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      Human occupation of northern Australia by 65,000 years ago.

      Nature
      Springer Nature America, Inc

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          Abstract

          The time of arrival of people in Australia is an unresolved question. It is relevant to debates about when modern humans first dispersed out of Africa and when their descendants incorporated genetic material from Neanderthals, Denisovans and possibly other hominins. Humans have also been implicated in the extinction of Australia's megafauna. Here we report the results of new excavations conducted at Madjedbebe, a rock shelter in northern Australia. Artefacts in primary depositional context are concentrated in three dense bands, with the stratigraphic integrity of the deposit demonstrated by artefact refits and by optical dating and other analyses of the sediments. Human occupation began around 65,000 years ago, with a distinctive stone tool assemblage including grinding stones, ground ochres, reflective additives and ground-edge hatchet heads. This evidence sets a new minimum age for the arrival of humans in Australia, the dispersal of modern humans out of Africa, and the subsequent interactions of modern humans with Neanderthals and Denisovans.

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          Most cited references40

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          Cosmic ray contributions to dose rates for luminescence and ESR dating: Large depths and long-term time variations

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            Dealing with Outliers and Offsets in Radiocarbon Dating

            The wide availability of precise radiocarbon dates has allowed researchers in a number of disciplines to address chronological questions at a resolution which was not possible 10 or 20 years ago. The use of Bayesian statistics for the analysis of groups of dates is becoming a common way to integrate all of the14C evidence together. However, the models most often used make a number of assumptions that may not always be appropriate. In particular, there is an assumption that all of the14C measurements are correct in their context and that the original14C concentration of the sample is properly represented by the calibration curve.
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              Optical dating of sediments

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                Author and article information

                Journal
                28726833
                10.1038/nature22968

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