Christian Tryon, a professor of anthropology at the University of Connecticut, knew stone tools, but he didn’t know teeth.
He was looking at a photograph of just that, ancient dentition recovered from a decades-old archaeological site in Lebanon. The photograph had come from the papers of a close associate of Rev. J. Franklin Ewing, the original expedition leader.
At first, Tryon thought the teeth belonged to the remains of an ancient child named “Egbert” by Ewing, bones long considered lost.
Tryon showed the photograph and others to his research partner, Shara Bailey, director of the Center for the Study of Human Origins at New York University. Expert in teeth, she picked up on subtle differences in these, which must have come from two individuals, according to an article in UConn Today.
Tryon and Bailey have tried to piece together whatever evidence they can of the ill-fated excavation, which dug down ...
