Discovery & Weird News

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'Oldest remains' outside Africa reset human migration clock

AFP

© asiafoto / Istock.com Two fossilised but badly damaged skulls unearthed in a Greek cave in the 1970s were identified as Neanderthal at the time.

A 210,000-year-old skull has been identified as the earliest modern human remains found outside Africa, putting the clock back on mankind's arrival in Europe by more than 150,000 years, researchers said Wednesday.

In a startling discovery that changes our understanding of how modern man populated Eurasia, the findings support the idea that Homo sapiens made several, sometimes unsuccessful migrations from Africa over tens of thousands of years.

Southeast Europe has long been considered a major transport corridor for modern humans from Africa. But until now the earliest evidence of Homo sapiens on the continent dated back only around 50,000 years.

There has however been a number of discoveries indicating the ancient presence of Neanderthals -- an early human cousin -- across the continent.

Two fossilised but badly damaged skulls unearthed in a Greek cave in the 1970s were identified as Neanderthal at the time. 

In findings presented in the journal Nature, an international team of researchers used state-of-the-art computer modelling and uranium dating to re-examine the two skulls.

One of them, named Apidima 2 after the cave in which the pair were found, proved to be 170,000 years old and did indeed belong to a Neanderthal.

But, to the shock of scientists, the skull named Apidima 1 pre-dated Apidima 2 by as much as 40,000 years and was determined to be that of a Homo sapiens.

That makes the skull by far the oldest modern human remains ever discovered on the continent, and older than any known Homo sapiens specimen outside of Africa.

"It shows that the early dispersal of Homo sapiens out of Africa not only occurred earlier, before 200,000 years ago but also reached further geographically, all the way to Europe," Katerina Harvati, a palaeoanthropologist at the Eberhard Karls University of Tuebingen, Germany, told AFP.

"This is something that we did not suspect before, and which has implications for the population movements of these ancient groups."

Apidima 1 lacked classic features associated with Neanderthal skulls, including the distinctive bulge at the back of the head, shaped like hair tied in a bun.

- Multiple migrations? - 

Hominins -- a subset of great apes that includes Homo sapiens and Neanderthals -- are believed to have emerged in Africa more than six million years ago. They left the continent in several migration waves starting about two million years ago.

The oldest known African fossil attributed to a member of the Homo family is a 2.8 million-year-old jawbone from Ethiopia.

Homo sapiens replaced Neanderthals across Europe for good around 45,000-35,000 years ago, in what was long considered a gradual takeover of the continent involving millennia of co-existence and even interbreeding.

But the skull discovery in Greece suggests that Homo sapiens undertook the migration from Africa to southern Europe on "more than one occasion", according to Eric Delson, a professor of anthropology at the City University of New York.

"Rather than a single exit of hominins from Africa to populate Eurasia, there must have been several dispersals, some of which did not result in permanent occupations," said Delson, who was not involved in the Nature study.

Harvati said advances in dating and genetics technology could continue to shape our understanding of how our pre-historic ancestors spread throughout the world.  

"I think recent advances in palaeoanthropology have shown that the field is still full of surprises," she said.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/offbeat/oldest-remains-outside-africa-reset-human-migration-clock/ar-AAE9lrc

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Archaeology's Neolithic 'big bang' moment found in a 9,000-year-old city near Jerusalem

VIDEO

Archaeologists say a huge prehistoric settlement discovered near Jerusalem offers new insight into how civilisations developed around the end of the Stone Age.

The 9,000-year-old metropolis — pre-dating both Britain's Stonehenge and ancient Egypt's pyramids — was uncovered during a survey before the construction of a new highway, is one of the biggest ever found, the Israel Antiquities Authority said on Tuesday.

The team estimated a population between 2,000 and 3,000 people, which would have constituted a large city for the time.

A photograph was taken on July 16, 2019, shows a partial view of a settlement from the Neolithic Period (New Stone Age), discovered during archaeological excavations by the Israel Antiquities Authority near Motza Junction, about 5km west of Jerusalem.

It covered dozens of hectares near what is today the town of Motza, some five kilometres west of Jerusalem.

Jacob Vardi, co-director of the excavations at Motza on behalf of the authority, told The Times of Israel that the find gives archaeologists their "big bang" moment.

"It's a game-changer, a site that will drastically shift what we know about the Neolithic era," Mr Vardi said.

He explained that the Neolithic period was a time where "more and more" human populations curbed migration and transitioned to permanent settlements.

Site touted as the Middle East's largest Neolithic find

Before the discovery, it was widely believed the entire area had been uninhabited in that period, during which people were shifting away from hunting for survival to a more sedentary lifestyle that included farming.

"This is most probably the largest excavation of this time period in the Middle East, which will allow the research to advance leaps and bounds ahead of where we are today, just by the amount of material that we are able to save and preserve from this site," said Lauren Davis, an archaeologist with Israel's antiquities authority.

© ABC NEWS A man holds a Neolithic figurine depicting a human face

The excavation exposed large buildings, alleyways and burial places, evidence of a relatively advanced level of planning, the antiquities authority said in a statement.

The team also found storage sheds that contained large quantities of legumes, particularly lentils, whose seeds were remarkably preserved throughout the millennia.

"This finding is evidence of an intensive practice of agriculture," the statement read.

Trays with findings from the archaeological excavation site of a settlement from the Neolithic Period (New Stone Age), discovered during archaeological excavations by the Israel Antiquities Authority near Motza Junction, about 5km west of Jerusalem, are exposed on July 16, 2019.

"Animal bones found on the site show that the settlement's residents became increasingly specialised in sheep-keeping, while the use of hunting for survival gradually decreased". 

Also found were flint tools, including thousands of arrowheads, axes for chopping down trees, sickle blades and knives.

The archaeologist of the Israel Antiquities Authority Jacob Vardi is pictured on July 16, 2019, at the archaeological excavation site of a settlement from the Neolithic Period (New Stone Age), discovered during archaeological excavations by the Israel Antiquities Authority near Motza Junction, about 5km west of Jerusalem.

If date estimates are correct, this civilisation's form of agriculture would also pre-date that of Victoria's Gunditjmara people, who created an elaborate series of channels and pools to harvest eels 6,600 years ago.

That site, known as the Budj Bim Cultural Landscape, was recently listed on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/archaeologys-neolithic-big-bang-moment-found-in-a-9000-year-old-city-near-jerusalem/ar-AAEqzkW?li=BBoPWjQ

 

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Age of Discovery ship found perfectly preserved in Baltic Sea

David Keys

VIDEO

The best-preserved shipwreck ever found from the age of Christopher Columbus and Vasco da Gama has been discovered – at the bottom of the Baltic Sea between Sweden and Estonia.

The newly discovered Baltic Mary Celeste is also at the heart of a 500-year-old maritime mystery.

Virtually pristine condition, the vessel has been located by archaeologists at a depth of around more than 120 metres some 100 miles South East of Stockholm.

Some 99 per cent of the ship is intact – with the masts still standing tall and its two swivel guns in their firing positions.

A small tender boat is still sitting on the deck, as is the wooden capstan. Even the bilge pump and elements of the rigging can be seen. The bowsprit and decorated transom stern are also clearly visible.

However, the 16-metre long vessel’s aft-castle had somehow been destroyed.

This, together with the guns being in their "ready to fire" positions, strongly suggests that the ship was sunk in a previously unknown naval battle.

Probably a small Swedish or Danish merchantman, the vessel was almost certainly built at some stage between 1490 and 1540 – most likely in the very early 16th century.

It is therefore conceivable that it was sunk during Sweden’s war of independence – the three-year-long conflict between that country and its Danish rulers which raged between 1521 and 1523. Alternatively, the vessel may have been sunk during the Russo-Swedish War of 1554 –1557.

