Paleoanthropologists from the University of New England think that it may be necessary to reclassify Homo floresiensis. Peter Brown, who originally named the Hobbits, and colleague Tomoko Maeda, write that it is possible that the Hobbits left Africa “before the evolution of the genus Homo,” in a paper due to be published in a special edition of the Journal of Human Evolution.

Archaeologist Francoise Villedieu says her team has uncovered a massive pillar that supported Nero’s rotating dining room in the Domus Aurea.   Here’s a little more information on the latest discovery in Rome.

British archaeologist Peter Sharrock spotted the missing legs of a twelfth-century Buddhist sculpture while visiting Angkor Thom this summer. French archaeologists removed the bust of the statue in 1925, which is now housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.  

Four skeletons dating to 320 B.C. were unearthed in a Chilean family’s yard. The human remains are thought to have been buried by the Batos culture.  

In New Zealand, a midden was uncovered on land occupied by a Maori settlement before 1850.  

American scientists have examined a skull fragment and jaw bone held in Russia and said to have come from Adolf Hitler. “What the DNA told us is that it was female,” said Linda Strausbaugh of the University of Connecticut. “From the point of view of archival integrity, (the skull) has no standing whatsoever,” added Christopher Browning of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Tuesday, September 29, 2009. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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