San Diego

A dispute is simmering between American- and Italian-led teams over access to one of the world's most promising hominid fossil fields.

The two groups are each feeling their way through research regulations in the East African state of Eritrea, which gained its independence from Ethiopia in 1993 and has since been attempting to open up its rich cultural heritage to scientific investigation.

Disputed territory: the Danakil Depression, where two teams' explorations overlapped. Credit: ERNESTO ABBATE

The dispute is over the northern Danakil Depression, where rocky outcrops have brought fossils to the surface to reveal tantalizing clues of early hominids in the region (see E. Abbate et al. Nature 393, 458–460; 1998).

Since 1995, a team from the University of Florence, Italy, has been exploring a region around the hamlet of Buia, where a million-year-old hominid skull was found. But when the Italian team, led by Lorenzo Rook, returned earlier this month to begin new explorations there, they were told that their research permits would be delayed.

According to Rook, Eritrean officials blamed the delay on problems that had arisen last October during a field trip in the same region by a team led by Randall Susman of Stony Brook University in New York. The Italian researchers are also annoyed that Susman was covering territory where they had been previously working. Such overlaps are frowned on by most physical anthropologists, but they are permitted by Eritrean regulations, which prohibit “exclusive” territorial concessions.

The field trip by Susman, a Stony Brook anatomist with 25 years' experience in functional-morphology research in Africa, has sparked unease in the Eritrean capital of Asmara. It has also caused ripples in San Francisco, home of the Leakey Foundation, which supports research into human origins and has provided US$15,000 to pay for the expedition.

In Asmara, Eritrean government officials have suspended Susman's survey permit, after his October field trip had included a South African geologist not approved as a member of the team. Susman acknowledges that this was an “administrative mistake”, saying it was an unintentional violation of regulations.

In San Francisco, Leakey Foundation officials criticized Susman for entering the Italian team's territory, when his grant award specifically stated that “the Leakey Foundation wishes to emphasize that your and the Italian team's study area should not overlap”.

Clark Howell, chairman of the Leakey Foundation's scientific executive committee and a former professor of anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, has suggested that Susman should return the grant to the foundation in light of the incident — but the full executive committee has declined to ask for such a refund.

Susman says that he tried hard to avoid the Italians' region, but ended up there because of inadequate maps, difficulties in securing Eritrean scientific assistance and confusion over the regulations. “I made every reasonable effort to prevent this from happening,” he says, “but it was impossible to avoid.”

Fossils collected on the expedition have been deposited at the Eritrean National Museum, Susman says. But Tewelde Medin Tecle, an Eritrean geologist who has worked with the Italian researchers, has accused Susman's team of harming the site by removing fossils and ancient tools. Susman denies this.

Late last week, Rook said that he hoped to leave soon for the field near Buia. “We are paying for the mistake someone else made,” he says.