Word: boned
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Whoa. This is a hominid," crowed Anthropologist Tim White when he spotted the first bone fragment, a portion of an elbow, lying on a layer of sand. Looking down, Expedition Leader Donald Johanson shouted, "There's part of a humerus right next to it!" That July 1986 find in Tanzania's Olduvai Gorge marked the beginning of a startling discovery that was formally unveiled last week by White and Johanson. The team of ten U.S. and Tanzanian scientists unearthed 302 fossil bones and teeth that have yielded a more complete picture of modern humans' earliest direct ancestor, Homo habilis...
Earlier discoveries of Homo habilis fossils consisted only of skulls, teeth and questionable limb bones, forcing scientists to guess at the creature's size and proportions. But the dramatic new find, which includes skull, arm bones, thigh and shin fragments from a single adult female, permits a more accurate assessment. The length of the thigh bone is a gauge of height, and the relative length of the upper arm bone to the upper leg bone is a vital clue to body build. The remains, described in the British journal Nature last week, belong to a creature that lived about...
...proportions of the skeleton were also a surprise to the scientists. The upper arm bone is about 95% as long as the thigh bone, indicating that the arms dangled to the knees, much as they do in apes. Thus Homo habilis closely resembled Australopithecus afarensis, of which the best-known example is the famed "Lucy" skeleton, which was discovered by Johanson in 1974. Lucy's ratio is 85%; in modern humans, the figure is about...
...stories. Wasn't it fun? Wasn't she pleased, the ancient matriarch who, in a time so distant that it seems made up, slid you out soaked, milky, blind into the sheets? On her designated "day," that same panting, sweating girl sat dry as a museum bone, a china plate receiving alms...
...Another bone of contention was the $7.9 million paid by Iran for U.S. weapons and left in Swiss accounts. Legislators contended that it is Government property, since it derives from the sale of federal assets. Secord insisted that it properly belonged to the "enterprise," meaning essentially Hakim and him. Under that interpretation, observed House Counsel Nields, "you could have gone off and bought an island in the Mediterranean." Yes, said Secord, "but I did not go to Bimini." The allusion to Gary Hart's troubles set off a gale of laughter. Secord eventually asserted that he intended to donate...