Stone man. This partial skull of a 500,000-year-old human was found in a slab of travertine from a quarry like this one in Turkey.Credit: John Kappelman/University of Texas, Austin Workers at a travertine factory near Denizli, Turkey, were startled recently when they sawed a block of the limestone for tiles and discovered part of a human skull. Now, it appears they unwittingly exposed fossilized remains of a long-sought species of human that lived 500,000 years ago, researchers say. Although only four skull fragments were found, the fossil also reveals the earliest case of tuberculosis. The Middle East has long been...
