Afarensis: Vilhonneur Cave

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Afarensis is a 3.5-2.8 million year old hominin from the Kada Hadar member of the Hadar formation in the Middle Awash, Ethiopia. He is approximately 41 inches tall, weighs approximately 60 pounds and has a cranial capacity of a whopping 410 cc (approximately). Afarensis is currently considered to be transitional between apes and humans and displays some traits of both. Since he spends a lot of time on the couch watching monster movies, some observers question whether he is an obligate biped (although no one has observed him climbing a tree). He also has a blog called Transitions:The Evolution of Life His previous blog can be found here.
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Vilhonneur Cave

Category: Paleoanthropology
Posted on: June 5, 2006 12:52 PM, by afarensis, FCD

According to Science News Daily a new cave, containing paleolithic art dating to ~27,000 years ago, has been discovered in France. Also found is a skeleton:

Baratin underscored the significance of the human skeleton, a young male, placed on the ground inside a decorated room. The only other instance in which a body was known to have been found in a decorated room of a cave is in the hamlet of Cussac, a grotto that experts have said was as important for engravings as paintings are for the famed Lascaux caves.
The archaeologist said two rib bones were analyzed at a Miami, Florida, laboratory, dating the skeleton at 27,000 years.

Also found:

A crude representation of a human face found in the cave could be among the oldest ever discovered, said Jean-Yves Baratin, archaeology curator for the Poitou-Charentes region.
The face is ''represented in the most elementary way, using an anomaly of the wall,'' Baratin said.

Two pieces of calcite that split are used to form the hair with two black horizontal strokes depicting the eyes. A vertical stroke forms the nose and another horizontal stroke the mouth.

V%20face.jpg

So far no pics of the skeleton, which is damn annoying, but I did find the above pic of the face (on Times Online).

John Hawks also has a story on the find. He asks:

I wonder if those bones are really human. I guess we'll find out.

Which is what I was wondering myself...be totally cool if they were Neanderthal wouldn't it? That's the question everyone wants answered. Speculation, though, is pointless.