https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fat-not-meat-may-have-led-to-bigger-hominin-brains/ > Northern Ethiopia was once home to a vast, ancient lake. Saber-toothed cats prowled around it, giant crocodiles swam within. The streams and rivers that fed it—over 3 million years ago, during the Pliocene—left behind trails of sediment that have now hardened into sandstone. > Deposited within these layers are fossils: some of early hominins, along with the bones of hippos, antelope, and elephants. Anthropologist Jessica Thompson encountered two of these specimens, from an area named Dikika, in 2010.