Neanderthals

Treated as if it were a big surprise: For Martisius’ tiny lissoir fragments, the nondestructive plastic bag method seemed perfect. You get fewer molecules to analyze, says Frido Welker, who performed the ZooMS analysis for Martisius, but at least it provides the possibility of identifying a species without having to take a sample. “For bone artifacts, we should probably always try this approach first,” he says. The results that Martisius got (recently published in Nature’s Scientific Reports journal) were intriguing. In the archaeological layers where the bone tool pieces had been found, the majority of the animal bones were identified as belonging to reindeer. However, ZooMS identified every one of the lissoir pieces as coming from bison or aurochs (a Read More ›