Although the ship is by far the best-preserved vessel ever found from Europe’s Age of Discovery, it is of a Northern European rather than southern European design.

However, the size of the ship, the shape of the perfectly preserved bow, the design of the anchors and of the masts and rigging are thought to be very similar to those of Columbus’ two smaller vessels, the Pinta and La Niña which he used along with the larger Santa Maria, to cross the Atlantic and discover America in 1492.

The discovery will, therefore, help maritime archaeologists and historians to understand more fully some of the ship technologies available to Columbus for his great 1492 voyage of discovery.

What happened to the crew of the Baltic ship is a complete mystery? Were all or most of them killed in the attack which destroyed the ship’s aft-castle? Were they captured by the attacking vessel – or did they survive the attack but were somehow unable to launch their tender and consequently went down with their ship?

The investigation of the newly discovered ship is being carried out by an international team of scientists, including archaeologists from the University of Southampton.

The whole project is being led by Dr Rodrigo Pacheco-Ruiz, a maritime archaeologist working for the Swedish offshore survey company, MMT in collaboration with the Centre for Maritime Archaeology at the University of Southampton and the Maritime Archaeology Research Institute of Södertörn University, Sweden.

Dr Pacheco-Ruiz, who is also a Visiting Fellow in Maritime Archaeology at Southampton, said: “This ship dates from Europe’s Age of Discovery, yet it demonstrates a remarkable level of preservation after five hundred years at the bottom of the sea.

“It’s almost like it sank yesterday. It’s a truly astonishing sight,” he added.

The vessel lies on the seabed with her hull structure preserved from the keel to the top deck and all of her masts and some elements of the standing rigging still in place.

The extraordinary level of preservation is a result of the very low levels of oxygen near the seabed in that part of the Baltic.

That massively reduces the number of micro and other organisms that would otherwise have quite literally eaten the vessel’s timbers.

The video is, therefore, the first occasion on which anybody has been able to actually see a real almost totally preserved Age of Discovery vessel since the 16th century.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/age-of-discovery-ship-found-perfectly-preserved-in-baltic-sea/ar-AAEHu2N?MSCC=1563878010&ocid=chromentp

Edited July 23, 2019 by CaaC (John)
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Scientists Just Discovered A 310-Mile Coral Reef Corridor In The Gulf Of Mexico

Yessenia Funes

© Photo: Courtesy of Leonardo Ortiz Lozano A taste of what the team found in the Corazones reef, which they discovered this year. (Photo: Courtesy of Leonardo Ortiz Lozano)

In the Gulf of Mexico, scientists have found five new coral reefs forming a so-called coral reef corridor. The team of scientists from the University of Veracruz and Mexico’s National Institute of Technology announced their findings earlier this month, reminding us there’s still so much we don’t know about the underwater world.

The five coral reefs -- Corazones, Pantepec South, Piedras Altas, Los Gallos, and Camaronera -- join a number of other reefs to make up the Reef Corridor of the Southwest Gulf of Mexico, which stretches from near the Tamiahua Lagoonin the state of Veracruz into the Gulf. The scientists have speculated about the existence of the corridor for years, and this discovery confirms it. This corridor stretches at least 499km, said Leonardo Ortiz Lozano, a researcher with the University of Veracruz who made the discovery alongside Ana Gutierrez of the National Institute of Technology.

This corridor offers incredible biological productivity for this region, Ortiz told Gizmodo. The reefs offer habitat for a number of species, fuelling an incredibly biodiverse ecosystem. The region is currently unprotected, but the scientists who discovered the corridor want to change that before the oil and gas industry moves into this part of the Gulf. 

© Photo: Courtesy of Leonardo Ortiz Lozano More coral found in the Corazones reef. (Photo: Courtesy of Leonardo Ortiz Lozano)

“We want the coral corridor to be officially recognised to protect it from the fossil fuel industry,” Ortiz said.

Related Slideshow: Stunning photos of coral reefs around the world (Provided by Photo Services)

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This group of researchers is now working to protect the corridor in coordination with the Mexican Center for Environmental Law. The fishing industry and sedimentation from runoff are threatening the reefs, but the ecologists are mindful about creating protections that won’t sacrifice the well-being of the fishing industry that’s built a dependence on the thriving ecosystem, which includes sponges, crustaceans, sea turtles, and sharks.

“What’s most important is that these sites are where hundreds of fishermen receive their nourishment and work,” Ortiz told Gizmodo. “It’s important to protect these sites, but it’s necessary to maintain the fishing industry.”

© Photo: Courtesy of Leonardo Ortiz Lozano A type of coral found in Los Gallos, another reef the team found. (Photo: Courtesy of Leonardo Ortiz Lozano)

And of course, the threat of climate change is looming over coral reefs, many of which are already feeling its impacts around the world. Warmer waters have caused waves of coral bleaching in the Gulf of Mexico. When corals bleach, they expel algae (a main source of food) as a response to the added stress. In other words, they essentially die.

Currently, these new reefs are scattered within and outside of protected areas. Setting up protections for all the reefs is a solid first step to ensuring they survive.

© Photo: Courtesy of Leonardo Ortiz Lozano Another coral formation in Corazones, one of the reefs recently discovered. (Photo: Courtesy of Leonardo Ortiz Lozano)

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/offbeat/scientists-just-discovered-a-310-mile-coral-reef-corridor-in-the-gulf-of-mexico/ar-AAEJEnewhere hundreds of fishermen receive their nourishment and work,” Ortiz told Gizmodo. “It’s important to protect these sites, but it’s necessary to maintain the fishing industry.”

 

Edited July 24, 2019 by CaaC (John)

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Oldest carving in East Asia found. But its maker is a mystery.

Maya Wei-Haas

© Photograph by Francesco d’Errico & Luc Doyon

About the size of a thumb, this engraved bone fragment is one in a pair recently unearthed in eastern China. The etchings push back the date of such abstract carvings in this region by tens of thousands of years.

More than a hundred thousand years ago in what is now eastern China, an ancient human relative decided to carve a bit of bone. Surrounded by the fragmented skeletons of butchered animals, the ancient engraver chose a tidbit of rib hardened from its time under the sun and carved seven nearly parallel lines, highlighting them with a smear of vibrant ochre pigments.

Now, these straight lines are making waves among paleoanthropologists, who believe that this tiny fragment, along with a second engraved bone found nearby, provide the oldest evidence of intentional symbolic carvings yet found in East Asia. If so, the find would beat the previous record-holder by some 60,000 years, the team reports in the journal Antiquity.

The branch of the human family tree to which the artist belongs remains shrouded in time. But fossil skulls from an unknown species found near the bones hint that the carvings were not the handiwork of our species, Homo sapiens.

“Archaeological digs are full of mystery; you never know what you're going to discover,” study author Zhanyang Li of Shandong University says in an email. “A small object invisible to the eye can change people's understanding.”

While we’re far from understanding the purpose behind the newly described lines, or whether they are truly symbols, the deliberateness of their creation underscores the complexity of our ancient relatives’ behaviours and interactions with the natural world. The work also continues to challenge the outdated notion that modern humans were the only hominins with the cognitive capacity to think abstractly.

"It is really exciting work," says archaeologist Leslie Van Gelder of Walden University in Minneapolis. “We don’t have to know what it means, we just have to know that to the people making it, it meant something.”

Discovering a doodle

Scientists discovered the tiny pair of bones, each about the size of an adult’s thumb, at an open area known as the Linjing site in Henan Province. The region once harboured a spring, which likely drew an array of animals and hungry hominins to the region, says study author Francesco D’Errico of the Université de Bordeaux in France.

