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The origin and key details of the making of the ~ 30,000 year old Venus from Willendorf remained a secret since its discovery for more than a hundred years. Based on new micro-computed tomography scans with a resolution of 11.5 µm, our analyses can explain the origin as well as the choice of material and particular surface features. It allowed the identification of internal structure properties and a chronological assignment of the Venus oolite to the Mesozoic. Sampling numerous oolite occurrences ranging ~ 2500 km from France to the Ukraine, we found a strikingly close match for grain size distribution near Lake Garda in the Southern Alps (Italy). This might indicate considerable mobility of Gravettian people and long-time transport of artefacts from South to North by modern human groups before the Last Glacial Maximum., (© 2022. The Author(s).)

In this paper we present two heavily eroded tooth fragments found in Grub/Kranawetberg, a Gravettian excavation site near Stillfried, Lower Austria. Both fragments were found during wet screening of sediment taken from an area near a hearth. Overall, the cultural layer yielded a large number of stone tools and flakes as well as bony points and over sixty bone beads and bone bead fragments. They point to an absolute date of 24,400 to 25,400 BP. We present a description of the tooth fragments and identify them as remains of an early modern human. One of the fragments is a deciduous right first lower molar (84) and the other a deciduous left lateral upper incisor (62). Due to their characteristic shape and size, as well as the degree of attrition, both teeth could have belonged to one single individual--a possibility consistent with their position in the stratigraphic column. The incisor could be compared for its metrical dimensions to the few other contemporaneous Upper Palaeolithic findings showing an insignificantly smaller dimension in mesio-distal and bucco-lingual dimensions. Although the remains are limited they increase our very small sample of deciduous teeth for this time period, which is essential for a better understanding of possible evolutionary trends from the Upper Palaeolithic to the Mesolithic.