In 1974 at the East Turkana site in Kenya, scientists unearthed a small skull fragment that they dated back to 1.9 million years ago and belonged to a
Homo erectus. It is the second oldest skull fragment ever found – the title belongs to a specimen found in South Africa that dates back 2 million years.
Since there was so much skepticism regarding the East Turkana skull’s age – they speculated that the bone may have been moved to the location because of water or wind, suggesting that the remains weren’t as old as initially thought – researchers went back to the site and conducted geological surveys.
Fraud, gold nuggets and 400kg of concrete: Police speak on the Mt Eden bones in the backyard case
17 Apr, 2021 05:00 PM
9 minutes to read
A picture of David Hart, who is the subject of a homicide investigation, with the Mt Eden house under which his remains were found entombed in concrete. NZ Herald Photo by Alex Burton 07 February 2020
A picture of David Hart, who is the subject of a homicide investigation, with the Mt Eden house under which his remains were found entombed in concrete. NZ Herald Photo by Alex Burton 07 February 2020
Tom Dillane is a reporter at the New Zealand Heraldtom.dillane@nzme.co.nz@tomdillane1
The story of Halford s flute boy , and what it tells us about the European trade in human remains
Posted 1
AprApril 2021 at 7:00pm
This skeleton came to Melbourne with the University of Melbourne s first professor of medicine . and an incredible backstory.
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At the height of the French Revolution in the late 1700s, a boy sat on the steps of the Notre-Dame cathedral playing a lilting tune on his wooden recorder.
Parisians hurried by, occasionally casting a glance towards the child, perhaps throwing a few coins his way.
But what may have caused them to stop mid-stride was the sight of his legs or, rather, leg. The boy s two thighs were fused at his knee and his leg ended in a single foot.
The big idea
During 2.4 million years of existence on Earth, a total of 2.5 billion
To estimate population, our team of paleontologists and scientists had to combine the extraordinarily comprehensive existing research on
From microscopic growth patterns in bones, researchers inferred that
T. rexfirst mated at around 15 years old. With growth records, scientists can also generate survivorship curves – an estimate of a
T. rex generations took 19 years. Finally,
T. rex existed as a species for 1.2 to 3.6 million years. With all of this information, we calculate that
T. rex existed for 66,000 to 188,000 generations.
From the fossil record alone, we had generated a
Excavations undertaken by Aerial Archaeology in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (AAKSA) shed significant light on the social and funerary practices of northwestern Arabia during the Neolithic and Chalcolithic periods. These Saudi Arabian dog remains are not the earliest evidence of dog domestication in history. There is evidence from the Natufian period in Israeli history going back 12,000 years ago, and Jordan too has evidence of dogs in hunting expeditions from 11,500 years ago.
Similarly, there are several indigenous tribes scattered over the world that have had semi-domestic or hunting relationships with dogs that predate the finds in the Arabian Peninsula. What sets this discovery apart are two factors. Firstly, the extremely harsh weather conditions and ensuing topography do not allow for the survival of too many species. Indeed, the Arabian Peninsula is the largest region in the world without any permanent rivers. Secondly, evidence of the history of the region and its communit