john hawks weblog

paleoanthropology, genetics and evolution

French team studies Narmada fossil

Sat, 2005-09-17 15:40 -- John Hawks

These days it's increasingly easy to keep track of what everybody else is doing. Consider this, from newKerala.com:

A French paleontology team is currently in Kolkata to study the only homo erectus skull found in India to find new insights into the over half million year old fossil, which has baffled Indian scientists for over 21 years.

The team joined by their Indian counterparts took a CT scan of the skull here, where it has been housed since it was first discovered by geologist Arun Sonakia in the village of Hathnora, near Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh in December 1982.

The scientists hope the CT scan data will allow then to complete the severely damaged and delicate skull by using advanced compute [sic] simulation.

Having gotten valuable insights into brain formation and structures like inner ear and sinuses, scientists could even be able to make complete 3D image of the specimen, which initially was mistaken for years as of a man known as the "Narmada Man".

...

"It is interesting for us and we want to compare it with discoveries of the same species in Europe ...we have discovered items during our excavations and we want to compare with fossil discovered in China, in Java and some fossil in Africa also," said Madam De Lumley, who is leading the French team.

This should make for some interesting work. It would be exciting if the EU starts putting some of this data on The Neanderthal Tools!

Neandertals

For years, I've worked on their bones. Now I'm working on their genes. Read more about the science studying these ancient people.

Denisova

From a finger bone of an ancient human came the record of a completely unexpected population. My lab is working on the science of the Denisova genome.

Acceleration

The advent of agriculture caused natural selection to speed up greatly in humans. We're uncovering some of the ways that populations have rapidly changed during the last 10,000 years.

Malapa

Just outside Johannesburg, the Malapa site is producing some of the most exciting finds in human evolution. This site is the headquarters of the Malapa Soft Tissue Project.