Free Republic

CAIRO (Reuters) - An American palaeontologist and a team of Egyptians have found the most nearly complete fossilised skeleton of the primitive whale Basilosaurus isis in Egypt's Western Desert, a university spokesman said on Monday. Philip Gingerich of the University of Michigan excavated the well-preserved skeleton, which is about 40 million years old, in a desert valley known as Wadi Hitan (the Valley of the Whales) southwest of Cairo, spokesman Karl Bates told Reuters. "His feeling is that it's the most complete -- the whole skeleton from stem to stern," said Bates. The skeleton, which is 18 metres (50 feet)...

Oldest human skulls found By Jonathan Amos BBC News Online science staff Three fossilised skulls unearthed in Ethiopia are said by scientists to be among the most important discoveries ever made in the search for the origin of humans. Herto skull: Dated at between 160,000 and 154,000 years old (Image copyright: David L. Brill) The crania of two adults and a child, all dated to be around 160,000 years old, were pulled out of sediments near a village called Herto in the Afar region in the east of the country. They are described as the oldest known fossils of modern...

In a discovery that several colleagues describe as "spectacular" and "extraordinary," an international team of researchers has uncovered fossils in Ethiopia that fill a crucial gap in the record of human evolution. Judged by their physical characteristics, the 160,000-year-old-fossils - nearly complete skulls of two adults and a child found near the village of Herto - teeter on the razor-thin edge of change between anatomically early and modern humans. The team also found skull pieces and teeth from seven other individuals. The discoveries dovetail with an expanding body of genetic evidence indicating that modern humans first evolved in Africa about...