viernes, 6 de abril de 2012

Were Ancient Fossil Bone Marks Made by Stone Tools or Biting Animals?

Leading scientist suggests need for universal standards for interpreting fossil evidence of early human stone tool use.

Are they marks left by a biting crocodile or an early human using a stone tool?

That's a question that deserves more careful consideration than it may have garnered in the past, according to Jackson Njau, an assistant professor at Indiana University Bloomington Department of Geological Sciences in the College of Arts and Sciences. An expert at reading bones, he is also former principal curator of the National Natural History Museum in Arusha, Tanzania and co-director of field research at paleontological sites in eastern Africa's Olduvai Gorge, one of the most famous regions bearing on human evolution and the fossil record.

"There's really no solid, standard method of analyzing these bones that is used by all researchers," he says. "And there is no universal guide, nothing that is part of one's training as a student, that tells you reliably how to judge one type of mark from another."

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Njau spells out the details in a Science Perspectives article, "Reading Pliocene Bones," published on April 6, 2012.

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