Researchers have uncovered thousands of bone fragments at the site, including remains from horses, extinct wild oxen known as aurochs, and donkey relatives called onagers. Many of the bones sport cut marks made when they were still fresh, evidence of many successful hunts. A collection of stone tools found at the site also revealed surprisingly sophisticated methods of tool shaping.

In 2016, while studying the fossil menagerie, researchers spotted clues to something even more intriguing: evidence of purposeful engraving.

For the latest work, the team began careful analysis of the shape and arrangement of the grooves in the two bones, revealing that they differed from butchery slashes in several ways. For one, the marks were much more shallow, indicating they were likely cut into a semi-fossilized rib. But the carved lines even dip into the pits in the bone, pointing to their creation with the sharpened tip of a rock as opposed to the long edge of a stone tool, which was more commonly used to cut meat.

The analysis also revealed a stunning number of details about the ancient carver. The hominin was likely right-handed, based on the lines' asymmetry and direction of carving. In spots where the tool seemed to dull, the hominin made several passes of the stone tip, etching multiple lines that nearly overlap.

Perhaps most telling, microscope images revealed red residue on one fragment, and chemical analysis showed that it contains traces of iron oxide not found in the sediments on the opposite side of the bone. This suggests that the pigments were not accidental: The mystery human relative likely smeared iron-rich clay called ochre into the lines to make them stand out.

Mysterious artists

On the surface, discovering a set of straight lines may not seem like a big deal, but “it’s not so much the lines themselves, it’s the deliberateness in the making of those lines,” Van Gelder explains. These marks weren’t just the product of random swipes of a tool across the surface of an old bone; they were created with thoughtfulness, she says.

Who exactly made these scratches, however, remains a mystery. Neanderthals likely didn’t venture this far into Asia; to date, we only know of Neanderthals making it as far east as Denisova cave in the Altai mountains—nearly 1,900 miles northwest of where the etched fragments were found. And it’s unclear if modern humans made it this far north at this early date.

The two fossil skulls found at the site contain a mosaic of ancient and modern features. Prior work hinted that they might be Denisovan, but thanks to the scant traces of Denisovan remains yet found, DNA evidence would be necessary to say for sure. Past research also suggested that Denisovans could be responsible for personal adornments, such as tooth pendants, found in Denisova cave. Still, scientists can’t exclude the possibility that modern humans had a hand in making those artefacts.

“My take on this is: It wasn’t purely modern humans,” University of Wisconsin-Madison paleoanthropologist John Hawks says of the capacity for crafting such material culture. “In fact, the idea that anything was ‘pure’ has gone by the wayside.”

The more scientists look, the more interspecies mingling they seem to find. Genetic evidence shows that when waves of modern humans began pouring out of Africa around 60,000 years ago, they met and interbred with at least two of their hominin cousins: Neanderthals and Denisovans. Along with this genetic exchange, there could have been a cultural exchange, too.

“I don’t think they saw themselves as being different forms of humans,” says Hawks, who was not involved in the new study. The latest find joins a number of ancient carvings or ochre sketches popping up around the world that are attributed to a variety of human species.

The oldest known ancient art is a set of zigzags carved on a mussel shell found in Trinil, Indonesia, which dates to some 540,000 years ago and is interpreted as the work of Homo erectus. A 73,000-year-old hashtag-like mark appears to be a doodle made by early H. sapiens in the Blombos cave in South Africa. And a set of 65,000-year-old ochre sketches in the Cueva de los Aviones in southeastern Spain were possibly crafted by Neanderthals.

“Modern behaviours do not seem to be the direct consequence of a speciation event creating modern humans, but more the result of shared cognition,” D’Errico says.

But what all these abstract forms mean is still up for debate, notes archaeologist Jillian Huntley of Griffith University. While she finds the new work fascinating, Huntley cautions that it’s unclear whether this latest carving and others like it are truly symbols for something, and even if they are, whether these abstract symbols translate to evidence of cognitive capacity.

“I think that’s a bit of a longer bow to draw,” Huntley says. Still, the latest find provides an intimate look into the lives—and perhaps the minds—of our ancient human relatives.

“And we’re just going to keep finding more,” Van Gelder says. “That’s the beauty of archaeology: Just when you think you know something, someone digs up the next thing.”

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/offbeat/oldest-carving-in-east-asia-found-but-its-maker-is-a-mystery/ar-AAEQ2nM

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Scientists find 6.5ft thigh bone weighing half a tonne belonging to a giant sauropod dinosaur that lived 140 million years ago in south-west France

Ian Randall For Mailonline

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Palaeontologists have unearthed a 6.5 foot-long (two metres) thigh bone that belonged to a giant sauropod dinosaur around 140 million years ago.

The enormous bone — which weighs in at around half a tonne — was unearthed from a dinosaur fossil-rich dig site in the department of Charente south-west France.

At the time that the giant dinosaur would have lived, the area — located near the town of Cognac — would have been a marshland. 

Located in southwestern France, the Angeac-Charente dig site is unique across all of Europe, with palaeontologists having already uncovered around 7,500 bones — from 45 different species of dinosaur — since excavations began back in 2010.

'This femur is huge! And in an exceptional state of conservation,' Angouleme Museum curator Jean-François Tournepiche told The Local.

'It's very moving.'

Alongside the thigh bone, volunteers with the National Museum of Natural History in Paris also uncovered a giant pelvis bone from the same layer of clay. 

Experts believe that the thigh bone belonged to a sauropod — one of a group of long-necked, plant-eating dinosaurs that include some of the largest animals to have ever walked the Earth.

'We can see the insertions of muscles and tendons, scars,' added Ronan Allain, a palaeontologist at Paris' National Museum of Natural History. 

'This is a very rare find as large pieces tend to collapse on themselves, to fragment.'

Palaeontologists have been working to reconstitute a complete sauropod skeleton from several different specimens that have been unearthed from Angeac-Charente in the last decade — with the reconstruction now around 50 per cent complete.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/offbeat/scientists-find-65ft-thigh-bone-weighing-half-a-tonne-belonging-to-a-giant-sauropod-dinosaur-that-lived-140-million-years-ago-in-south-west-france/ar-AAETl8k

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Science-loving boy, 10, discovers a nest of 11 dinosaur eggs after spotting a 'strange stone' in the ground while playing in a Chinese city

 

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A science-loving schoolboy has accidentally discovered a nest of fossilised dinosaur eggs while playing outdoors in China.

Experts believe the 11 eggs, each about 3.5 inches long, date back some 66 million years to the late Cretaceous period just before the ancient beasts were wiped out.

The third-grade pupil said he initially saw a 'strange stone' in the soil, but realised it could be a dinosaur egg after checking the object closely. Experts confirmed his speculation before excavating 10 more eggs nearby.

The 10-year-old came across the extraordinary find on Tuesday while playing on an embankment in the city of Heyuan, Guangdong Province. 

The boy, named Zhang Yangzhe, was trying to look for tools to crack open walnuts when he found what he thought was a piece of rock that 'looked special'.

He was accompanied by his mother while playing by the Dong River. 

He said at first he thought the rock had 'circles' on its surface.

'Then I called my mother over, [and we] thought the shell looked like that of a dinosaur egg,' Yangzhe told a reporter from Heyuan Radio and Television Station. 

According to his mother, Yangzhe loves science, especially dinosaurs, and has read many books about them.

The parent, named Li Xiaofang, said her son remembered the shell pattern of dinosaur eggs after visiting a local museum to learn more about the ancient creatures.

Ms Li called the police and guarded the site with her son until authorities arrived.

Experts from Heyuan Dinosaur Museum confirmed that the 'strange stone' was indeed a fossilised dinosaur egg.

