Hyena Coprolites And Hominin Hair

National Geographic has an interesting story on hair found in hyena coprolites. The coprolites were in strata that date to about 195,000-257,000 years ago.

Homo heidelbergensis at the Gates of Europe and the Peopling of the Americas

One of the biggest debates in North American archaeology concerns the timing of the peopling of the America’s. Basically, it boils down to Clovis or Pre-Clovis. One of the more interesting thing about this debate is the way archaeological evidence gets used and critiqued by the various participants.

Atatpuerca 5

In place of today’s ‘Know Your Primate” (which will be back next week) I present the following picture:

The Atapuerca Hyoids

Greg Laden has a write up of the 1.1-1.2 MYA find at Atapuerca. I mentioned this story last year and the find has finally been published. I will have more to say about this in a later post (there are several other papers out that relate – I also plan on writing about the Homo floresiensis paper and the Orrorin tugenensis paper as well). In the meantime a second paper relating to Atapuerca came out in January.