

African Fossils - showwebgl
http://africanfossils.org/search

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netcan
This feels like something that is really in line with early ideas of what the
internet/www should be.

When reading about some piece of science I often wish I could gauge how
certain science is about something and why. Human evolution is always going to
be a fascinating topic. It's got a lot of uncertainties, contradictory
theories and less-than-certain facts that make it into pop science.

Do we have hundreds of high quality fossils for some homo species or is it
just a few skull fragments? It's great to be able to interact with
evidence/finds like this directly.

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tjr
_Do we have hundreds of high quality fossils for some homo species or is it
just a few skull fragments?_

I often wonder in a similar direction. For example, this headline from a few
days ago:

"Horrific FLESH-EATING PLATYPUS once terrorised Australia"

...based on finding a single tooth, it seems.

[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/05/new_platypus_species...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/05/new_platypus_species/)

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duopixel
The skull labeled as Homo Sapiens is actually a Homo Erectus, which precedes
us by 1.5 million years. Amazing athletic performance, crude tools and
possible domestication of fire.

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freshyill
One look at that and I was sure theres on way that's a modern human skull. For
reference, here's a reconstruction:
[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cb/Homo_erec...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cb/Homo_erectus_new.JPG)

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Gauhier
Great stuff! Would also be great to have your own x-ray results in a
embeddable 3D some day...Imagine going to the dentist and say:"want to have a
3D view of my mouth ? Go on www..." Or share on Facebook a 3D version of the
leg you broke after a skiing session...etc

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jcmoscon
I'm wondering how they end up with numbers like 17 million. Does anybody know?

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steeve
Most likely thanks to Carbon Dating [1]

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiocarbon_dating](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiocarbon_dating)

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jofer
No. Carbon dating is only reliable back to ~50ka (50,000 years before
present), at most ~100ka. For older things, you're typically dating the
formation of a mineral grain. Common methods are Potassium/Argon and
Uranium/Lead dating.

The ages are based on the stratigraphy that the fossils are in. We can
"easily" correlate stratigraphy across wide areas, but most sedimentary rocks
are hard to date. For these particular fossils, the stratigraphy happens to
contain a lot of volcanic ash units that can be directly dated. In most cases,
we use the fossils present (biostratigraphy) to correlate with other units
that can be directly dated.

The exact numerical age is based on dating things like feldspar grains in
volcanic units that can be dated with K/Ar dating or zircons in volcanics that
can be dated with U/Pb, etc, etc.

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cardamomo
An intriguing experiment! But the taxonomic filters could use a little
refinement. The application allows me to select incompatible filters, such as
"Genus: gorilla" and "Species: sapiens".

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Fauntleroy
I'd love to see something like this expanded to all fossils and artifacts. I
can only imagine how free and easy access to this kind of information would
help aid in archaeological research.

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cyrillevincey
Very nice 3D use case.

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melkisch
3D is getting very interesting. I guess a lot of researchers can play with
these embeds from across the world.

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ginko
Is it just me or is the lighting really dark for many of these fossils?

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_random_
That's to give them Quake-style vibe!

