Oldest human bone discovered in Tabuk

RIYADH: A joint research team comprising Saudi archaeologists and experts from Oxford University discovered the oldest human bone during an excavation at Tayma in Tabuk, a large oasis in the Nafud Desert with a long history of settlement.
The bone found is the middle part of the middle finger of a human being who lived 90,000 years ago, the oldest human trace found to date in the Arabian Peninsula, an official from the Saudi Commission for Tourism and National Heritage (SCTNH) said. The announcement about the finding was recently made by SCTNH President Prince Sultan bin Salman during a speech at the Académie des Beaux-Arts (French Academy of Fine Arts), Asharq Al-Awsat, a sister publication of Arab News, reported.
According to the SCTNH, this archaeological finding is an important phase in research and excavation being carried out by the authorities with the help of the joint team that comprises experts from Oxford University, King Saud University, King Abdul Aziz City for Science and Technology (KACST), Saudi Geological Survey, University of Hail and Saudi Aramco.
It is indeed an important achievement for the Saudi researchers and also an important outcome of Prince Sultan’s support and care for the archaeological sector in the Kingdom, the SCTNH said.
The project is part of the Green Arabia Project, which is a Saudi-British unddertaking for survey and excavation to implement environmental and archaeological studies of many historical sites in the Kingdom.
The project is being carried out by the SCTNH and the University of Oxford and its implementation will take five years (2012-2017) with the objective to study the likelihoods of expansion or extinction of humans and animals and their adaptation to living conditions. This joint project has led to many other significant discoveries of animals and mammal fossils in the Saudi deserts including a giant 300,000-year-old elephant tusk belonging to an extinct species of elephant from the Nafud Desert suggesting a greener, wetter Arabian desert in the past. An elephant’s carpal bone, located five meters from the pieces of tusk, was also discovered from the same sand layer at the excavation site in the Nafud Desert.