OPEN AIR NEANDERTHAL SITE DISCOVERED IN ISRAEL

According to a report in The Times of Israel, a Neanderthal upper molar and Neanderthal lower limb bones have been found at a 60,000-year-old open-air site in northern Israel by an international team of scientists led by Ella Been of Ono Academic College and Erella Hovers of Hebrew University.

The lower limb bones were found in a layer that also contained flint tools, animal bones, marine shells, pigments, and deer antlers. It had been previously thought that Neanderthals lived primarily in caves, since that is where their remains are usually recovered. But the study suggests that Neanderthals repeatedly visited the open-air site, known as Ein Qashish, and thus had adapted to living in diverse environments by the time Homo sapiens arrived in the Near East.