Professor Frank McDermott Nature Publication
Recent News
- New instruments for high precision land surveying arrive at UCD
- Neoma MC-ICP-MS delivery
- Hook Head Peninsula Fieldtrip
- Next Generations Explorers Award
- Software Agreement with Baker Hughes
- Maeve Boland elected Fellow of the Geological Society of America
- New faculty - Dr Kara English
- New faculty – four Ad Astra Fellows
- Dr Laia Comas-Bru WCRP/GCOS Data Prize
- Mass extinction - learning from the past for the future
- Formation of platinum-group ore deposits & sub-volcanic intrusions
- UCD’s School of Earth Sciences collaboration with Irish-based NGO Self Help Africa (SHA)
- Swampy rainforests in Antarctica dated to the mid-Cretaceous
- Professor Frank McDermott Nature Publication
- The Blue Book Project
- Geology Workshop
- IGA Diamond Jubilee Lecture
- Mt Etna
- Dr William Foster Publication
- Journal of Quaternary Science Publication
- Dr Srikumar Roy Review article
- SGA 2019 Pre-conference Field Trip
- UCD Festival 2019
- Dr Chris Mark awarded SFI Starting Investigator Research Grant
- TOSCA travels to the Mid-Atlantic ridge and discovers an other-wordly landscape
- UCD School of Earth Sciences-led international expedition, TOSCA, sets sail
- Piecing Together the Big Picture on Water and Climate
- Prof John Walsh awarded 2017 RIA Gold Medal
- Assoc Professor Eoghan Holohan Irish Research Council
- 2018
- 2017
- 2016
New dates on a famous African hominin skull is helping rewrite the human family tree
A new age on the skull of Homo heidelbergensis is helping change our understanding of human evolution, thanks to research from Professor Frank McDermott at the UCD School of Earth Sciences.
The hominin skull was originally discovered in the 1920s in cave deposits in Zambia and was thought to have been as old as 500,000 years. Now, new dates on calcium carbonate deposits, tooth enamel and the skull itself have revised the age to 299,000 years ago.
The results, published in Nature today, suggests that Homo heidelbergensis was unlikely to have been an ancestor to modern humans. Instead, the younger age implies heidelbergensis lived alongside Homo sapiens and Homo naledi in Africa. The total number of different human species living in Africa and Asia at the time is now estimated to be nine.
Professor McDermott worked on dating a calcitic layer that was found on the skull. His results suggested that the skull might be significantly younger than previously thought. This led to a research team at The Australian National University to follow up with direct dating of skull and tooth enamel to tie down the skull ages to 299,000 years ago, plus or minus 25,000 years.
Nature Press Release: https://www.natureasia.com/en/research/highlight/13269
Full Paper: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2165-4