Word: krishtalka
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...time when many progenitors of modern mammals first appeared. Representing some 65 species and including about eight species previously unknown, the bones are the most diverse and perfectly preserved ever discovered from that time. Although they have only just begun to study their find, Richard Stucky, 34, and Leonard Krishtalka, 38, are already convinced that the bones will reveal precious clues to the evolution and extinction of ancient animals. Says Stucky exuberantly: "It's a gold mine...
Despite these promising conditions, scientists have rarely found more than a few scattered specimens at a time. But almost as soon as Stucky and Krishtalka struck their pickaxes in the ground last June they unearthed a beautifully preserved Eocene skull and lower jaw of a three-toed dawn horse. Digging further in that spot and five adjacent areas, they retrieved 19 skulls, five eggs, over 150 jaws and hundreds of teeth, limbs and bone bits...
Like the animals from which they came, the fossils are tiny, many smaller than a matchstick. Says Krishtalka: "One rarely finds small specimens preserved so exquisitely." Animals that have been identified include bats, monkeys, iguana-like reptiles, a possum-like marsupial and salamanders. The scientists have yet to label the new species but have linked them to the lizard and shrew families...
...other bones, uncovered about half a mile away from White's find, consist of seven skull fragments, all lying within 18 in. of one another. The discoverer was another expedition member, Leonard Krishtalka of Pittsburgh's Carnegie Museum. Remarkably, three of the fossils, including a frontal bone, which is especially useful in assessing the possible shape of the skull, easily fit together. The age of the bones was determined from radioactive dating of a layer of cindery volcanic debris near the fossils. The bones, declared Clark, are the oldest clearly identifiable hominid, or humanlike, skull fragments ever found...
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