Word: bone
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...sloping forehead, a receding chin, and thick ridges over his eye sockets. Java man, discovered by a Dutch doctor who found a skullcap, or cranium, in 1891 and a thighbone in 1892, was obviously an even earlier, less evolved specimen than Neanderthal. Teeth, a nearly complete skullcap and bone fragments discovered in a cave at Choukoutien, China, during the 1920s established the existence of yet another early ancester, Peking man.* These discoveries helped to convince the remaining skeptics that the earlier finds were not the remains of a freak ape or a deformed human. The ancient, erect-walking creatures...
...later their team made an even more dramatic discovery. Not far from their first find, they uncovered the fossilized remnants of a 20-year-old female Australopithecus lying in a layer of sediment 3 million years old. Unlike most other fossils of early man ?a tooth here, a bone fragment there, occasionally a portion of a skull?this one comprised a good part of the skeleton...
...most exciting of the recent discoveries have come from East Africa and Richard Leakey, In 1972, Bernard Ngeneo, a Kenyan member of Leakey's fossil-hunting team, spotted a few scraps of bone exposed by erosion in sandy sediments in a steep gully near Lake Turkana's eastern shore. Working carefully, the Leakey team sifted scores of additional fragments out of the soil, then turned them over to Meave Leak ey, a paleontologist, and Anatomist Bernard Wood for assembly. As the last pieces of the six -week reconstruction job were put in place, the team mem bers found themselves staring...
...chiefly fossils, a farrago of frequently undecipherable-and occasionally contradictory-bits of evidence that often raise more questions than they answer. Fossils, the souvenirs of ages gone by, have survived through a still incompletely understood process whereby minerals from the soil infiltrate and gradually replace the very molecules of bone or other hard tissues of an organism, leaving its form and many features preserved...
...most difficult task, however, is reconstructing an image of the creature who left these fossils behind. "It's a matter of comparative anatomy," explains Simons. "You study other animals -apes, humans and other primates. Then when you find a piece of bone, you note similarities and differences." The shape of the pelvis tells clearly whether its erstwhile owner walked on all fours or stood erect. Teeth, which are frequently preserved because of their tough, protective enamel, tell even more. Animals that eat meat need teeth shaped to cut and slice; vegetarians need broad molars to chew their fibrous foods...