Cosmic Rays and Australopithecines

Digs & Discoveries July/August 2015

(Courtesy the University of the Witwatersrand)
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Skull, Australopithecus prometheus, South Africa(Courtesy the University of the Witwatersrand)

A new dating technique is making it easier for paleoanthropologists to study the human evolutionary record by making it possible to date a wider range of stones and sediments. A team of scientists, including Darryl Granger of Purdue University, has looked to aluminum-26 and beryllium-10, isotopes that are created when rocks are out in the open, exposed to cosmic rays. Once the rocks are buried, the

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  • Features July/August 2015

    In Search of a Philosopher’s Stone

    At a remote site in Turkey, archaeologists have found fragments of the ancient world’s most massive inscription

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    (Martin Bachmann)
  • Letter from Virginia July/August 2015

    Free Before Emancipation

    Excavations are providing a new look at some of the Civil War’s earliest fugitive slaves—considered war goods or contraband—and their first taste of liberty

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    (Library of Congress)
  • Artifacts July/August 2015

    Gold Lock-Rings

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    (Courtesy Amgueddfa Cymru-National Museum of Wales)
  • Digs & Discoveries July/August 2015

    A Spin through Augustan Rome

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    (Courtesy and created at the Experiential Technologies Center, UCLA, ©Regents of the University of California)