It certainly did in 1976, when paleoanthropologist Andrew Hill and a colleague were tossing elephant dung at each other in Laetoli, a hominid archeological site in Tanzania. As Hill dived out of ...

In Ethiopia, they found hominid skull, jaw, and arm bones plus a few teeth that dated back to 4.4 million years ago. That would make these the oldest hominid ancestors yet identified, and the most ...