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Bushmen win rights over ancestral lands David Beresford in Lobatse Thursday December 14, 2006 The Guardian (UK) The Bushmen of Botswana yesterday appeared to have won a famous legal victory in their long-running battle to hang on to ancestral lands in the giant Central Kalahari game reserve. The Botswana high court ruled that the Bushmen, whom the government had tried to evict by cutting off their water supplies and other services, lawfully occupied the land. Three judges found that they had been deprived of possession of the land "forcibly, wrongly and without their consent". The court also found that the...

Papers have been flapping with new headlines about the latest in a long line of alleged dinosaur ancestors of birds. This one is claimed to be a sensational dinosaur with feathers on its hind legs, thus four ‘wings’.1 This was named Microraptor gui—the name is derived from words meaning ‘little plunderer of Gu’ after the paleontologist Gu Zhiwei. Like so many of the alleged feathered dinosaurs, it comes from Liaoning province of northeastern China. It was about 3 feet (1 meter) long from its head to the tip of its long tail, but its body was only about the size...

Jan. 27, 2004 — In a prehistoric battle for survival, Neanderthals had to compete against modern humans and were wiped off the face of the Earth, according to a new study on life in Europe from 60,000 to 25,000 years ago. The findings, compiled by 30 scientists, were based on extensive data from sediment cores, archaeological artifacts such as fossils and tools, radiometric dating, and climate models. The collected information was part of a project known as Stage 3, which refers to the time period analyzed. The number three also seems significant in terms of why the Neanderthals became extinct....