Thanks to a mummified 3,300-year-old baboon skull, Nathaniel Dominy, a primatologist at Dartmouth College, and his team were able to get a solid idea as to Punt s whereabouts.
The skull was archived in the British Museum s archives. This was a hamadryas baboon, which was originally discovered in Egypt, where these types of primates were revered even though they were not native to the land.
Dominy s team studied this particular baboon s teeth, more specifically the oxygen and strontium isotope compositions found in their enamel, to find clues of its birthplace. The reason for looking into isotopes is because the region s soil and water have a specific ratio of strontium isotopes, something that gets locked into tooth enamel in the primate s first years of life.