Word: anatomists
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...most scientists of the time disputed even the Neanderthal man's antiquity. Rudolf Virchow, a respected German anatomist, pronounced the caveman to be a modern Homo sapiens, whose deformations were caused by rickets in childhood and arthritis later in life. And his flattened skull? He had suffered powerful blows to the head, Virchow opined...
Among the experts who agree is Yoel Rak, an anatomist at Tel Aviv University. He believes "Neanderthals have nothing to do with our history." They may well have become extinct, he says, because they were too highly specialized -- probably well adapted to survive the frigid temperatures of Ice Age Europe. But when such conditions change, he notes, "the highly specialized creatures are at a tremendous disadvantage...
...analyze what they've found (the harder part). The earliest hint that his team had discovered an especially ancient human ancestor was a single knee joint plucked from the African dirt. It was old -- carefully dated volcanic ash in nearby rocks proved that. But it took laborious work by anatomist Owen Lovejoy to prove the knee belonged to a biped -- and thus, not entirely apelike -- primate. Lucy turned up nearby a year later, but it took weeks to piece her jumbled bones into a partial skeleton and years before anthropologists could agree on her place in human evolution...
...rage for dinosaurs is hardly new. The British anatomist Richard Owen first coined the term dinosaur (from the ancient Greek deinos, "terrible," and sauros, "lizard") in 1841 to characterize gigantic fossilized bones found several decades earlier. Dinosaur bones and footprints had actually been known for centuries, but were ascribed to dragons or extinct lizards or even giant ravens. Owen realized that these enormous bones belonged to a previously unknown and long-extinct group of animals related to but different from lizards. Dinosaurs became an immediate rage in London. An 1854 exhibition at Hyde Park's Crystal Palace featured a number...
...bickering has seriously delayed examination of the Iceman's internal organs and analysis of his DNA, tests that could shed light on his diet, immune system and cause of death, and even help identify his closest living descendants. Innsbruck University anatomist Werner Platzer feels frustrated and bewildered: "The Italian ministry has told us that we are not allowed to destroy a bit of the body," he complains. On the other hand, "they say that if no research is carried out, the body must go to Rome for research purposes." As head of the anatomical-research project, Platzer has decided...