Word: skulls
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...latest shocker comes in the current issue of Nature, where Chinese scientists have contended that the skull of a modern-looking human, found in their country a decade ago, is at least 200,000 years old -- more than twice as old as any Homo sapiens specimen ever found in that part of the world. Moreover, the skull has features resembling those of contemporary Asians. The controversial implication: modern humans may not have evolved just in Africa, as most scientists believe, but may have emerged simultaneously in several regions of the globe...
...Nature article came only a week after an even more surprising report in the competing journal Science. U.S. and Indonesian researchers said they had redated fossil skull fragments found at two sites on the island of Java. Instead of being a million years old, as earlier analysis suggested, the fossils appear to date back nearly 2 million years. They are from the species known as Homo erectus -- the first primate to look anything like modern humans and the first to use fire and create sophisticated stone tools. Says F. Clark Howell, an anthropologist at the University of California, Berkeley: "This...
...Fortunately, many specimens are found in sedimentary rock, laid down in layers through the ages. By developing ways of dating the rock layers, scientists have been able to approximate the age of fossils contained in them. But these methods are far from foolproof. The 200,000-year-old Chinese skull, in particular, is getting only a cautious reception from most scientists, in part because the dating technique used is still experimental...
...piece of evidence came in 1974 with the discovery of the long- sought "missing link" between apes and humans. An expedition to Ethiopia led by Donald Johanson, now president of IHO, painstakingly pieced together a remarkable ancient primate skeleton. Although about 60% of the bones, including much of the skull, were missing, the scientists could tell that the animal stood 3 ft. 6 in. tall. That seemed too short for a hominid, but the animal had an all important human characteristic: unlike any species of primate known to have come before, this creature walked fully upright. How did the researchers...
Connections between skull shape and personality may be reminiscent of folklore or parlor science, but Harvard researchers have recently found evidence supporting a link between facial shape and genetic tendency toward shyness...