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Muddy Past

November 17, 2007

Konrad Hughen, a paleoclimatologist in the WHOI Department of Marine Chemistry and Geochemistry, recently worked with archaeologist and anthropologists to show that Neanderthals probably did not die out from an extreme climate event, one of the popular theories of their extinction. Using data from sediment cores collected off Venezuela and Spain and ice cores collected in Greenland, Hughen and colleagues, the team provided archaeological dating information that could not be acquired through traditional carbon dating methods. (Photo by Tom Kleindinst, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)