Researchers reported that a Stone Age graveyard in the Sahara desert, called Gobero, is filled with the remains of people, fish, and crocodiles from a time when the desert was briefly green. The 10,000-year-old site in Niger was discovered in 2000 by a group led by University of Chicago paleontologist Paul Sereno, who realized they were in a green Sahara while looking for dinosaur fossils. The site contains at least 200 graves from two separate settlements 1,000 years apart. A woman and two children, their arms interlocked, were buried on a bed of flowers approximately 5,000 years ago, in what is considered a dramatic burial. The older group, known as Kiffians, were tall hunter-gatherers who left the area due to a drought that dried up the lake around 8,000 years ago. A second group, the Tenerians, settled in the area between 7,000 and 4,500 years ago. They were smaller in stature and engaged in hunting, herding, and fishing. Both groups left behind various artifacts such as tool kits, fishhooks, ceramics, and jewelry, according to a report published in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS ONE by Sereno's team. Chris Stojanowski, a bioarchaeologist from Arizona State University working on the site, stated that it is initially difficult to imagine two more biologically distinct groups of people burying their dead in the same location. The Sahara, the world's largest desert for tens of thousands of years, experienced changes in its climate due to shifts in the Earth's orbit 12,000 years ago, which brought monsoons further north temporarily. The team conducted tests on tooth enamel, pollen, bones, soil, and tools to determine the age of the site, artifacts, and remains. The researchers concluded in their report that the data from Gobero, along with other sites in North Africa, suggest that we are just beginning to comprehend the intricate history of biosocial evolution in response to significant climate changes in the Sahara.