The Talgai Skull is a human fossil found on the Talgai Station, near Allora, Southern Downs Region, Queensland, Australia. It has been dated indirectly, based on the radiocarbon date of a carbonate nodule found in stratigraphic proximity, at 13,500 years old. [2]
The Talgai Skull was discovered in 1886 on Talgai Homestead, as the first fossil evidence of early human occupation in the area. It was found by fencing contractor, William Naish. It had been embedded in the wall of Dalrymple Creek, which had been scoured out by heavy rain. In 1896 the skull was sent to Sydney where it was examined by the trustees of the Australian Museum. The museum was interested in purchasing the fossil but could not agree on an acceptable price. Eventually the skull was returned to its owner. [3] It remained at the homestead until 1914 when Professor Edgeworth David, Professor of Archaeology at Sydney University visited Talgai and presented a theory that the skull was 20,000 years old and provided a "missing link" in the evolutionary chain. This sudden change in attitude towards the skull was motivated in part by the recent "discovery" of the Piltdown man fossils in England. Although later proven to be hoax, the Piltdown find encouraged others to search for similar evidence of early man. CSIRO and the Queensland Museum conducted archaeological surveys at the site. [4]
Severe cracks in the skull led some observers to conclude that a blow to the head had been the cause of death. However, later investigation showed that the cracks were produced by expansion and contraction of the clay soil where the skull was found. [5]
The original skull is housed at the Sydney Museum. [4] In 1968 the Australian Broadcasting Commission made an award-winning documentary about the skull called The Talgai Skull . [6]
The Piltdown Man was a paleoanthropological fraud in which bone fragments were presented as the fossilised remains of a previously unknown early human. Although there were doubts about its authenticity virtually from the beginning, the remains were still broadly accepted for many years, and the falsity of the hoax was only definitively demonstrated in 1953. An extensive scientific review in 2016 established that amateur archaeologist Charles Dawson was its likely perpetrator.
The Creswellian is a British Upper Palaeolithic culture named after the type site of Creswell Crags in Derbyshire by Dorothy Garrod in 1926. It is also known as the British Late Magdalenian. According to Andreas Maier: "In current research, the Creswellian and Hamburgian are considered to be independent but closely related entities which are rooted in the Magdalenian." The Creswellian is dated between 13,000 and 11,800 BP and was followed by the most recent ice age, the Younger Dryas, when Britain was at times unoccupied by humans.
The Bimini Road, sometimes called the Bimini Wall, is an underwater rock formation near North Bimini island in the Bahamas. The Road consists of a 0.8 km (0.50 mi)-long northeast-southwest linear feature composed of roughly rectangular to subrectangular limestone blocks. Various claims have been made for this feature being either a wall, road, pier, breakwater, or other man-made structure. However, credible evidence or arguments are lacking for such an origin.
Riversleigh World Heritage Area is Australia's most famous fossil location, recognised for the series of well preserved fossils deposited from the Late Oligocene to more recent geological periods. The fossiliferous limestone system is located near the Gregory River in the north-west of Queensland, an environment that was once a very wet rainforest that became more arid as the Gondwanan land masses separated and the Australian continent moved north. The approximately 100 square kilometres (39 sq mi) area has fossil remains of ancient mammals, birds, and reptiles of the Oligocene and Miocene ages, many of which were discovered and are only known from the Riversleigh area; the species that have occurred there are known as the Riversleigh fauna.
The Upper Paleolithic also called the Late Stone Age is the third and last subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age. Very broadly, it dates to between 50,000 and 12,000 years ago, according to some theories coinciding with the appearance of behavioral modernity in early modern humans, until the advent of the Neolithic Revolution and agriculture.
The Calaveras Skull was a human skull found by miners in Calaveras County, California, which was purported to prove that humans, mastodons, and mammoths had coexisted in California. It was later revealed to be a hoax. Coincidentally, "calaveras" is the Spanish word for "skulls".
Australian archaeology is a large sub-field in the discipline of archaeology. Archaeology in Australia takes three main forms, Aboriginal archaeology, historical archaeology and maritime archaeology. Bridging these sub-disciplines is the important concept of cultural heritage management which encompasses Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander sites, historical sites and maritime sites.
Charles Dawson was a British amateur archaeologist who claimed to have made a number of archaeological and palaeontological discoveries that were later exposed as frauds. These included the Piltdown Man, which he presented in 1912.
