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Soooo much of human history is unaccounted for

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Dantac
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27 Jan 2011, 11:36 am

Hydrant wrote:
Anatomically modern Homo Sapiens may go back further than we thought, to 400,000 years in the past, due to recent discovery of teeth.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101227/ap_ ... ient_teeth

It's not known for certain yet if that's the case.


from the article:

"whose team examined the teeth with X-rays and CT scans and dated them according to the layers of earth where they were found.

He stressed that further research is needed to solidify the claim"

Its very irresponsible to even dare to estimate the age of this tooth based solely on the strata layer it was found and Xray and CT do not give any indication of how old it is. The earth in which anything is buried is dynamic... it can move and ground layers can shift for many reasons. Earthquakes, human/animal activity, water layers above or below the buried object can 'push' a layer of dirt deeper or push it upwards... inclination of the location can also cause 'run-offs' where the dirt may slowly move down slope (and thus push the object to an 'older' ground strata layer).

Once they finish an actual scientific dating process we'll see. The best one they can do on that tooth is called Electron Spin Resonance which is known to be the best to use for things like tooth enamel. If THAT one comes back with a result of nearly 400 thousand years then its 'O.o' time :)