Posted on 02/07/2013 4:04:53 PM PST by blam
Researchers Just Dug Up A Half-Million-Year-Old Human Jawbone
Tia Ghose, LiveScience
February, 2013
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An ancient hominin jawbone unearthed in a Serbian cave may be more than half a million years old.
Scientists have unearthed a jawbone from an ancient human ancestor in a cave in Serbia.
The jawbone, which may have come from an ancient Homo erectus or a primitive-looking Neanderthal precursor, is more than 397,000 years old, and possibly more than 525,000 years old. The fossil, described today (Feb. 6) in the journal PLOS ONE, is the oldest hominin fossil found in this region of Europe, and may change the view that Neanderthals, our closest extinct human relatives, evolved throughout Europe around that time.
"It comes from an area where we basically don't have anything that is known and well- published," said study co-author Mirjana Roksandic, a bioarchaeologist from the University of Winnipeg in Canada. "Now we have something to start constructing a picture of what's happening in this part of Europe at that time."
Cave diggers
In 2000, Roksandic and her colleagues began excavating a cave in Balanica, Serbia, that contained ancient archaeological remains. While they were away, rogue diggers secretly dug a deeper pit within the cave, hoping to do their own excavations. Because the site had already been disturbed, the team then decided to probe deeper below the pit's bottom, Roksandic told LiveScience. [In Photos: Our Closest Human Relatives]
About 5.9 inches (15 centimeters) below the surface the team found an ancient jawbone fragment with three molars still intact.
Using several dating techniques, the team determined the fragment was definitely older than 397,000 years and perhaps older than 525,000 years.
The jawbone lacked several characteristic Neanderthal features, including distinctive chewing surfaces on the teeth that show up in Western
(snip)
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Image: JOHN GURCHE PORTRAIT OF A PIONEER With a brain half the size of a modern one and a brow reminiscent of Homo habilis, this hominid is one of the most primitive members of our genus on record. Paleoartist John Gurche reconstructed this 1.75-million-year-old explorer from a nearly complete teenage H. erectus skull and associated mandible found in Dmanisi in the Republic of Georgia. The background figures derive from two partial crania recovered at the site.
I wondered how they knew so quick.
“may change”
I wish I had a nickle for every time I have seen those words from the ‘scientific’ community. I would be SO rich.
Those teeth are in better shape & outnumber those belonging to numerous rednecks!
IB4HTP
LOL
Hey! Helen Thomas wasn’t through using it yet!
No, "electron spin resonance combined with uranium series isotopic analysis, and infrared/post-infrared luminescence dating...using a thermal ionization mass spectrometer equipped with a secondary electron multiplier."
They don’t seem real clear on what it is other than a human jawbone. So, how do they know it’s human?
Cause of death was found to be the Piranah Brothers.
hominin jawbone, not human.
Because they went to school for 10 years to learn how to identify fragmentary fossils?
“They don’t seem real clear on what it is other than a human jawbone. So, how do they know it’s human?”
They don’t... What makes a human a human is not in the bones. It’s the soul or at the very, least the brain. Who’s to say that this animal did not have the reasoning of a monkey? The skeleton could have “evolved” hundreds of thousands of years ahead of the brain. I suspect that the brain evolved to human six thousand years ago...
Here’s the problem with relying on press releases and non-specialist websites and the MSM for science information
The headline doesn’t match the article, or the scientific paper by the discoverers.
It’s a “hominin” jawbone, like human. But some idiot at LiveScience put “human” in the headline.
Jawbone of an Ass
The teeth appear to be incredibly well preserved! The enamel still appears to reflect light.
It belonged to Sen.Barbara Boxer and it was still moving when they found it.
It's time for a hominid family reunion, and anthropologists Ian Tattersall and Jeffrey Schwartz have brought the scrapbook. Extinct Humans is both an album of knowledge of our ancestors and closely related species and a theoretical reconsideration of the fossil evidence. Tattersall and Schwartz suggest that many more human species existed than we previously thought, and that many of them existed contemporaneously until about 25,000 years ago. Profusely illustrated, the book makes its case well, showing and discussing the evidence and proposing a family history that pulls all the fossils and theories together into a testable whole. The authors have personally investigated every available hominid specimen, and the depth of their knowledge is staggering at times--but their obsession is enlightening and entertaining.
So, while the skull was discovered in the Republic of Georgia, it could not have been found in the State of West Virginia.
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