Allora is a rural town and locality in the Southern Downs Region, Queensland, Australia. In the 2016 census, Allora had a population of 1,223 people.
The Pithecometra principle or Pithecometra thesis describes the evolution of humans; the pithecometra law is analogous to the concept that "man evolved within apes" or "man descended from apes" as advocated by Thomas Henry Huxley.
The Lancefield Swamp is a rich fossil deposit from the Pleistocene epoch was discovered in the 19th century near Lancefield, Victoria, Australia.
Luzia Woman is the name for an Upper Paleolithic period skeleton of a Paleo-Indian woman who was found in a cave in Brazil. Some archaeologists originally thought the young woman may have been part of a migratory wave of immigrants prior to the ancestors of today's Amerindians, though DNA and other evidence has shown this to be improbable. The 11,500-year-old skeleton was found in a cave in the Lapa Vermelha archeological site in Pedro Leopoldo, in the Greater Belo Horizonte region of Brazil, in 1974 by archaeologist Annette Laming-Emperaire. The nickname Luzia was chosen in homage to the Australopithecus fossil Lucy. The fossil was kept at the National Museum of Brazil, where it was shown to the public until it was fragmented during a fire that destroyed the museum on September 2, 2018. On October 19, 2018, it was announced that most of Luzia's remains were identified from the Museu Nacional debris, which allowed them to rebuild part of her skeleton.
Peștera Muierilor, or Peștera Muierii, is an elaborate cave system located in the Baia de Fier commune, Gorj County, Romania. It contains abundant cave bear remains, as well as a human skull. The skull is radiocarbon dated to 30,150 ± 800, indication an absolute age between 40,000 and 30,000 BP. It was uncovered in 1952. Alongside similar remains found in Cioclovina Cave, they are among the most ancient early modern humans in Romanian prehistory.
Narrabeen Man is the name given to a 4,000-year-old skeleton of a tall Aboriginal Australian man found during road works in Narrabeen, a suburb of the Northern Beaches region of Sydney, in January 2005.
Gabarnmung is an archaeological and rock art site in south-western Arnhem Land, in the Top End of Australia’s Northern Territory. Habitation of the site has been dated to at least 44,000 years ago, placing it among the oldest radiocarbon dated sites in Australia. The oldest rock art was produced more than 28,000 years ago, making it the oldest securely dated prehistoric art in Australia. The cave was still visited by members of the Jawoyn within living memory, possibly until as late as the 1950s, but its existence had been forgotten until its 2006 rediscovery.
The Keilor archaeological site was among the first places to demonstrate the antiquity of Aboriginal occupation of Australia when a cranium, unearthed in 1940, was found to be nearly 15,000 years old. Subsequent investigations of Pleistocene alluvial terraces revealed hearths about 31,000 years BP, making Keilor one of the earliest sites of human habitation in Australia. Remains of megafauna suggest a possible association with Aboriginal hunting.
Gibraltar 2, also known as Devil's Tower Child, represented five skull fragments of a male Neanderthal child discovered in the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar. The discovery of the fossils at the Devil's Tower Mousterian rock shelter was made by archaeologist Dorothy Garrod in 1926. It represented the second excavation of a Neanderthal skull in Gibraltar, after Gibraltar 1, the second Neanderthal skull ever found. In the early twenty-first century, Gibraltar 2 underwent reconstruction.
Manot Cave is a cave in Western Galilee, Israel, discovered in 2008. It is notable for the discovery of a skull that belongs to a modern human, called Manot 1, which is estimated to be 54,700 years old. The partial skull was discovered at the beginning of the cave's exploration in 2008. Its significance was realised after detailed scientific analysis, and was first published in an online edition of Nature on 28 January 2015. This age implies that the specimen is the oldest known human outside Africa, and is evidence that modern humans lived side-by-side with Neanderthals. The cave is also noted for its "impressive archaeological record of flint and bone artefacts". Geologically, it is an "active stalactite cave".
Talgai Homestead is a heritage-listed homestead at Allora, Southern Downs Region, Queensland, Australia. It was designed by architect Richard George Suter for Queensland pastoralist and politician George Clark and was built in 1868. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 21 August 1992. It is also known as East Talgai Homestead to distinguish it from the West Talgai Homestead built by Clark's brother, Charles Clark.
Tam Pa Ling is a cave in the Annamite Mountains in north-eastern Laos. It is situated at the top of Pa Hang Mountain, 1,170 m (3,840 ft) above sea level.