Fossil may expose humanity's hybrid roots

摘要

Last Nov. 28, archaeologists working in Portugal's Lapedo Valley, 90 miles north of Lisbon, chanced upon a child's burial. At first the researchers, led by Joao Zil-hao of the Portuguese Institute of Archaeology in Lisbon, viewed the 24,500-year-old skeleton as an example of modern Homo sapiens. The shallow grave resembled other Late Stone Age human burials in Europe. A seashell lay among the child's bones, which bore the stains of an intentionally applied red pigment.