Faces of Homo floresiensis (LB1)

Since being excavated in 2003, the skull of LB1 (the holotype of Homo floresiensis) has been given many faces, though the details regarding how each was accomplished are typically few. Here we detail our application of known, and verified, relationships between the skull and soft tissues of anatomically modern humans to produce an evidence-based facial approximation of LB1. We then compare our results to nine pre-existing LB1 faces using geometric morphometrics. These analyses suggest our facial approximation differs in proportional facial width, upper lip height and nasal morphology. Some of these differences are likely due to a different interpretation of taphonomic and excavation damage, application of different 'forensic' methods and/or an idiosyncratic incorporation of aspects of non-human primate morphology. Other differences, and in particular upper lip height, are less justifiable in relation to the skeletal evidence.     

Late Devonian thelodonts (Agnatha) from the Gneudna Formation,Carnarvon Basin,Western Australia

Dermal denticles of two thelodont agnathans, Australolepis seddoni gen. et sp. nov., and a possible nikoliviid gen. et sp. indet. are described from the Gneudna Formation, a marine sequence of interbedded limestone and shale exposed on the eastern edge of the Carnarvon Basin, Western Australia. The age and significance of these new forms are discussed. The Gneudna Formation is Late Devonian, probably early Frasnian, which, if confirmed, makes these the youngest thelodonts known to date.     

From stone to metal: New perspectives on the later prehistory of West Africa

Earlier views saw West Africa as culturally stagnant through much of the Holocene until stimulus or intervention from north of the Sahara transformed Iron Age societies. Evidence accumulating over the past 15 years suggests that stone-using societies from 10,000 to 3000 B.P. were far more diverse than previously thought. Against an increasingly detailed record of Holocene climate change, the complexity of local adaptation and change is becoming better understood. Although a strong case currently exists for the introduction of copper and iron to West Africa from the north in the mid-first millennium B.C., the subsequent development of metallurgy was strongly innovative in different parts of the subcontinent. Soon after the advent of metals, a dramatic increase in archaeological evidence for social stratification and hierarchical political structures indicates the emergence of societies markedly more complex than anything currently documented in the Late Stone Age. The best-documented examples come from the Middle Niger region and the Nigerian forest. In these areas, earlier diffusionist models in which complexity originated outside West Africa have yielded to evidence that indigenous processes were instrumental in this transformation. Trade, ideology, climate shifts, and indirect influences from North Africa, including the introduction of the domesticated horse to the Sahelian grasslands, are identified as factors essential to an understanding of these processes.     

Siberia and neighboring regions in the Last Glacial Maximum: did people occupy northern Eurasia at that time?

An updated analysis of Paleolithic sites in Siberia and the Urals ¹⁴C-dated to the coldest phase of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), with its timespan currently determined as ca. 23,000–19,000 BP (ca. 27,300–22,900 cal BP), is presented. It is demonstrated that people continuously occupied the southern and central parts of Siberia and the Russian Far East (up to 58° N latitude), and perhaps sporadically settled regions located even further north, up to 70° N, throughout the LGM. This is in accord with our previous data, but is now based on a larger dataset, and also on a paleoecological analysis of the major pre-LGM archaeological sites in Siberia and the Urals north of 58° N. It is clear that Paleolithic people in northern Eurasia were able to cope with the treeless tundra environment well in advance of the LGM, at least at ca. 34,000–26,000 BP (ca. 38,500–30,000 cal BP). Therefore, a high degree of adaptation to cold conditions allowed people to survive in Siberia during the LGM.