After excavation, they found 10 more dinosaur eggs in the soil nearby which belonged to the same nest.

Each of the eggs measures about nine centimetres (3.5 inches) in length.

Huang Dong, the former director of the Heyuan Dinosaur Museum, told Beijing News that the fossils came from the late Cretaceous period.

The eggs have been taken to Heyuan Dinosaur Museum for further studies to determine the type.

Heyuan, a city with a population of three million, is billed as China's 'home of dinosaurs'.

A giant clutch of 43 fossilised dinosaur eggs were discovered by workmen doing roadworks in the city in 2015.

The first recorded dinosaur egg in Heyuan was found on March 1996, by the Dong River. Since then, more than 17,000 of them have been dug out in the city.

The Heyuan Dinosaur Museum claims to have 10,008 dinosaur eggs, the largest collection of its kind in the world.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/offbeat/science-loving-boy-10-discovers-a-nest-of-11-dinosaur-eggs-after-spotting-a-strange-stone-in-the-ground-while-playing-in-a-chinese-city/ar-AAEW8vQ

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Well, the saying  'When in Rome, Do as the Romans Do' refers to the importance of adapting yourself to the customs of the people who are in a certain place or situation and behave as they do. is true then and we still do this nowadays 

I came to London in 70AD and all I got you was a lousy pen: Roman iron stylus unearthed in the City of London bears 'welcome gift' inscription

A Roman iron stylus pen unearthed in the City of London and dated around 70AD bears the inscription: ¿I have come from the city. I bring you a welcome gift with a sharp point that you may remember me'

It's a familiar slogan you’ve read on any number of cheap modern-day tourist souvenirs: ‘My dad went to wherever and all he got me was this lousy...’

But a remarkable archaeological find suggests vendors had a similar sense of humour nearly 2,000 years ago.

A Roman iron stylus pen unearthed in the City of London and dated around 70AD bears the inscription: ‘I have come from the city. I bring you a welcome gift with a sharp point that you may remember me.

‘I ask, if fortune allowed, that I might be able to give as generously as the way is long and my purse is empty.’ 

And perhaps in contrast to today’s recipients of the slogan’s modern equivalent, archaeologists have hailed the poetry and humour on the stylus.

Michael Marshall, a senior Roman finds specialist, said: ‘It’s one of the most human objects from Roman London.

‘It’s very unpretentious and witty. It gives you a real sense of the person who wrote it.’ 

The pen was found during excavations underneath Bloomberg’s European headquarters near the Cannon Street Tube station on the bank of the river Walbrook, a now-lost tributary of the Thames.

 The pen was found during excavations underneath Bloomberg¿s European headquarters (pictured) near the Cannon Street Tube station

During the excavations between 2010 and 2014, experts recovered about 14,000 artefacts which archaeologists are continuing to work through. 

Due to corrosion, the inscription on the 5in stylus – used to scratch letters on a wax-covered tablet – was exceptionally difficult to read and became legible only after painstaking work by conservators.

Paul Roberts, a curator at Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum where the stylus is on display, said: ‘I’ve never seen anything quite like it.’ 

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/offbeat/i-came-to-london-in-70ad-and-all-i-got-you-was-a-lousy-pen-roman-iron-stylus-unearthed-in-the-city-of-london-bears-welcome-gift-inscription/ar-AAF3kGs

 

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This ancient predator had claws like rakes and a body like a spaceship

Kat Eschner

 

© Lars Fields/Royal Ontario Museum A reconstruction of Cambroraster falcatus.

What has claws like rakes, a circular mouth like a slice of pineapple, and is named after the Millennium Falcon? Cambroraster falcatus, that's what. This newly-discovered aquatic species lived more than 500 million years ago and was a giant of its time.

"In terms of animals that it might look most similar to today, you could think of horseshoe crabs," says Joseph Moysiuk, a Royal Ontario Museum palaeontologist who is the first author of a paper describing the Cambroraster for the first time. Like the horseshoe crab, the animal had a "huge head shield in the front, relatively small body," he said.

Also like the horseshoe crab, Moysiuk and his colleagues believe the Cambroraster spent a lot of time in the mud, where it must have been a strange sight. The creature was about a foot long in a time when most animals were smaller than your little finger: it was a gigantic predator, trundling around the ocean floor of the Cambrian Period and scooping prey into its mouth with giant claws that had spines on them to filter out dirt but capture even small prey.

When his team found the first fossils of this beast in 2014, says Moysiuk, “we weren’t exactly sure what to make of them, and we just nicknamed them the ‘spaceship.’” After years of exploring the site, he says, “we’ve discovered many more and that allowed us to piece the animal back together.”

When the time came to give the animal a formal designation, they stuck with the nickname and gave it a title that references the famous movie spaceship it looks most like. Cambroraster tells us the period it lived in and the way it hunted (raster is Latin for "rake"), but falcatus—that's pure science fiction.

The fossil was discovered in the Burgess Shale, a Canadian site notable for its preservation of bodies from the "Cambrian explosion," a time when Earth's animals diversified and developed into the distant ancestors of the many fauna we have today.

There are a number of competing theories about why the Burgess Shale preserved animals so unusually well, Moysiuk says, but one thing’s certain: mudslides under the ocean or other similar events must have swept over the diverse creatures, cutting their bodies off from air that would otherwise have supported microbes and small animals as they gnawed on soft tissue. Researchers have found creatures in the Burgess Shale so well-preserved, even their stomach contents could be examined for hints at their last meals.

Among the animals that have been found on this site are a number of relatives of the Cambroraster. Collectively, they're known as Radiodonts, for the arrangement of their teeth around a circular mouth. They were the first large predators, says Moysiuk, and looking at the variety of ways that they hunted shows the sophistication of early animals.

The most famous member of the group, Anomalocaris, was long and skinny and swam around actively hunting prey. Another member of the group is believed to have eaten algae in the upper water column. Looking at the Cambroraster as part of this group shows that related animals in the period had distinct, sophisticated strategies for getting food, Moysiuk says: "They're not simply predators that are typecast into one role in the ecosystem."

"Cambroraster falcatus adds to this increasingly complex picture of radiodont diversity by showing that some representatives of this group had evolved a highly modified morphology and ecology," says Rudy Lerosey-Aubril, an invertebrate palaeontologist at Harvard University. "It was clearly adapted to life as a bottom dweller feeding on the small organisms inhabiting the seafloor—this is a radical departure to the lifestyle of all the other members of the group."

ttps://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/offbeat/this-ancient-predator-had-claws-like-rakes-and-a-body-like-a-spaceship/ar-AAFaFtv?li=AAg17eQ

 

 

 

Edited October 11, 2019 by CaaC (John)
Spacing correction

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Treasure Trove Discovered at Egypt’s Atlantis, Where Cleopatra Was Crowned

By Candida Moss

In Plato’s Critias the fictional city of Atlantis—a rival to ancient Athens—was cursed by the gods, besieged by earthquakes and floods, and disappeared into the ocean. For centuries, people wrote pseudo-histories about the ancient city and its supposed location. According to Stanford professor Dan Edelstein, some of the theories about Atlantis even provided fodder for Nazi mythology. But for all of the interest it generated, Atlantis never actually existed. There were, however, places that suffered its fate.

In 1933 British RAF Group-Captain Cull was flying his plane over Aboukir, a Royal Air Force base east of Alexandria in Egypt, when he glimpsed something in the water below him. From his vantage point, Cull could make out the outlines of structures beneath the water. Unbeknownst to him, Cull had located Heracleion, an important ancient Egyptian city that had lain hidden beneath the water for nearly 1500 years.

According to legend, this lost metropolis had hosted its namesake, Heracles, and lovers Paris and Helen before they fled to Troy. Cleopatra, Egypt’s most famous queen, had even been crowned in one of the temples there.  

