Becoming Human

Published in the journal Nature for 11 December 2019is a paper describing the oldest example of human figurative art and dated to approximately 44,000 years ago buy uranium series methods. A cave named Leang Blu’ Sipong 4 was investigated in 2017  by a team led by Maxine Aubert and yielded a panel proximately 15 feet long, depicting animals apparently being hunted by "anthropes", i.

In a paper published in the journal Nature this week, Yohannes Haile Selassie et al. attribute a fossil cranium found in Ethiopia in 2016 to the species Australopithecus anamensis and discourse on its relationship to fossils of the same species found earlier, as well as its relationship to A. afarensis, until now thought to be an evolutionary descendant of A.

A paper in the journal Science this week offers evidence of the as yet oldest human occupational site in the New World. The site is Cooper's Ferry in Idaho and radio carbon dating yields an age range of 16560 to 15280 years ago. The authors, Davis et al.

A technique to tease out the dietary history of fossilized hominins    has been used with some of the more recent hominins in the human lineage, such as  H. sapiens and H. neanderthalensis.

A technique to tease out the dietary history of fossilized hominins  then  has been used with some of the more recent hominins in the human lineage, such as  H. sapiens and H. neanderthalensis. In a paper published in the 15 July Edition of the journal nature, a team led by Renaud Joannes-Boyau reports on the use of this technique with two fossil specimens from the species A.

Two fossils found in Apidima Cave southern Greece,  in the early 70s have yielded startling results after undergoing reanalysis, according to a paper published in this week’s edition of the journal Nature and named Apidima 1 and 2.  The paper is entitled “Apidima Cave fossils provide earliest evidence of Homo sapiens in Eurasia” by Harvati et al.

A widely reported hominin jawbone, found in a Tibetan cave and dated to 160,000 years ago, was announced this week. The fossil jawbone was identified as" Dennisovan", according to the investigative team. The dating of the jawbone was ascertained by the UT (uranium-thorium) method.

This fossil is significant in a number of respects:

Announced in the April 10 edition of the journal Nature is a new species of genis Homo, named Homo luzonensis. The attribution is based on a small number of post cranial bones and seven teeth. The latter show both primitive and derived characteristics. The remains are dated to approximately 67,000 years ago by the Uranium thorium (UT) method.