Word: oldest
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...dominate the earth, begins in Africa. While many unanswered questions remain about when and where modern humans first appeared, their ancestors almost surely emerged from Africa's lush forests nearly 4 million years ago. The warm climate was right, animal life was abundant, and that's where the oldest hominid fossils have been uncovered...
...1970s in Tanzania by a team led by the famed archaeologist Mary Leakey. Set in solidified volcanic ash, the footprints confirmed that Lucy and her kin walked like humans. Some of the A. afarensis specimens date back about 3.9 million years B.P. (before the present), making them the oldest known hominid fossils...
...dates ended up validating Curtis' previous work. The Mojokerto child and the Sangiran fossils were about 1.8 million and 1.7 million years old, respectively, comparable in age to the oldest Homo erectus from Africa. Here, then, was a likely solution to one of the great mysteries of human evolution. Says Swisher: "We've always wondered why it would take so long for hominids to get out of Africa." The evident answer: it didn't take them much time at all, at least by prehistoric standards -- probably no more than 100,000 years, instead of nearly a million...
...Great North-South-East-West Conference: Also known as the "Compass Eight," fine institutions like Eastern Ohio, Northwest Indiana and Southeastern Michigan State compete every year for the bragging rights to one of the nation's oldest trophies, the GNSEW's prestigious Little Brown Beer Bottle...
...from Cuba. Each of the Brothers' planes is decorated, bomber- style, with stickers representing rafts saved -- Domaniewicz's alone boasts 32. The Brothers, founded in 1991 by two Cuban-American veterans of the Bay of Pigs invasion, have rescued a total of 1,286 men, women and children; the oldest was 77, the youngest a five-day-old infant. Last year, as economic conditions worsened in Cuba, the number of rafters rose to 3,656 -- the highest since the 1980 Mariel boatlift. Often the rafts are empty: by some estimates, 1 in 4 balseros die -- and the rescuers themselves...