Amid chaos of Libya, newly unearthed fossils give clues to our own evolution
Monday, March 9, 2015 - 14:20
in Paleontology & Archaeology
A discovery of mammal fossils uncovered in the Zallah Oasis in the Sirt Basin of central Libya date back to the early Oligocene, between about 30 and 31 million years ago. Working in the Zallah Oasis in Libya's Sirt Basin -- an area that has "sporadically" produced fossil vertebrates since the 1960s -- the team discovered a highly diverse and unique group of fossil mammals dating to the Oligocene, the final epoch of the Paleogene period, a time marked by a broad diversity of animals that would seem strange to us today, but also development of species critical to human evolution.