Word: paleontologist
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Niles Eldredge is a paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History. His book The Triumph of Evolution is due out early next year
...journal Science. Digging in Madagascar, an international team headed by John Flynn of Chicago's Field Museum has unearthed the fossil jaws of two dinosaurs that appear to be around 230 million years old. "These are either the earliest or among the earliest dinosaurs known," comments University of Pennsylvania paleontologist Neil Shubin. The scientists also found fossils of eight other primitive animals, some of which are a key to the evolution of mammals, which arose at about the same time as the dinosaurs...
...looked like a well-preserved crime scene," says paleontologist Tim White of the University of California, Berkeley, who examined the bones with scanning electron microscopy. Slashes across foot, ankle and elbow joints indicate tendons and muscles were deliberately cut. Skulls were smashed to remove the brains, bones were broken for the marrow, and in at least one instance a tongue was cut out. The markings, says White, were what you'd expect "if you were slicing up and down to cut the meat away from a turkey bone...
...surprised that they showed a mix of chimpanzee-like and human traits that as a whole are more primitive than those of A. afarensis: smaller molars, larger canines and thinner tooth enamel, suggesting a diet rich in easy-to-chew fruits and vegetables. The new species, says paleontologist Tim White of the University of California at Berkeley, a co-leader of the expedition, "is way closer to an ape than to an australopithecine and is significantly different from any other hominid...
Given this protracted struggle, Americans of goodwill might be excused for supposing that some genuine scientific or philosophical dispute motivates this issue: Is evolution speculative and ill founded? Does evolution threaten our ethical values or our sense of life's meaning? As a paleontologist by training, and with abiding respect for religious traditions, I would raise three points to alleviate these worries...