This skull was found by Peter Nzube in 1968 at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania. This skull marked the oldest hominid from Olduvai dated at 1.8 million years, and belonged to an adult female. The specimen was encased in a coating of limestone, was fragmented and had been squashed under the weight of rocks in which it was buried. It was painstakingly reconstructed by Ron Clarke. The original specimen is now housed in the National Museum in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The fractured and collapsed bones of this specimen led the anatomist Phillip Tobias, who was studying them, to remark that only the famous British model “Twiggy” was as flat as this specimen. Thus the pet name for OH24 became “Twiggy”. This skull appeared to be a close match for the mandible OH 7, the holotype of Homo habilis, found by Jonathan Leakey in 1961.
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