Atapuerca

Atapuerca may refer to:

Juan Luis Arsuaga

Juan Luis Arsuaga Ferreras (born 1954 in Madrid) obtained a master degree and a doctorate in Biological Sciences at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, where he is professor in the Paleontology Department of the Faculty of Geological Sciences.

As a child he already showed a great interest in prehistory after reading Quest for Fire and visiting a dig in nearby Bilbao.

Arsuaga is a visiting professor of the Department of Anthropology at the University College of London and since 1982 he has been a member of the Research Team investigating Pleistocene deposits in the Atapuerca Mountains (Province of Burgos, Spain). He has been a co-director since 1991 with José María Bermúdez de Castro and Eudald Carbonell Roura of the Atapuerca Team, which was awarded the Prince of Asturias Prize for Scientific and Technical Research and the Castilla León Prize for the Social Sciences and Humanities, both in 1997.

The finds at Atapuerca have shed new light on the first humans in Europe. This contrasts with the secretive atmosphere surrounding the digs to near Orce, in southern Spain, which has yielded tools indicating human presence that predate the finds at Atapuerca. In 2013, Arsuaga co-authored a paper which reported the finding of the oldest human DNA ever, dating back 400,000 years. The mitochondrial DNA that stemmed from a fossil found in a cave in Sima de los Huesos had similarities to mitochondrial genomes previously found in the extinct Denisovans in Siberia.

Juan Francisco Luis

Juan Francisco Luis (July 10, 1940 – June 4, 2011) was a U.S. Virgin Island politician who served as the third elected Governor of the U.S. Virgin Islands and the territory's 23rd Governor overall. Luis assumed the governorship on January 2, 1978, succeeding Governor Cyril King, who died in office. He held the governor's office from 1978 until 1987, becoming the longest serving Governor in the history of the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Biography

Early years

Luis was born in 1940 on the neighboring island of Vieques in Puerto Rico. He moved with his family to Saint Croix-which has a sizeable Puerto Rican community-in the U.S. Virgin Islands when he was two months old. In 1958, Luis graduated from the former Christiansted High School as his class' valedictorian.

Luis studied at the Interamerican University of Puerto Rico. He moved back to Saint Croix after college, where he took a position as a sixth-grade teacher at the Christiansted Public Grammar School. He also worked as a project office manager for the Department of Housing and Urban Development before serving as a in the U.S. Army.