Word: fossilizing
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Until now, paleontologists could only speculate about the existence of such people. But an international research team co-directed by Tim White of the University of California, Berkeley, reported in Nature last week that it has finally unearthed the long-sought fossil remains of what could be the very first true Homo sapiens, dated to between 160,000 and 154,000 years ago. And because of the quality of the specimens and where they were discovered, they cast new light on several of paleontology's thorniest questions...
...discovery was largely an accident, one that never would have happened if not for El Nino. Back in 1997, the Pacific Ocean disturbance that affects much of the world's weather triggered punishing rains in Ethiopia. The deluges not only exposed buried fossils but also drove away the people of Herto and their livestock, which would have trampled the fragile bones. When White and the others happened to drive by the village, they noticed a fossil hippo skull poking out of the ancient sand. On closer examination, the skull bore marks indicating that the animal had been gashed with...
Love your Palm but tired of carrying around (and occasionally dropping) yet another untethered piece of hardware? Now for the first time, somebody has squeezed the Palm operating system into a wristwatch. Fossil's Wrist PDA goes on sale this month for $295 on Amazon.com and it has almost everything you have come to expect from its big brothers, including a USB connection to synch with a PC and an infrared port for wireless data transfer. There's even a backlit screen and a tiny stylus hidden in the band...
...watch, however, it's a little clunky. It weighs as much as an iPod, and with just 2 MB of memory, two hours of battery life and the old Palm OS 4.1, it can't be as quick and versatile as a full-size PDA. Fossil recommends that you stick to applications "designed for the smaller screen size." You'll have to cut it some slack for not having the latest Palm features like Wi-Fi connectivity, a built-in camera or a color screen. Still, it will free up space in your increasingly crowded pockets...
...rovers won't be especially good at addressing the question people ask most: Is there now, or might there ever have been, life on Mars? The devices can make inferences, looking for evidence of water or iron. And if the microscopic imager sent back a picture of a microbial fossil, that would settle the question. But even NASA acknowledges that when it comes to searching for life, the Europeans have the edge this time...