Ancient Man and Beast

One never knows what ancient finds will be made and by who. This was proven when a volunteer, who was helping archaeologists excavate a cave, found something very interesting. The volunteer was a young woman named Camille who was only 16 years old, but that didn’t stop her from making the find of a lifetime. While helping archaeologists dig in a cave for artifacts, she found a human tooth. This was not just any human tooth, but a tooth which was 565,000 years old. It is always important to archaeologists and other scientists to find ancient human artifacts since it helps to piece together our ancient history. The tooth was discovered in a cave in France in an area known as Tautavel. This area is considered one of the most important prehistoric sites in Europe. Another reason the tooth is considered so important is the fact we have so few human fossils from this period.

Since we are talking about teeth, a discovery has been made which affects what we know about T-Rex and some other large dinosaurs. I think many of us realize much of the time it is easier to cut with a serrated knife than a standard one. The reason is the serrations act like a saw. It turns out that scientists have just discovered the T-Rex had serrated teeth allowing it to completely butcher its prey in the shortest possible time. Even though the teeth had tremendous sheering stress they were supported by extremely strong tissue to resist this force. If the animal lost a tooth it would be replaced, but could take up to 2 years to grow back. If we look at animals alive today we will find only one animal which has serrated teeth. It is the famous Komodo dragon. Here is an interesting fact, the Komodo dragon is not a dinosaur descendent and developed the serrated teeth separately.

Chinese paleontologists have made what many believe to be an incredible discovery. They have found a dinosaur fossil which is covered with feathers.Β  The beast has short wings and the experts believe it was not capable of flight or even gliding. They think this dinosaur was on the verge of evolving into a bird. As we know most scientists believe birds evolved from dinosaurs. This dinosaur is of a species never discovered before. It is believed to be 125 million years old. The beast was killed when a volcano erupted covering and preserving the animal. While this was very unlucky for the animal, it was very lucky for the scientists. The dinosaur species has been named, Zhenyuanlong. This means Zhenyuan’s dragon. It was named after its discoverer. It has been called the most beautiful fossil ever found by some of the scientists. “It has short arms, and it is covered in feathers [with] proper wings with layers of quill-pen feathers.” The fossil has a complete skeleton and skull. This is the first time such a large dinosaur has been found with wings and short arms. It has been said even though this is a dinosaur it resembles a turkey or vulture.

It is odd how some places we consider desolate turn out to be the best places to find fossils of ancient life. Some of these place are the vast deserts in Morocco. Today they look like lifeless piles of sand, but there was a time when these areas were teeming with life. During the Ordovician period, which took place about 485 to 444 million years ago, there was all sorts of live living there. There is a formation in Morocco which has become very famous, because of the fact it contains fossils of some of the very oldest marine life ever to appear on earth. The formation is called the Fezouata Biota. There are over 160 genuses which have been found there.Β  A genus is defined as the usual major subdivision of a family or subfamily in the classification of organisms usually consisting of more than one species. When these fossils were first found it had a serious effect on the scientific community, because some of the fossils showed we were off by many millions of years in our dating of these creatures. An example of this is a type of crab which we believed we knew the age of, but we found we were off by at least 25 million years. Other animals which we thought became extinct at a certain time were found to have lived millions of years longer.

A worm is a worm is a worm. This is not true in this case. Chinese paleontologists have found the fossilized remains of a worm which seems to be built for survival. The worm has been named Hairy Collin’s Monster. This is a strange name indeed, but it is a strange worm. It has been dated back to the Cambrian period about 500 million years ago. The worm is covered with spikes and armor. Scientists say this worm was hairy, thorny and yes dangerous. Dr. Javier Ortega-HernΓ΅ndez said, “Modern velvet worms are all pretty similar in terms of their general body organization and not that exciting in terms of their lifestyle. But during the Cambrian, the distant relatives of velvet worms were stunningly diverse and came in a surprising variety of bizarre shapes and sizes.” The fossilized worm they found was 8.5 centimeters long and had 15 segments. In inches the worm was about 3.34 inches long.

One thing is for sure, the date humans first appeared is being pushed back almost every year. Archaeologists have made what is called an incredible find. They have discovered tools that are said to be over 700,000 years older than anything else relating to tools ever found. These tools have been dated to 3.3 million years ago. It is hard for me to wrap my brain around this. The tools are older than anything ever found which has to do with the genus “homo” appearing on earth. They beat the earliest fossil by 500,000 years. Because of this scientists are now saying that the manufacture of stone tools didn’t begin with they thought it did and must have been started by other more primitive types of life which are said to be ancestors of humans. There is a story attached to this find. It seems scientists had made a wrong turn while going to a site in Kenya and landed in an unexplored area. They decided since they were there to explore and this is where the ancient tools were found. The site has been named Lomekwi 3, Kenya. The tools were large and it is not clear exactly what their use was.