McCoy, to Kirk

Usage examples of bones.

Tuttle of the University of Chicago, fossil foot bones of the known australopithecines of 3.

Most of them, by nineteenth-century scientists, described incised bones, stone tools, and anatomically modern skeletal remains encountered in unexpectedly old geological contexts.

And they also found large numbers of stone tools of various types, as well as animal bones bearing signs of human action.

The Origin of Species, many scientists found incised and broken bones indicating a human presence in the Pliocene, Miocene, and earlier periods.

Opponents suggested that the marks and breaks observed on the fossil bones were caused by the action of carnivores, sharks, or geological pressure.

For example, stone tools were sometimes found along with incised bones, and experiments with these implements produced marks on fresh bone exactly resembling those found on the fossils.

Scientists also employed microscopes in order to distinguish the cuts on fossil bones from those that might be made by animal or shark teeth.

Nonetheless, reports of incised and broken bones indicating a human presence in the Pliocene and earlier are absent from the currently accepted stock of evidence.

If Desnoyers concluded correctly that the marks on many of the bones had been made by flint implements, then it would appear that human beings had been present in France during that time.

Certainly, there is not sufficient reason to categorically reject these bones as evidence for a human presence in the Pliocene.

Morlan of the Archeological Survey of Canada and the Canadian National Museum of Man, conducted studies of modified bones from the Old Crow River sites.

Morlan concluded that many bones and antlers exhibited signs of intentional human work executed before the bones had become fossilized.

The bones, which had undergone river transport, were recovered from an Early Wisconsin glacial floodplain dated at 80,000 years B.

Afterwards, Morlan backed away from his assertions that all the bones he had collected had been modified by human agency.

Shipman examined the marks on the bones under an electron scanning microscope and compared them with more than 1,000 documented marks on bone.