Before its discovery, Heracleion (which was also known in the ancient world by its Egyptian name, Thonis) was almost the stuff of mythology. Though it is now buried several miles off the coast, Thonis-Heracleion was once a thriving port city. If you were bringing goods into Egypt, this is where your items would be taxed and inspected. The focal point of the city was a huge temple dedicated to the god Amun-Gereb, around which a network of canals snaked and flowed. In between them, small islands housed residences, religious sites, and commercial buildings, almost like an ancient Venice. 

By the fifth century, Heracleion was no more, its role as Egypt’s main port having been assumed by Alexandria in the second century. According to written records, a steady succession of earthquakes, perhaps as many as 23, struck North Africa between A.D. 323-1303. The most severe occurred in A.D. 365. The coastline fell and the cluster of cities that lay in the Canopic branch of the Nile vanished into the Mediterranean.

Even before Cull flew over Heracleion, there had been rumours of underwater ruins for over a century. In 1866 Mahmoud Bey El-Falaki, the official astronomer to the Viceroy of Egypt, had published a map that located the nearby ancient town of the Canopus on the edge of the coastline. But it took nearly 70 years to identify and excavate the area. It was only in 1996, when a team of Egyptian and European archaeologists, working under the leadership of Franck Goddio, founder of the Institut Européen d’Archéologie Sous-Marine, began to truly explore the uncharted waters of the ancient port. It took years to locate Heracleion itself: the team had to start from scratch surveying the seabed, taking soil samples, and collecting geophysical information in an effort to locate archaeological remains. 

The time and effort paid off. During an underwater expedition in 2000, divers saw a large stone head emerge from the murky dark waters. It was the head of the god Hapi, the personification of the Nile’s annual flood. Speaking to Archaeology.org in 2000, Goddio described the city of Heracleion as “an intact city, frozen in time.” It was almost like a sub-marine Pompeii. 

In the past few months, divers at Heracleion have discovered what can only be described as a treasure trove of artefacts from the site. Among the recent discoveries are gold jewellery, coins, and a missing piece of a large ceremonial boat that, when complete, measured 43 feet in length and 16 feet across. According to Egypt’s Ministry of Antiquities, they also discovered two previously unearthed temples: the first was large and included stone columns while the second, smaller temple was crumbling and buried beneath 3 feet of sediment. Goddio and his team discovered the artefacts by using sophisticated underwater scanning tools that can locate and produce images of items buried under the seabed. 

To date, the excavation has also uncovered 700 anchors, 64 ships, numerous other gold coins, tiny sarcophagi used for the animals that were sacrificed to Amun-Gereb, a number of colossal statues like that of Hapi, and the temple of Amun-Gereb itself. 

Many of the coins found at Heracleion date to the time of King Ptolemy II, who ruled Egypt from 283 to 246 B.C. Ptolemy II’s father had been a companion and bodyguard of Alexander the Great and he participated in Alexander’s military campaigns in Afghanistan and India. Some have even claimed that Ptolemy I was Alexander’s half-brother. After Alexander’s death in 323 B.C., Ptolemy became the governor of Egypt and he and his successors styled themselves as the new pharaohs in Egypt. When Heracleion was first discovered it was the huge statues of Ptolemy II and his queen (and sister), Arsinoe, that helped draw attention to the site. The statues were so large that the ceiling of the British Museum had to be dismantled before they could be exhibited.

It is not known exactly which temples were unearthed in this season’s excavation but there are some important candidates that have yet to be discovered. The fifth-century B.C. historian Herodotus writes that the Temple of Heracles was a refuge for runaway slaves. Herodotus notes that if a slave took refuge there and had the “sacred marks” set on them it would not be lawful for the slave’s original owner to claim them. 

According to legend, this practice was instrumental in the history of the Trojan war. Herodotus says that when Paris and Helen arrived in Heracleion, Paris’s attendants became supplicants at the temple. They revealed the whole story about Paris’s deceit of Menelaus and the abduction of Helen. As a result the warden of the city, Thonis, refused Paris and Helen refuge. They would continue their journey to Paris’s hometown of Troy and the rest, as they say, is history.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/offbeat/treasure-trove-discovered-at-egypts-atlantis-where-cleopatra-was-crowned/ar-AAFkbOI

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Ancient parrot in New Zealand was 1m tall, study says

A giant parrot that roamed New Zealand about 19 million years ago had a height of 1m (3ft 2in) - roughly half the average height of a human, a new study has found.

The remains of the parrot were found near St Bathans in New Zealand's southern Otago region.

Given its size, the parrot is believed to have been flightless and carnivorous, unlike most birds today.

A study of the bird was published on Tuesday in the journal Biology Letters.

Weighing just over one stone (7kg), the bird would have been two times heavier than the kākāpo, previously the largest known parrot.

"There are no other giant parrots in the world," Professor Trevor Worthy, a palaeontologist at Flinders University in Australia and lead author of the study, told the BBC. "Finding one is very significant."

• Bird family tree shaken by fossil discovery
• Baby bird fossil is 'rarest of the rare'
• How birds got their beaks

Palaeontologists have dubbed the new species Heracles inexpectatus in recognition of its unusual size and strength.

The bones - initially believed to belong to an eagle or duck - were kept in storage for 11 years until earlier this year, when a team of palaeontologists reanalysed them.

Prof Worthy said one of his students came across the parrot's bones by chance in his laboratory during a research project.

The parrot's beak would have been so big, Mike Archer of the University of NSW Palaeontology said, it "could crack wide open anything it fancied".

The professor told AFP news agency the parrot "may well have dined on more than conventional parrot foods, perhaps even other parrots".

However, because the parrot had no predators, it is unlikely that it was aggressive, Prof Worthy told the BBC.

"It probably sat on the ground, walked around and ate seeds and nuts, mostly," he said.

Paul Scofield, the senior curator of natural history at Canterbury Museum, told AFP that researchers were "putting our money on it being flightless".

VIDEO

The discovery of large birds is not uncommon in New Zealand, once home to the moa, a now-extinct species whose height reached an estimated 3.6m (11ft 8in).

St Bathans, where the giant parrot's leg bones were excavated, is an area known for its abundance of fossils from the Miocene epoch, which extended from 23 million to 5.3 million years ago.

"But until now, no-one has ever found an extinct giant parrot - anywhere," Prof Worthy told AFP.

"We have been excavating these fossil deposits for 20 years, and each year reveals new birds and other animals... no doubt there are many more unexpected species yet to be discovered in this most interesting deposit."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-49262365

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Bizarre fossils reveal Asia’s oldest known forest

The diminutive trees of the Xinhang forest likely lived in a swampy environment near a coast, as shown here in an illustration.

The narrow rods peeking out from the walls of the clay mine didn’t initially look like much. But as more of the spindly fossils appeared, paleobotanists Deming Wang and Min Qin soon realized they were in the midst of an ancient forest.

Discovered near the town of Xinhang, China, the fossilized tree trunks date back to about 365 million years ago and cover at least 2.7 million square feet, which is roughly the size of 47 American football fields. This means they now represent the oldest forest yet found in Asia, the researchers report today in the journal Current Biology.

 

The ancient forest found in Xinhang would have featured trees that grew straight upward like poles, their stems fringed with narrow leaves. Once mature, the treetops would have split into crowns of droopy branches, each tipped with a spore-filled cone.

MORE

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'Human-sized penguin' lived in New Zealand

The remains of a giant penguin the size of a human have been discovered in New Zealand.

The fossilised bones are of an animal thought to have been about 1.6m (5ft 3in) tall, weighing up to 80kg (176lb).

