Post by Sharon Faulkner on Oct 1, 2006 10:10:43 GMT -5
Delving deep into Britain's past
By Paul Rincon, Science reporter
October 1, 2006
Scientists are to begin work on the second phase of a project aimed at piecing together the history of human colonisation in Britain.
Phase one of the Ancient Human Occupation of Britain project (AHOB) discovered people were here 200,000 years earlier than previously thought.
Phase two has now secured funds to the tune of £1m and will run until 2010. Team members hope to find out more about Britain's earliest settlers and perhaps unearth their fossil remains.
They will also compare the animals and plants of Britain with those of nearby continental Europe. This will establish similarities and differences to determine how distinctive the British environment was in the distant past.
The first year of "AHOB2" will include an attempt to recover DNA from a fragment of human jawbone discovered at Kents Cavern in Devon. Recent re-dating of the specimen shows it is older than previously thought.
If the jawbone is from a modern human (Homo sapiens), as it was long thought to be, it would be amongst the earliest fossils from our species known from Europe; but the early date suggests it could also be from a late Neanderthal (Homo neanderthalensis).
Read the complete article here. This article is lengthy, but includes photos and a graph depicting the time line of human occupation in Britain.
By Paul Rincon, Science reporter
October 1, 2006
Scientists are to begin work on the second phase of a project aimed at piecing together the history of human colonisation in Britain.
Phase one of the Ancient Human Occupation of Britain project (AHOB) discovered people were here 200,000 years earlier than previously thought.
Phase two has now secured funds to the tune of £1m and will run until 2010. Team members hope to find out more about Britain's earliest settlers and perhaps unearth their fossil remains.
They will also compare the animals and plants of Britain with those of nearby continental Europe. This will establish similarities and differences to determine how distinctive the British environment was in the distant past.
The first year of "AHOB2" will include an attempt to recover DNA from a fragment of human jawbone discovered at Kents Cavern in Devon. Recent re-dating of the specimen shows it is older than previously thought.
If the jawbone is from a modern human (Homo sapiens), as it was long thought to be, it would be amongst the earliest fossils from our species known from Europe; but the early date suggests it could also be from a late Neanderthal (Homo neanderthalensis).
Read the complete article here. This article is lengthy, but includes photos and a graph depicting the time line of human occupation in Britain.