Paleontologist Lucinda Blackwell and her colleagues at the University of Witwatersrand were digging in Gladysvale cave, South Africa, when they came upon a sensational find. 

In the fossilized hyena waste they collected they found the remains of human hair dated 195,000 to 257,000 years ago!  This predates the earliest known sample of human hair by 200,000 years.

She and her team removed a 9.8-inch block of calcified hyena waste from a brown hyena latrine found in the cave. Such latrines are only used by one animal and are typically demarcated areas that measure about 6 feet round in size.

The researchers then extracted 40 hairs from a single coprolite using fine tweezers. Although amino acid analysis detected no protein, and DNA sampling was not possible, very high magnification revealed that the size and shape of the hairs, along with their distinct cuticular scale patterns, best matched those of human hair.

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From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Geekazoid.