Tag archives for Hair
Oldest Human Hair Found in Hyena Poop Fossil?
Posted by The oldest human hairs ever found were discovered in an unusual place–hyena poop! Researchers found the rock-hard dung in a cave in South Africa. They used tweezers to extract 40 fossilized hairs resembling glass needles from one of the hyena coprolites, or fossil turd.
Read the whole story on National Geographic News.
Get the scoop on spotted hyenas in the Creature Feature.
Photograph courtesy Karin Jaeger (Medical University of Vienna, Austria)
A new study says that our hair is related to reptile claws. Hair is made from a protein called keratin. Findings suggests that modern birds, reptiles, and mammals–as well as dinosaurs–shared an early common reptilian ancestor that had claws built from keratin more than 300 million years ago. Keratin evolved into strands of hair only in mammals.
Read more on National Geographic News.