It lived in the Paleocene Epoch, between 66 and 56 million years ago.

The animal, dubbed "monster penguin" by Canterbury Museum, adds to the list of now-extinct gigantic New Zealand fauna. Parrots, eagles, burrowing bats and the moa, a 3.6m-tall bird, also feature.

Why was the penguin gigantic?

"This is one of the largest penguin species ever found," Paul Scofield, the museum's senior curator, told the BBC. It was specific to the waters of the Southern Hemisphere, he added.

Penguins are thought to have become this big because large marine reptiles disappeared from the oceans, around the same time that dinosaurs disappeared.

"Then, for 30 million years, it was the time of the giant penguins," Mr Scofield said.

Today's largest species, the Emperor Penguin, grows to about 1.2m tall.

"We think that at the time, animals were evolving very rapidly," Mr Scofield explained. "Water temperatures around New Zealand were ideal back then, around 25C (77F) compared to the 8C we have now."

During the time of the giant penguin, New Zealand was still joined with Australia, which in turn is thought to have been connected to Antarctica.

The new species, crossvallia waiparensis, resembles another prehistoric giant penguin, crossvallia unienwillia, which was found at a site in Antarctica.

According to the researchers, the crossvallia penguin's feet probably played a bigger role in swimming than those of modern penguins.

It likely shared the waters around New Zealand with "giant turtles, corals and strange-looking sharks," Mr Scofield says.

Why isn't it around anymore?

It's not entirely clear why the giant penguins disappeared from the waters of the Southern Hemisphere.

The most commonly held theory is that it's simply due to growing competition with marine mammals.

"At the time giant penguins evolved, the large marine reptiles just had become extinct," Gerald Mayr, another author of the new study, told the BBC.

"In Antarctica and New Zealand, there were no large marine competitors until the arrival of toothed whales and pinnipeds (seals) many million years later."

The extinction of the giant penguins seems to correlate with the rise of these competitors, but the exact reasons for the disappearance of giant penguins are still being discussed, Mr Mayr cautions.

Where was it found?

The leg bones of the new species were discovered at a site in North Canterbury last year and have since been analysed by an international team.

"This site is pretty much unique," Mr Scofield said. "It's a river bed cutting into a cliff."

The place has been the site of fossil finds since the 1980s, and many of the discoveries - like this latest one - are made by dedicated amateur palaeontologists.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-49340715

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Stash of ancient diamonds is discovered near the Earth’s core

An ancient reservoir of diamonds that is older than the moon has been discovered near the Earth’s core, more than 410km below the surface.

The diamonds had lain undisturbed for more than 4.5 billion years before being brought to the surface by a violent volcanic eruption in Brazil.

An international group of scientists measured helium isotopes – different atomic forms of helium – in the diamonds to find the ancient reservoir, according to a study published in Science.

Researchers say they acted as “perfect time capsules” that gave them an insight into the tumultuous period shortly after the planet formed. During this period there was so much violent geological activity that almost nothing of the young planet’s original structure remained.

However, amid all this change, it had long been suspected there was an area of the mantle somewhere between the crust and core which had been relatively undisturbed. Until now, there was no proof it existed.

The diamonds were ‘perfect time capsules’ that gave scientists an insight into a violent period shortly after the Earth formed (Graham Pearson)

The first clues came in the 1980s when scientists noticed some basalt lavas from particular locations had a ratio of helium-3 to helium-4 isotopes that was higher than usual. What was particularly interesting was that this ratio mirrored the isotope ratio found on early meteorites that had crashed into Earth.

This suggested the lava had come from some deep reservoir in Earth which hasn’t changed for billions of years.

“This pattern has been observed in ‘ocean island basalts’, which are lavas coming to the surface from deep in the Earth, and form islands such as Hawaii and Iceland,” said Dr Suzette Timmerman, from the Australian National University, who led the research.

“The problem is that although these basalts are brought to the surface, we only see a glimpse of their history. We don’t know much about the mantle where their melts came from,” said Dr Timmerman.

To find out more, researchers studied helium isotope ratios in super-deep diamonds that formed between 150 and 230km below the Earth’s crust. “Diamonds are the hardest, most indestructible natural substance known, so they form a perfect time capsule that provides us with a window into the deep Earth,” she said.

“We were able to extract helium gas from 23 super-deep diamonds from the Juina area of Brazil.

“These showed the characteristic isotopic composition that we would expect from a very ancient reservoir, confirming that the gases are remnants of a time at or even before the moon and Earth collided.”

By studying the diamonds, scientists could tell they came from an area called the ‘transition zone’ which is between 410 and 660km below the surface of the Earth.

“This means that this unseen reservoir, leftover from the Earth’s beginnings, must be in this area or below it,” said Dr Timmerman.

No one knows the size of the reservoir and they believe there could be more than one of them. 

Professor Matthew Jackson from the University of California, Santa Barbara, who was not involved in the research, said the result was “interesting” and would help scientists map out where these ancient domains are in the Earth’s deep interior.

“This work is an important step towards understanding these reservoirs, and points the way to further research,” he said. 

Scientists will present their work at the Goldschmidt conference in Barcelona later this month.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/techandscience/stash-of-ancient-diamonds-is-discovered-near-the-earths-core/ar-AAFRavE?MSCC=1565948664&ocid=chromentp

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The Mystery of ‘Skeleton Lake’ Gets Deeper

In a kinder world, archaeologists would study only formal cemeteries, carefully planned and undisturbed. No landslides would have scattered the remains. No passersby would have taken them home as souvenirs, or stacked them into cairns, or made off with the best of the artefacts. And all this certainly wouldn’t be happening far from any evidence of human habitation, under the surface of a frozen glacial lake.

But such an ideal burial ground wouldn’t have the eerie appeal of Skeleton Lake in Uttarakhand, India, where researchers suspect the bones of as many as 500 people lie. The lake, which is formally known as Roopkund, is miles above sea level in the Himalayas and sits along the route of the Nanda Devi Raj Jat, a famous festival and pilgrimage. Bones are scattered throughout the site: Not a single skeleton found so far is intact.

Video: Roopkund Skeleton Lake: A Himalayan Mystery (The Weather News)

 

Since a forest ranger stumbled across the ghostly scene during World War II, explanations for why hundreds of people died there have abounded. These unfortunates were invading Japanese soldiers; they were an Indian army returning from war; they were a king and his party of dancers, struck down by a righteous deity. A few years ago, a group of archaeologists suggested, after inspecting the bones and dating the carbon within them, that the dead were travellers caught in a lethal hailstorm around the ninth century.

In a new study published today in Nature Communications, an international team of more than two dozen archaeologists, geneticists, and other specialists dated and analyzed the DNA from the bones of 37 individuals found at Roopkund. They were able to suss out new details about these people, but if anything, their findings make the story of this place even more complex. The team determined that the majority of the deceased indeed died 1,000 or so years ago, but not simultaneously. And a few died much more recently, likely in the early 1800s. Stranger still, the skeletons’ genetic makeup is more typical of Mediterranean heritage than South Asian.

Gallery: DNA study deepens the mystery of lake full of skeletons (National Geographic)

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“It may be even more of a mystery than before,” says David Reich, a geneticist at Harvard and one of the senior authors of the new paper. “It was unbelievable because the type of ancestry we find in about a third of the individuals is so unusual for this part of the world.”

Roopkund is the sort of place archaeologists call “problematic” and “extremely disturbed.” Mountaineers have moved and removed the bones and, researchers suspect, most of the valuable artefacts. Landslides probably scattered the skeletons, too. Miriam Stark, an archaeologist at the University of Hawaii at Manoa who was not involved in the research, pointed out that, unlike most archaeological sites, Roopkund is “not within a cultural context,” like a religious site or even a battlefield. That makes the new study “a really useful case study of how much information you can milk” from an imperfect data set, she says.

