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Paul Sereno does it again. Another amazing find for Paleontology's" Indiana Jones "

POSTED BY: AURAPTOR
UPDATED: Sunday, August 24, 2008 13:33
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Sunday, August 17, 2008 2:34 AM

AURAPTOR

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Chicago dinosaur hunters uncover ancient human graveyard in Sahara
Discovery offers glimpse of era when the desert was a lush paradise

By Jeremy Manier | Chicago Tribune reporter
August 15, 2008
A group of Chicago dinosaur hunters has stumbled across an ancient human graveyard in the middle of the Sahara, offering a unique glimpse of an epoch when much of the desert was a lush paradise.

The find represents several firsts, said University of Chicago paleontologist Paul Sereno, whose team published the discovery in Thursday's issue of the journal PLoS ONE. It's the biggest Saharan graveyard ever found from the period between 4,500 and 10,000 years ago, a time that scientists have known mostly from scattered fragments of human remains buried in the hot sands.

The period of the Green Sahara, as some researchers call it, began when a fluctuation in the Earth's orbit changed African weather patterns and brought more rain to the desert. The lakes that developed supported 6-foot-long pike fish, turtles, crocodiles and an array of other wildlife and human settlers.

But the dunes eventually returned, swallowing for ages any record of how Stone Age people managed to thrive at the site in northern Niger.
"It's really the story of humanity's struggle to exist in an environment undergoing severe changes," Sereno said.

The team found the bones by the ancient lakeshore in 2000 and excavated the site through 2006. Sereno, who made his name in paleontology by unearthing giant crocodiles and new kinds of dinosaurs from the Sahara, was floored when a photographer with the team found old human bones in the dunes near where other group members were digging for dinosaur remains.

Knowing he would need more than dinosaur specialists to understand the site's full scientific story, Sereno enlisted several outside archeologists who specialize in the study of ancient human remains and settlements.

The most important discovery at the site, called Gobero, was an expanse consisting of 200 graves, including those of people from two separate populations called the Kiffian and the Tenerian.

One of the most moving and mysterious burials was of a Tenerian woman who was buried facing two young children. Pollen was found beneath the three skeletons, suggesting the three had been buried on a bed of flowers.

The diversity of material from the graves, homes and even garbage dumps makes the site unique, said study co-author Elena Garcea, an archeologist from the University of Cassino in Italy.

"It's not just one site, it's really eight sites where people buried their dead but also lived," Garcea said Thursday at a news conference on the discovery in Washington, D.C. The conference was held by the National Geographic Society, which helped fund the research.

The older population of Kiffians were taller and had heartier builds than the Tenerians, who settled in the area toward the end of the Green Sahara period. One Kiffian male whom the team uncovered stood well over 6 feet.

Sereno said he hopes to return the specimens to Niger when the country can build a national museum, which also would house his Saharan dinosaur finds.






It is not those who use the term "Islamo-Fascism" who are sullying the name of Islam; it is the Islamo-Fascists. - Dennis Prager


" They don't like it when you shoot at 'em. I worked that out myself. "

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Sunday, August 24, 2008 1:33 PM

KWICKO

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." -- William Casey, Reagan's presidential campaign manager & CIA Director (from first staff meeting in 1981)


I refuse to believe that the weather could ever change enough to threaten peoples' existence...

Sounds like a myth made up by scientists to me!



Mike

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