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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
 Posted - 05/13/2009 : 02:01:45
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A couple hundred thousand years ago, the world was a vastly different place. Early Homo sap had to contend with some very formidable predators, including hyenas.
Now in many circles, mainly in those that know squat about hyenas, they are considered as strictly scavengers, and rather ugly ones at that. They are anything but -- they are highly efficient, nocturnal predators, as this unfortunate fellow may well have learned first hand.
"The oldest known human hair belonged to a 9,000-year-old mummy disinterred from an ancient Chilean cemetery.
Until now. A recent discovery pushes the record back some 200,000 years. (And the newly discovered strands received a rather less dignified burial.)
While excavating in Gladysvale Cave, near Johannesburg, South Africa, a team of researchers from the University of the Witwatersrand discovered an ancient brown-hyena latrine. Upon inspection, hyena coprolites — fossilized dung — appeared to contain uncannily hair-like structures.
Lucinda Backwell, a paleontologist in the group, took a sediment block containing several coprolites back to the lab for a closer look. She and a colleague carefully removed forty of the "hairs apparent" from one of the coprolites and subjected half to scanning-electron microscopy. Sure enough, fossilized hairs they were, and five showed remarkably preserved surface scales.
Comparing the scales to those of a variety of animals — an admittedly tricky undertaking — Backwell's team concluded that human hairs were the best match.
Dating of the cave's limestone layers showed that the dung had been deposited sometime between 257,000 and 195,000 years ago. During that period, both early Homo sapiens and a relation, H. heidelbergensis, roamed the South African landscape.
A couple of chilling explanations spring to mind as to how human hairs might have become lodged in hyena dung. Backwell thinks it most likely that a brown hyena scavenged an ancestral human's remains."
Whether the hyena(s) hunted him down or dug up his grave is not important; this is a pretty incredible find. Hell, just getting a hair out of a petrified hyena turd is remarkable in and of itsef.
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist! 
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 05/13/2009 : 02:06:56 [Permalink]
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When I die, I'll be past caring what happens to my remains. At this point while still alive, I would prefer not to have my body take up near-permanent real estate, as in a traditional graveyard plot. I know it's irrational, but damned if I'd want to end up as part of hyena feces.
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
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Wrong place at the wrong time....