From a scientific standpoint, the only convenient thing about Roopkund is its frigid environment, which preserved not only the bones, but the DNA inside them, and even, in some cases, bits of clothing and flesh. That same environment can make the site difficult to study. Veena Mushrif-Tripathy, an archaeologist at Deccan College in Pune, India, was part of an expedition to Roopkund in 2003. She says that even at base camp, which was about 2,300 feet below the lake, the weather was dangerous and turned quickly. To reach Roopkund, the party had to climb to a ridge above the lake and then slide down to it, because the slopes surrounding the lake are so steep.

Mushrif-Tripathy never actually reached the lake; she was stuck at base camp with altitude sickness. “That was one of my biggest … regrets,” she says. “Still today, I am not over that.”

As Fernando Racimo, a geneticist at the University of Copenhagen points out, ancient-DNA studies commonly focus on the global movements of human populations over thousands of years. The new study, in contrast, is “a nice example of how ancient-DNA studies could not only inform us about major migration events,” Racimo says, “but it can also tell smaller stories that would have not been possible to elucidate otherwise.” Stark says that seeing geneticists and archaeologists collaborating to ask nuanced questions is refreshing. “A lot of the time it seems like the geneticists are just performing a service,” she says, to prove the hunches of anthropologists or historical linguists about where a specimen really came from. “And that’s not what we should be asking.”

To Kathleen Morrison, the chair of the anthropology department at the University of Pennsylvania, the least interesting thing about the specimens at Roopkund is where in the world their DNA says they came from. She points out that a Hellenic kingdom existed in the Indian subcontinent for about 200 years, beginning in 180 B.C. “The fact that there’s some unknown group of Mediterranean European people is not really a big revelation,” she says. She also cautions that radiocarbon dating gets less and less accurate the closer specimens get to the present day, so the early-1800s date assigned to the Roopkund specimens with Mediterranean heritage might not be perfectly accurate.

Roopkund is a high altitude lake situated in Uttarakhand, India at 5029 metres. It also a major trek in the Himalayas.

Besides, knowing that some of the bones at Roopkund came from a slightly unusual population still doesn’t shake the fundamental mystery: how hundreds of people’s remains ended up at one remote mountain lake. Reich and Mushrif-Tripathy are both confident that the skeletons were not moved to the site. Mushrif-Tripathy believes that the people whose bones she helped study simply “lost their way” and “got stuck” near the lake during bad weather. As Reich points out, it’s possible that remains scattered around the area gradually fell into the lake during landslides.

Morrison, though, doesn’t fully buy this explanation. “I suspect that they’re aggregated there, that local people put them in the lake,” she says. “When you see a lot of human skeletons, usually it’s a graveyard.”

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/the-mystery-of-skeleton-lake-gets-deeper/ar-AAG5bFL?li=BBoPWjQ

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Can DNA solve the mystery of Europe’s pointy skulls?

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Skull modification may have been an extreme way to declare one's identity during the Migration Period (ca. 300-700 A.D.), when so-called "barbarian" groups like the Goths and the Huns were vying for control of territory in Europe after the collapse of the Roman Empire. Could ancient DNA help archaeologists pinpoint what exactly those cultural alliances were?

At a site called Hermanov vinograd in eastern Croatia, archaeologists recently found a peculiar burial pit that contained the remains of three teenage boys. The teens were buried sometime between 415 and 560 A.D.

Two of the boys had artificially deformed skulls, and a DNA analysis, published today in the journal PLOS ONE, has now revealed another curious fact: The three boys buried together all had dramatically different genetic backgrounds. The one without any skull modifications had ancestry from western Eurasia, the teen who had a heightened but still, rounded skull had ancestry from the Near East, and the boy who had a very elongated skull had ancestry mainly from East Asia.

"When we got the ancient DNA results we were quite surprised," says senior author Mario Novak of the Institute for Anthropological Research in Zagreb, Croatia. "It is obvious that different people were living in this part of Europe and interacting very closely with each other. Maybe they used artificial cranial deformation as a visual indicator of membership in a specific cultural group."

Artificial cranial deformation (ACD) involves binding a child's head from infancy to deform the skull and is a form of body modification that has been practised since at least the Neolithic period in cultures all over the world. In Europe, the practice of ACD appeared around the Black Sea in the second and third centuries A.D., reached a high-point in the fifth and sixth centuries and faded away at the end of the seventh century, says Susanne Hakenbeck, a University of Cambridge historical archaeologist who has studied skull modification in Europe (Hakenbeck was not involved in the study).

According to Novak, about a dozen ACD skulls have been found in Croatia outside of Hermanov vinograd, but to date scientific studies of these skulls have not been published.

Enter the Huns

Novak and his colleagues think their findings lend support to a long-standing theory that the Huns—a nomadic, horse-riding confederacy that some believe originated in East Asia—introduced ACD in Central Europe.

"For the first time now we have physical, biological evidence of the presence of East Asian people, probably the Huns, in this part of Europe, based on ancient DNA results," Novak says.

Related Slideshow: 16 of history's greatest unsolved mysteries (Provided by Photo Services)

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However, the exact homeland of the Huns is a matter of debate among archaeologists, and other scholars have suggested this group came not from East Asia but from north of the Black Sea.

Genetic data alone also can't prove that a specific individual from the past—such as the boy with the most elongated skull at Hermanov vinograd—would have identified as a Hun, which Novak is quick to acknowledge.

"I wouldn't say that we can say, based on ancient DNA, that this [person] is an Ostrogoth or this [person] is a Hun," Novak says. "It also depends on how people felt about themselves, which is quite subjective"—and fairly impossible to glean without written sources, which the Huns didn't leave.

After studying the spread of ACD skulls discovered in Europe and Eurasia, Hakenbeck doesn't think there's an exclusive link between Huns and the practice. "More likely the practice came to Europe through connections with the Eurasian steppes that aren't necessarily historically attested," she says. "It's possible that the Huns contributed to that, but they weren't the only ones."

More surprising stories

How the teens came to be buried in the pit together is also still a mystery. Hermanov vinograd is the site of a large Neolithic settlement but there is no Migration Period settlement in the immediate vicinity. The one-off burial wasn't part of any larger, established cemetery, and was perhaps linked to a community of nomads or a group of people who lived elsewhere, Novak says. The boys had similar diets in their final years, suggesting they had lived in the same place for some time. They were buried with horse and pig bones, and their cause of death is unclear. Though the incomplete skeletal remains show no signs of a violent death, the researchers think it's possible that the teens were killed in some sort of ritual, or that they may have died of plague or another quick-killing disease.

"The caveat is really that it's a small sample size—it's just one burial and we don't have much information about what it is," says Krishna Veeramah, a geneticist at Stony Brook University in New York, who was not involved in the study. "But even so, it's interesting that you'd have such diversity."

Last year, Veeramah and his colleagues published a study analyzing the DNA of women with artificial cranial deformation who had been buried in southern Germany during the Migration Period. Those women had very diverse genetic backgrounds, including possible components of East Asian ancestry, and one possible explanation for this pattern is that women with ACD skulls migrated westward by marriage. According to Hakenbeck, the majority of individuals with modified skulls in Europe and western Eurasia are female, at a ratio of about 2 to 1.

Novak says that with more samples, researchers could get a finer and more precise resolution on where people who practised ACD came from and figure out if it really was a visual indicator of association with a certain cultural group.

There hasn't been much work studying the DNA of individuals with ACD skulls, and the Migration Period in Europe hasn't been very well covered in the plethora of ancient DNA studies that have been published in the last two decades, says Ron Pinhasi of the University of Vienna, another senior author of the new study.

