oldest human DNA

[DrLeftover]

4 December 2013

The discovery of DNA in a 400,000-year-old human thigh bone will open up a new frontier in the study of our ancestors.

That's the verdict cast by human evolution experts on an analysis in Nature journal of the oldest human genetic material ever sequenced.

The femur comes from the famed "Pit of Bones" site in Spain, which gave up the remains of at least 28 ancient people.

But the results are perplexing, raising more questions than answers about our increasingly complex family tree.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-25193442

 

[Nebulous's iconNebulous]

400,000-year-old human

Wake me up when they've found a million year old human

That is pretty neat though!

 

[DrLeftover]

400,000-year-old human

Wake me up when they've found a million year old human

Will you settle for 2.+ million year old, identifiably human, remains?

Olduvai Gorge, Olduvai also spelled Olduwai, paleoanthropological site in the eastern Serengeti Plain, within the boundaries of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area in northern Tanzania. It is a steep-sided ravine consisting of two branches that have a combined length of about 30 miles (48 km) and are 295 feet (90 metres) deep. Deposits exposed in the sides of the gorge cover a time span from about 2.1 million to 15,000 years ago. The deposits have yielded the fossil remains of more than 60 hominins (members of the human lineage), providing the most continuous known record of human evolution during the past 2 million years, as well as the longest known archaeological record of the development of stone-tool industries. Olduvai Gorge was designated part of a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1979. Although Olduvai Gorge has often been called the “Cradle of Mankind,” a different World Heritage site called the “Cradle of Humankind” is located in South Africa. Compare Sterkfontein, Swartkrans, and Kromdraai.

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/427425/Olduvai-Gorge

The site for the site:
http://www.olduvai-gorge.org/index.html

 

[Nebulous's iconNebulous]

Awesomeness! Thanks oh wise bringer of information.

 

[DrLeftover]

I live but to serve.