Word: ago
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Human beings and the great apes had a common ancestor about 5 million years ago. The genes of the two groups differ hardly at all, but some of them are differently arranged. By using that information, along with hominid fossils, we shall learn what genetic changes made it possible for the ancestors of modern people to stand upright (about 4 million years ago) and then to speak. As a by-product, we shall be able to trace the migration routes of our human ancestors who emigrated from Africa and came to populate the surface of the earth. A half-century...
Only 70 years ago, the universe was found to be expanding, but now there is a model of how it began: the Big Bang. At the beginning, it is said, there was literally nothing ("the void" of Genesis), not even space. Then there came into being a tiny speck of superheated space that contained enough energy to create all the stars and galaxies that fill the sky-with enough left over to drive the expansion of the universe ever since...
...Tanzania's Olduvai Gorge, Mary Leakey finds the fossilized skull of a human ancestor who lived 1.8 million years ago...
...Luis and Walter Alvarez speculate that an asteroid's crashing into Earth 65 million years ago wiped out the dinosaurs and other species. In 1991 the putative impact crater is found beneath Mexico's Yucatan peninsula...
REAL CHEAP PCS It doesn't seem that long ago that a good deal on a computer meant a new PC that sold for under a grand. Now the cheapest PC practically pays for itself. The $299 Webzter Jr. desktop from Microworkz Computer Corp. packs a surprisingly powerful punch with its 300-MHz Cyrix processor, 32 megabytes of memory and 3.2-gigabyte hard drive. Like every other sub-$1,000 PC, it comes without a monitor, but it does give you one year of free Internet service from Earthlink, a $240 value...