A long awaited paper by Semaw et al. 2020 just came out with 2 Homo erectus crania and associated stone tools from Gona in the Afar region of Ethiopia. Naomi started working at Gona as a MS student in 2001 and worked on the stratigraphy associated with the DAN5 cranium. She continued to work on the geology of these strata up there her time at UM and led the geologiy on this paper. Check out the UM News Release on the study.

The DAN5 cranium. Photo credit: Mike Rogers (Southern Connecticut State University)

Naomi with Bob Butler (then at University of Arizona) at Gona in February 2003 working on the magnetostratigraphy of the Busidima Formation. This work contributed to our understanding of the age of the DAN5 and BSN12 crania, described in Semaw et al. 2020. Naomi was between her MS and PhD at the time, working as a tech at the University of Arizona. Photo credit: Jay Quade (Univ. Arizona).