Evidence of a green Sahara

Nation & World News

Scientists unearth evidence of Saharan civilizations.

Paleontologist Paul Sereno of the University of Chicago stabilizes the nearly perfectly preserved skull of a Tenerian woman during excavation at the archaeological site of Gobero in Niger. Predating the Egyptian pyramids, the site's human record provides evidence of two distinct populations that lived in a green Sahara, separated in time by more than 1,000 years.

The skeleton of an 11-year-old Tenerian girl who was buried wearing an upper-arm bracelet carved from the tusk of a hippopotamus some 4,800 years ago.

Zooarchaeologist Helene Jousse holds up a belly plate from a soft-shelled turtle found in a Tenerian garbage dump.

These bones are from a triple burial containing a woman and two children, their limbs entwined, discovered at the Gobero site.

A skeleton and artifacts uncovered at the Gobero archaeological site in Niger.

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Paleontologist Paul Sereno of the University of Chicago stabilizes the nearly perfectly preserved skull of a Tenerian woman during excavation at the archaeological site of Gobero in Niger. Predating the Egyptian pyramids, the site's human record provides evidence of two distinct populations that lived in a green Sahara, separated in time by more than 1,000 years.

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