A stopping point on the way to Australia? 'thousands of stone artefacts and animal bones in a deep cave in Timor Island has shed light on the timing and nature of early human migrations through Indonesia to Australia.'
...
"The site of Laili is especially fascinating as it demonstrates a large human population settled on the island between 49-43,000 years ago,” Griffith University’s Research Fellow Kasih Norman
'The occupation of Laili therefore appears to be part of the large-scale migration of modern humans that took place across the globe between 70-40,000 years ago.'
From John Hawks on fabulous Middle #Pleistocene woodworking:
'Schöningen, Germany, famous in archaeology for its 300,000-year-old wooden spears, exceptionally preserved in waterlogged mud. New work led by Dirk Leder reveals dozens more wooden tools of many kinds, some with carving methods not previously seen before the Holocene.'
🦌#LostBones#FossilFriday 🦌🐂🦥🐴🐘🐪🐟🍃 You can still find remnants of elk (Cervus canadensis) in Minnesota. They were common, in the thousands, up until the 1800s.
The Ojibwe called them omashkooz, and the Dakota called them heȟáka.
This gorgeous antler specimen was found near Motley, Minnesota, in 1972 and has been housed for the past 50 years at SCSU in St. Cloud.
A "Scaldicetus" I made for the Steinkern Magazine. "Scaldicetus" is considered to be a wastebasket taxon, consisting of various prehistoric sperm whales, often used as a name for tooth fossils.
"The Portuguese Bend landslide, in coastal southern California, is an active, slow-moving mass of blocks and debris that extends from the shoreline to moderate altitudes along part of the southerly margin of the Palos Verdes Hills... Ground failure has been widespread in this area. It evidently began in mid- to late-Pleistocene time, and it has continued intermittently to the present." #pleistocene#landslide#PortugueseBend#PalosVerdeshttps://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0013795289900379
@NatureMC. Let’s get these watershed wizards back in the wild. Starting with modern beavers, then letting divergent evolution work. #rewilding,#Pleistocene.
Join us for a special embroidery workshop that will transport you back to the Ice Age. Facilitated by the talented Ciara from The Wild Stitch, you’ll learn basic needle and embroidery skills while creating a Beringia themed masterpiece.
Geologists name physical rock formations.
Several hundred years ago, #Climate scientists noticed a waxing and waning of glaciers on land. It seemed like there were cycles of ~100,000 years where ice sheets and glaciers expanded (=glacial time) coupled with sea levels dropping and temperatures cooling.
The last inter-glacial period was ~127,000-115,000 years ago.
S. Gaudzinski-Windheuser et al., #Beaver exploitation, 400,000 years ago, testifies to prey choice diversity of Middle #Pleistocene hominins, #SciRep 13, 2023. 🔓
This article analyses #taphonomic bias in the #archaeological record of #symbolic artefacts to check if there really was a big increase around 45,000 years. They find there was. But they also acknowledge the jump of habitual #ochre use in ritual c.160,000 yrs. That's the launching of the symbolic revolution, in our view
"In 1991, archaeologists made an unprecedented discovery in a remote region of #Brazil - a massive collection of prehistoric rock art spanning over 8 miles within the #SerradaCapivara mountains. Carbon dating revealed the drawings dated back approximately 12,600 years, offering a unique window into the late #Pleistocene era in #SouthAmerica." #Archaeology
It’s a #lostbones#FossilFriday! 🐂🦥🐴🐘🐪🐟 This remarkable mammoth 🦷 has an even more remarkable story! Housed at the Interstate Park Ice Age Interpretive Center in Taylors Falls, WI - the tooth originated in #Minnesota.
It was discovered in 1987 by a heavy equipment operator excavating gravel from a Gray Cloud Island gravel deposit ~125 feet below the original surface!
A recent study published in the journal Science found that humans were nearly wiped out in an "ancestral bottleneck" event 800,000 years ago. This event lasted nearly 120,000 years before the population recovered.
During this time period, it was estimated that there were only roughly 1280 breeding individuals during this time period.
Yes, I want to #flyless but reaching northern Ireland from northern Germany ( #EAA2023 ; #EAABelfast) is quite some hassle even when flying today (at least I go to the airport with only public transport). 😒 In the Late #pleistocene the connection would probably have been better at least to the shores of the Irish Sea. 😁
Ongoing construction at the new Felipe Ángeles International Airport (AIFA) near Mexico City has led to the discovery of an ancient flamingo fossil egg, believed to be from the Pleistocene Epoch....
Good discussion of the uncertainties around the #Banyoles (Spain) mandible, dating to very early phase of modern humans in Europe 66-45 Ka?). But is it modern human when it lacks a chin? Could it represent interbreeding? And if so, with who?
"You will join our research group... aimed at developing new analytical approaches to unravel the #Phyloproteomic relationships between... #Pleistocene#Hominin populations, including... our own species."
The role is for two years. Monthly salary is 4,870 EUR. Deadline for applications: 15 August 2023, 23.59pm CET
Lovely! New #research about our ancestors reveal that we now have evidence of someone attacking, and possibly killing, another hominid using weapons. The evidence was found on a 1.45 million year old skeleton during a #study into predation on early humans. Tooth marks and other evidence is extremely rare, but now we can definitively add “other humans” to the list. I can't help think of Hesiod's Golden Age, in which he described a time of limitless peace, prosperity and harmony between all things. Well, sorry Hesiod, but that might have been significantly further back than you thought; probably before life began (I'm sorry to say). #history#prehistory#pleistocene#ancient#humanity https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-35702-7
When stimulated, the mice showed a drop in body #temperature 🌡️of about 3C for about one hour. The mice’s metabolism also shifted from using both carbohydrates and fat for energy to only fat, a key feature of torpor, and their heart rates fell by about 47%, all while at room temperature.
Ancient fossilized flamingo egg found near Felipe Ángeles airport, Mexico (mexiconewsdaily.com)
Ongoing construction at the new Felipe Ángeles International Airport (AIFA) near Mexico City has led to the discovery of an ancient flamingo fossil egg, believed to be from the Pleistocene Epoch....