ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - Ethiopia is to allow "Lucy" its world-famous, 3.2-million-year-old skeleton to travel abroad for the first time for an exhibition in the United States that it hopes will encourage more visits by American tourists.
The fossil's discovery in 1974 was a landmark in the history of uncovering the origins of humanity, representing the most complete human-like fossil to have been found until that time.
Lucy, stored in a vault in an Ethiopian museum, and other Ethiopian artifacts including crowns and scepters of ancient monarchs are due to be put on display at the Houston Museum of Natural Science in Texas in 2006.
This would be great and probably worthwhile going to see in Houston. It's a very significant skeleton. Also, read Don Johansen's book Lucy: The Beginnings of HUmankind. This book has apparently gotten many people hooked enough on paleoanthropology to go into it as a profession. I confess I read it as a young undergraduate and, while not pushing me into archaeology, definitely helped to seal the deal. It's a fasinating account of the process of carrying out fieldwork in this field and the life of one who does this stuff. Some of the interpretations are, of course, a bit dated, but read it because it's a good read and a time capsule of current thought on human evolution in the mid-late 70s.
ANd you will never ever have difficulty spelling 'Australopithecus' again.
Hunley update: Hunley Findings Put Faces on Civil War Submarine Crew
The identities of the crew of the Civil War submarine H.L. Hunley are coming to light just days before the men's remains are to be buried. The first submarine to sink an enemy ship, the Hunley itself sank off South Carolina in 1864, was found in 1995, and was raised in 2000.
On a cold February night in 1864, eight men squeezed through the tiny hatches of the H.L. Hunley, a strange new warship tied up at a dock in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. They crawled or duckwalked through the 4-foot-tall (1.2-meter-tall) passageway to their places on a long, low bench. Each of them sat down at a hand crank attached to the Hunley's propeller shaft.
These eight men were the living power plant for a revolutionary machine—a submarine that could attack an enemy ship from underwater. Led by Confederate Lt. George Dixon, these men would literally dive into the pages of history when the submerged Hunley attached a torpedo to the U.S.S. Housatonic and blew it up. The Union warship was helping to enforce the maritime blockade of Charleston that was slowly strangling the rebellious Confederate States of America's ability to fight the Civil War.
Re-opening 400-year-old Medici murder mystery
Rome - American and Italian scientists will probe a centuries-old murder mystery when they examine remains of 49 members of the Medici family which ruled Florence for 300 years, the city museum department said.
Using latest technology, researchers will try to find out about the Medici lifestyle including what they ate and how they died, when the family vault is opened this month.
Above all they will try to solve the mystery of Francesco Medici and his wife, who died within a day of each other in 1587 of what appeared to be malaria but was probably poisoning.
Recent archaeology Authorities to exhume body of woman slain in 1948
A judge in northern Illinois has ordered the exhumation of a woman who was killed more than 55 years ago.
Ogle County Judge Stephen Pemberton yesterday approved a request from the brother of Mary Jane Reed.
Reed was 17 when she and her boyfriend were shot to death on June 26th, 1948, in the town of Oregon, about 25 miles southwest of Rockford. No arrest was ever made in their deaths.