Latest Middle Stone Age Stories

NEW YORK (AP) -- A new analysis of bones unearthed nearly 40 years ago in Ethiopia has pushed the fossil record of modern humans back to nearly 200,000 years ago - perhaps close to the dawn of the species. Researchers determined that the specimens are around 195,000 years old. Previously, the oldest known fossils of Homo sapiens were Ethiopian skulls dated to about 160,000 years ago. Genetic studies estimate that Homo sapiens arose about 200,000 years ago, so the new research brings the...

SHE MAY have only been a midget but her bones have generated a huge row in the world of human palaeontology, already reeling from the dramatic implications of her discovery. All the experts who have studied her tiny skull and skeleton believe the "hobbit woman" found on a remote Indonesian island represents a new human species that only died out in recent history. However, a maverick scientist disputes this interpretation, saying she was just another member of our own species but with a...