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The Human Jawbone
In 1958, Dr. Johannes Huerzeler of the Museum of Natural History in Basel, Switzerland unearthed a human jawbone at a depth of 600 feet in a coal mine in Tuscany, Italy. The bone had belonged to a child between the ages of five and seven. Although flattened like a sheet of iron several experts declared the jaw as a modern species of human. But what mystified them was that it had been encased in a Miocene stratum, which was geologically dated at 20 million years. Dr. Huerzeler declared it to be the world's "oldest man" but his fellow anthropologists did not dare give it the same distinction. Here were human remains more modern in appearance than all the "ape-men" forms ever found. However they were five times older than any of them. In fact, the jawbone is as old if not older than many ancestors of the apes are. The bone raised more questions than answers. So the find was quickly "shelved", and no further work was ever done to give it due recognition.