JENA, GERMANY—Courthouse News Service reports that an international team of researchers has found stone tools that are between two and 1.8 million years old in Ewass Oldupa in Tanzania, western area of Oldupai Gorge, a 28-mile-long canyon known for its hominin fossils. Recovered from layers of linear sediments, the artefacts are the oldest stone tools found in the gorge to date. The instruments include pebble and cobbler corals, sharp flakes, and hailstones. Fossils of wild cattle, pigs, hippos, panthers, lions, hyenas, primates, reptiles and birds have been found in the rows, along with evidence that habitats have changed over the 200,000 year period. Habitats included river and lake systems, bracken meadows, forests, palm groves, dry steppes, and evidence of natural burning. The recycling of Oldowan machines in these series suggests that the hominins moved in and out of the area at times of volcanic activity and as the environment shifted. “We see a lot of flexibility and resilience even though ecosystems were changing,” said team member Michael Petraglia of the Max Planck Institute for Human History Science. “I think to some extent, this is the beginning of our own genus, and to some extent, that is our legacy. ”Read the original scholarly article about this research in Nature Communication. To read about an 800,000-year-old bone point from Olduvai, go to “The Bone Collector.”