the Kenyan skull is similar to Homo erectus specimens, but left open the possibility that it could be something else.

He said that his team will continue digging for more clues at the Kenya site, which was discovered in 1942 by Mary Leakey.

Kenya is perhaps the only country in the world that can boast of possessing the longest and most complete record of man's cultural development.
 
(Xinhua News Agency July 3, 2004)