What's 30,000 years between friends?

[unixronin]

Depends.  As the age of the Earth goes, it's an eyeblink.  But when it means humans have been in the Americas almost four times as long as previously believed -- almost four times as long as human recorded history, in fact -- it can be a pretty big deal.

Of particular interest to tech geeks in this article is the final comment (emphasis mine):

The footprints remain where they were found.  The team has used laser scans and rapid prototyping equipment to create highly accurate three-dimensional copies, accurate to a fraction of a millimetre, which can be viewed at the Royal Society's Summer Exhibition in London, UK, which ends on 7 July.

Now there's applied tech for you.  I bet the inventors of rapid prototyping never thought the devices they were building would be used for THAT purpose....

Comments

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

In a word, cool.

[ilcylic.livejournal.com]

Heh. Ditto. :)

-Ogre

[plutosonium.livejournal.com]

Once again, I wish I'd gone with archeology.

[jilara.livejournal.com]

They'll have to look at that barbecued baby mammoth on Santa Rosa Island again. That one, dated at 29,000 BCE, has bugged the archeology community for years, and they've done incredible gyrations to try to discount what it implies: that someone was barbecuing mammoths 29,000 years ago in North America. Hopefully, the footprints won't join it on the "things we want to forget" list.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

I hate that attitude .... "This datum doesn't fit the theory. The datum must be incorrect."

[olafthunderfoot.livejournal.com]

heh, can't tinker with established theories, dontcha know?

[olafthunderfoot.livejournal.com]

wow.