Sahara: Remains of 5,000-year-old cemetery found.

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Sahara: Remains of 5,000-year-old cemetery found.

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Opinion

Barry Artiste. Now Public Contributor

Certainly Now Public’s Contributor Paschen’s story last week on the Sahara validates Paschen's story and this story, as they try to turn the tide on the Sahara, as a discovery of a 5,000 year old cemetery in the barren part of the Sahara, complete with Crocodiles and fish, which pretty much proves the Sahara was temperate, with lakes well after the last ice age 10,000 years ago.

http://www.nowpublic.com/environment/desertification-part-ii-history-sahara-desert-attempt-stop-desertification

Perhaps this except says it best: "Everywhere you turned, there were bones belonging to animals that don't live in the desert," said Sereno. "I realized we were in the green Sahara."

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Science/2008/08/14/pf-6450666.html

August 14, 2008

Remains of 5,000-year-old cemetery found in Sahara

By Randolph E. Schmid, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON - A tiny woman and two children were laid to rest on a bed of flowers 5,000 years ago in what is now the barren Sahara Desert.

The slender arms of the youngsters were still extended to the woman in perpetual embrace when researchers discovered their skeletons in a remarkable cemetery that is providing clues to two civilizations who lived there, a thousand years apart, when the region was moist and green.

Paul Sereno of the University of Chicago and colleagues were searching for the remains of dinosaurs in the African country of Niger when they came across the startling find, detailed at a news conference Thursday at the National Geographic Society.

"Part of discovery is finding things that you least expect," he said. "When you come across something like that in the middle of the desert it sends a tingle down your spine.

" Some 200 graves of humans were found during fieldwork at the site in 2005 and 2006, as well as remains of animals, large fish and crocodiles.

Below is more info on this amazing discovery http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-sahara-remainsaug15,0,6029550.story

Chicago dinosaur hunters uncover ancient human graveyard in Sahara Discovery offers glimpse of era when the desert was a lush paradise

By Jeremy Manier | Chicago Tribune reporter

August 15, 2008

A group of Chicago dinosaur hunters has stumbled across an ancient human graveyard in the middle of the Sahara, offering a unique glimpse of an epoch when much of the desert was a lush paradise.

The find represents several firsts, said University of Chicago paleontologist Paul Sereno, whose team published the discovery in Thursday's issue of the journal PLoS ONE.

It's the biggest Saharan graveyard ever found from the period between 4,500 and 10,000 years ago, a time that scientists have known mostly from scattered fragments of human remains buried in the hot sands.

The period of the Green Sahara, as some researchers call it, began when a fluctuation in the Earth's orbit changed African weather patterns and brought more rain to the desert.

The lakes that developed supported 6-foot-long pike fish, turtles, crocodiles and an array of other wildlife and human settlers.

Below is a National Geographic story on the Sahara and it's history. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/05/080508-green-sahara.html