Word: skulled
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...group of loosely related species. If that is true, then there must have been an even older species, still undiscovered, that was ancestral to them all. The debate has been difficult to resolve, because fossil hunters have never found a key piece of evidence: an intact A. afarensis skull. Skulls are the Rosetta stones of anthropology, bearing unique features that let scientists determine whether two fossil samples come from the same type of creature...
...they have the evidence. Researchers from the Institute of Human Origins (IHO) in Berkeley, California, and from Tel Aviv University in Israel report in the current issue of Nature that they have discovered a nearly intact skull from a male A. afarensis who lived about 200,000 years after Lucy -- call him Lucy's Grandson -- along with several arm bones from other males. The new fossils virtually clinch the view that A. afarensis is one species, placing it more firmly than ever at the root of the human family tree. And because the specimens are nearly a million years younger...
Unfortunately, the few hundred afarensis bone fragments scientists have dug up over the past 20 years have been too few and too fragmentary to advance the argument very far in either direction. That is why Lucy's Grandson is a breakthrough. Says Walker: "We've had parts of afarensis skulls from different individuals, but now we know what a single skull looks like, and we have the proportions correct...
...airport. After a chorus of vivas, the candidate stepped down from the platform and, in his populist campaign style, waded into the crush to shake hands. The assassin edged up behind him, thrust a .38-cal. pistol at his head and fired. The bullet smashed through the candidate's skull, shattering his brain. Then the gunman leaned over and fired another bullet into the fallen man's stomach...
...year's most popular stories. Last year she repeated the experience with a cover updating the conventional wisdom about dinosaurs; Alexander has had similar success with a cover exploring the dawn of life. Notes Wallis: "If you have a new artifact to look at -- the skull of an early hominid, the talon of a velociraptor -- you can engage in a thrilling kind of time traveling. Add some evocative writing, and readers can be transported...