5 ms·

Dude in a caravan 100 years ago gets finger cut off while harnessing camel. Buried finger in sand. At night. (thus leaving the sand 'unbleached' as the term i

Dude in a caravan 100 years ago gets finger cut off while harnessing camel. Buried finger in sand. At night. (thus leaving the sand 'unbleached' as the term is used in the optical luminescence field.) Occam's razor.

gus_massa 9y ago
I still not 100% sure because I can't read the research article, but from the press article it loos like they didn't find the bone in the middle of a pile of sand but in the middle of some dry mud that was at the bottom of a lake a looong time ago. With dry mud you an easily notice if someone has been digging there after the main part of the sediments was formed. Some relevant parts: > After all, fossilization on land is very rare; the water and wet sediments of the paleolake must have offered just the right protection from oxygen to preserve the bone. > One possibility is that, at the time, it wasn’t a desert. While the Nefud is all sand and rock today, at the time of the Al Wusta fossil, the region was a savannah, covered in lakes and rivers thanks to summer monsoons. The multitude of animal bones found in the same location, from wild cattle to antelopes, suggest that game was plentiful. The lake itself lasted year round and offered a source of fresh water, though it may have come with risks as well as rewards: many of the faunal bones bore marks of carnivores’ teeth.
- lurquer 9y ago
  Reads like they found it near the surface: ------ "But researchers behind the recent Misliya discovery argue that the bone’s location on the surface rather than in the lake deposits below mean it might not correspond to that climactic period."
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
Ar-Curunir 9y ago
Lol for people interested in Science, HN really likes to think Science is easy and done by idiots...
- MisterTea 9y ago
  Armchair experts.
flukus 9y ago
> Groucutt and the rest of the team used a number of dating methods to confirm the likely age of the Al Wusta finger. For the finger itself and the tooth of an ancient hippopotamus found nearby, they applied U-series dating Quite a trick for some dude in a caravan 100 years ago to be able to simulate 85,000 years of radioactive decay.
- nonbel 9y ago
  >"Quite a trick for some dude in a caravan 100 years ago to be able to simulate 85,000 years of radioactive decay." I don't think it is usually the constant decay rate assumption that can go wrong. It is instead the assumption that the isotopes were being generated and deposited at the same rates way back then. This does depend on environmental factors.

gus_massa 9y ago

I still not 100% sure because I can't read the research article, but from the press article it loos like they didn't find the bone in the middle of a pile of sand but in the middle of some dry mud that was at the bottom of a lake a looong time ago. With dry mud you an easily notice if someone has been digging there after the main part of the sediments was formed. Some relevant parts: > After all, fossilization on land is very rare; the water and wet sediments of the paleolake must have offered just the right protection from oxygen to preserve the bone. > One possibility is that, at the time, it wasn’t a desert. While the Nefud is all sand and rock today, at the time of the Al Wusta fossil, the region was a savannah, covered in lakes and rivers thanks to summer monsoons. The multitude of animal bones found in the same location, from wild cattle to antelopes, suggest that game was plentiful. The lake itself lasted year round and offered a source of fresh water, though it may have come with risks as well as rewards: many of the faunal bones bore marks of carnivores’ teeth.

lurquer 9y ago
Reads like they found it near the surface: ------ "But researchers behind the recent Misliya discovery argue that the bone’s location on the surface rather than in the lake deposits below mean it might not correspond to that climactic period."

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

Ar-Curunir 9y ago

Lol for people interested in Science, HN really likes to think Science is easy and done by idiots...

MisterTea 9y ago
Armchair experts.

flukus 9y ago

> Groucutt and the rest of the team used a number of dating methods to confirm the likely age of the Al Wusta finger. For the finger itself and the tooth of an ancient hippopotamus found nearby, they applied U-series dating Quite a trick for some dude in a caravan 100 years ago to be able to simulate 85,000 years of radioactive decay.

nonbel 9y ago
>"Quite a trick for some dude in a caravan 100 years ago to be able to simulate 85,000 years of radioactive decay." I don't think it is usually the constant decay rate assumption that can go wrong. It is instead the assumption that the isotopes were being generated and deposited at the same rates way back then. This does depend on environmental factors.