- BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) --
Experts analysing remains of a man, woman and teenaged boy unearthed in
Romania last year are convinced that the 35,000-year-old fossils are the
most complete ever of modern humans of that era, a U.S. scientist said
Saturday.
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- International scientists have been carrying out further
analysis to get a clearer picture on the find, said anthropologist Erik
Trinkaus of Washington University in St. Louis. But it's already clear
that "this is the most complete collection of modern humans in Europe
older than 28,000 years," he said.
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- "We are very excited about it," Mr. Trinkaus
said by phone, adding that the discovery in a cave in southwestern Romania
"is already changing perceptions about modern humans."
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- Romanian recreational cavers unearthed the remains of
three facial bones last year and gave them to Romanian scientists.
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- Mr. Trinkaus travelled to the Romanian city of Cluj this
week with Portuguese scientist Joao Zilhao, a fossil specialist.
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- Mr. Trinkaus said a jawbone belonged to a man aged about
35. He said part of a skull and remains of a face, including teeth, belonged
to a 14- to 15-year-old male and a temporal bone was from a woman of unspecified
age.
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- "This was 25,000 years before agriculture. Certainly
they were hunters," said Mr. Trinkaus. He said the bones were discovered
in the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains.
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- Mr. Trinkaus said the humans would have used stone tools,
had religious beliefs and a well-defined social system, and lived in a
period during which early modern humans overlapped with late surviving
Neanderthals in Europe, Mr. Trinkaus said.
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- Scientists will not give the exact location for the cave,
but Mr. Trinkaus said the humans survived because the area was "ecologically
variable."
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- "It was close to the Banat plain and close to the
mountains. They didn't have to travel more than 50 kilometres" to
hunt, he said.
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- A team of international scientists from the United States,
Norway, Portugal and Britain will carry out more field work in the cave
and the surrounding area this summer, Mr. Trinkaus said.
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