ANTH 1001 Lecture Notes - Lecture 14: Body Proportions, Absolute Dating, Magnetostratigraphy
Document Summary
Introduction to biological anthropology, week 10, lecture 14__ Paleontology- study of extinct organisms based on their fossilized remains. What can we learn from fossils: cranial size cognition behavior, teeth diet, behavior, social structure, body proportions ecology, hands manual dexterity, pelvis spine and lower limbs locomotion, obstetrics, feet bipedalism. Individual walked across volcanic ash layer: footprints, soft rain cemented the footprints, and they were covered by another ash deposit. Some unusual surprises: coprolites (fossilized feces, more common when individuals incorporate inorganic components into their diets hyenas eat bones, useful to understand diet and environment. The matrix: skeletons become fossils by absorbing minerals from their surroundings, the matrix composition is informative for analyzing fossils and it is critical for the dating of fossils, context is critical. Three majors types of dating: relative dating, using principles of stratigraphy, biochronology (faunal succession, absolute dating, radiometric methods, paleomagnetism, method for linking up to absolute dating methods.
