Possible Fatal Wound Identified in Neanderthal Bone

Haaretz reports that Emma Pomeroy of the University of Cambridge and her colleagues examined the remains of Shanidar A, a Neanderthal of about 45 years of age who was buried in Iraqi Kurdistan's Shanidar Cave some 75,000 years ago. The researchers suggest that the individual had been killed when a weapon, likely a sharpened stick, was forced into his chest from the front, passed through a lung, and punched a hole in his left shoulder blade. Similar holes have been identified in fossilized animal bones. About a year before his death, this individual had also suffered facial injuries, including a...