SUNAGAWA, Hokkaido--A gunshot rang out on a recent morning in a meadow in northern Japan. The brown bear slumped in the cage, watched by a handful of city officials and hunters. The bear had been ...

Researchers Stunned After Discovering 20,000-Year-Old Fossil Belonged to a Bear, Mistook It to Be of a Human Initially The 20 ...

The 20,000-year-old fossilized bones of "Ushikawa Man," thought to be some of Japan's most ancient human fossils, are not ...

The oldest human fossils on Japan's mainland were found in a limestone quarry near Hamakita, 40 km east of Ushikawa.

Fossils once thought to represent the earliest known human remains from the country turn out to be from another animal.

According to a study, what scientists thought were the oldest human fossils found in Japan are actually the bones of a brown bear.

shows beyond a doubt that the bones are from an ancient brown bear, Suwa said in an email. He added that the bones of bears were rarely found in archaeological sites in Japan from this time ...

NAGOYA -- What were until now thought to be the oldest human fossils found in Japan, known as the "Ushikawa ... they were thought to likely be from a brown bear. The research group commented ...

In the 1950s, when they were discovered, the Ushikawa fossils were identified as parts of a human humerus (upper arm bone) and femur (leg bone), believed to be over 20,000 years old ...