In terms of genetic data, "we know a lot more about what happened 5,000 years ago in Europe than we know what happened 1,500 years ago in Europe," Pinhasi says. However, he thinks that's starting to change, and he expects to see more investigations on DNA samples from the last 2,000 years.

"I think we're going to find a lot more surprising stories," says Pinhasi. "And maybe when they're pieced together, we'll have a very different understanding of the Migration Period."

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/offbeat/can-dna-solve-the-mystery-of-europes-pointy-skulls/ar-AAGbbQr

[CaaC (John)+]

Rare Pictish stone carved 1,200 years ago discovered at an early Christian church in the Scottish Highlands is 'of national importance'

The stone, thought to have been carved around 12,000 years ago, is decorated with a number of Pictish symbols and is said by experts to be of national importance

A Pictish stone described as a 'once-in-a-lifetime find' has been uncovered in the Scottish Highlands.

The stone, thought to have been carved around 12,000 years ago, is decorated with a number of Pictish symbols and is said by experts to be of national importance.

It is believed the stone, discovered at an early Christian church site in Dingwall, originally stood at more than 7.8 feet (2.4 metres) high.

A Pictish stone described as a 'once-in-a-lifetime find' has been uncovered in the Scottish Highlands

It now measures around 4.9 feet (1.5 metres), having been broken over the years and been reused as a grave marker in the 1790s.

WHAT WERE PICTISH STONES? 

The Picts are known chiefly for their elaborately but regularly decorated memorial stones found in profusion throughout eastern Scotland from Shetland to the Firth of Forth. 

The symbol stones are decorated in a structured way with a series of animal and object symbols current in late Roman Iron Age times - including mirrors, combs, cauldrons, geese and hounds.

Gallery: 10 priceless artefacts countries are arguing over (Photos)

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They were erected from perhaps as early as the fifth century AD but were chiefly in use in the sixth and seventh centuries.

In the seventh or eighth centuries, simple cross-incised stones which were most likely grave-markers, indicate the arrival of Christianity in Aberdeenshire 

Anne MacInnes, from the North of Scotland Archaeological Society, was the first to recognise the stone while carrying out a survey at the church site.

It now measures around 4.9 feet (1.5 metres), having been broken over the years and been reused as a grave marker in the 1790s.

She said: 'I was clearing vegetation when I spotted the carving. I really couldn't believe what I was seeing.'

The find was verified by archaeologists from Highland Council and Historic Environment Scotland, before being safely removed from the site by specialist conservators.

The stone will now be professionally conserved with a view to ultimately putting it on public display at a Highland museum or other suitable venue.

 The find was verified by archaeologists from Highland Council and Historic Environment Scotland, before being safely removed from the site by specialist conservators

Kirsty Cameron, an archaeologist at Highland Council, said: 'This is a once-in-a-lifetime find and what started as a small recording project has resulted in the identification of not only this important stone but also that the site itself must be much older than anyone ever expected.

'All credit goes to the local archaeologists for immediately recognising the importance of the stone and putting plans in place for securing its future.'

Designs on the stone include several mythical beasts, oxen, an animal-headed warrior with sword and shield, and a double-disc and z rod symbol.

The stone will now be professionally conserved with a view to ultimately putting it on public display at a Highland museum or other suitable venue

Details of the carvings on the reverse side of the stone are not yet known but experts suggest that, based on examples from similar stones, they are likely to include a large ornate Christian cross.

It would make the stone one of an estimated 50 complete or near-complete Pictish cross-slabs known across the world, and the first to be discovered on the Scottish mainland for many years.

John Borland, president of the Pictish Arts Society, said: 'The discovery of the top half of a large cross-slab with Pictish symbols is of national importance.

 It is believed the stone, discovered at an early Christian church site in Dingwall, originally stood at more than 7.8 feet (2.4 metres) high

'The findspot - an early Christian site in Easter Ross - is a new location for such sculpture so adds significant information to our knowledge of the Pictish church and its distribution.

'This new discovery will continue to stimulate debate and new research.'    

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/rare-pictish-stone-carved-1200-years-ago-discovered-at-an-early-christian-church-in-the-scottish-highlands-is-of-national-importance/ar-AAGfTF5

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Archaeologists remain baffled by a 1,000-year-old skeleton discovered in 1928 which was used by Nazis and the Soviet Union as propaganda - as new study offers no clues

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A skeleton from the Middle Ages that was first discovered inside Prague Castle in 1928 and then used as gruesome Nazi propaganda continues to baffle scientists. 

The man who lived during the 10th century was buried with a sword and two knives have long been the focal point of a debate that rages between warring academics.

No agreement has been found among experts as to who or what the individual was, despite Hitler's government claiming the remains 'proved' the castle was Germanic.

The skeleton made another bizarre appearance later when the Soviets tried to pull the same trick the Nazis and claim it was of Soviet origin. 

The latest analysis says it could be a Slav from a neighbouring region, 'who had mastered Old Norse as well as Slavonic' or he may have been a legitimate Viking.

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A new study published in the journal Antiquity looked at all previous analysis and theories to try and reach a conclusion.  

However, the authors failed to bring any clarity to the murky picture. 

The authors could not conclude for definite the origin of the bones but were able to give some clarity to possible explanations. 

They write: '[The] material culture is a mix of foreign (i.e. non-Czech) items, such as the sword, axe and 'fire striker' (a common piece of Viking equipment), and domestic objects, such as the bucket and the knives'.

They also reveal that the sword is especially unique as it is the only one discovered in 1,500 early medieval graves so far found in Prague Castle. 

Related Slideshow: 16 of history's greatest unsolved mysteries (Provided by Photo Services)

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It is possible, they say, that the individual was a Slav from a neighbouring region, 'who had mastered Old Norse as well as Slavonic' or he may have been a legitimate Viking. 

On 11 July 1928, the remains of a male were discovered under the courtyard of Prague Castle.

A project to excavate the region led by the National Museum intended to study the earliest phases of the Castle stumbled across the skeleton for the first time. 

The body was located on the edge of an old burial ground from when a hill fort was built on the site, likely dating to AD 800–950/1000. 

It had a number of weapons, including a sword, located in the grave with the remains. 

THE HISTORY OF THE PRAGUE CASTLE SKELETON 

It was discovered by Ivan Borkovský on July 11 1982. 

The true identity was unknown and the discoverer opted not to publish his findings. 

It is possible he was concerned with the progress of his application for Czech citizenship.

This decision proved fateful when the Nazis invaded.

Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia in 1939 and seized Prague Castle, and the skeleton, and claimed it was German in order to further the Nazi ideology. 

The nation then came under the control of the Soviets in 1945. 

They tried a similar tactic with the skeleton. 

His true origin is unknown, but his burial with weapons and some analysis has found he may have been a Slav from a neighbouring region, 'who had mastered Old Norse as well as Slavonic' or he may have been a legitimate Viking.

It was discovered by Ivan Borkovský, a Ukrainian who fought for both the Austro-Hungarians and the Russians in the early 20th century.  

Nazi soldiers invaded Czechoslovakia in 1939 and the discoverer became embroiled in a scandal and accusations were fired at him that he conspired to conceal the skeleton's true identity. 

Nazi's claimed the remains were Germanic, or maybe Viking, but certainly not Slavic.

The Nazis pushed this unfounded ideology to add credence to their claim that German heritage was a real thing which spread over established borders of space and time.    

The unwitting remains became part of a larger rhetoric which claimed Prague Castle, a national landmark, belonged to Germany. 

Mr Borkovský is thought to have attempted to publish his analysis but was threatened with imprisonment in a concentration camp if he did so.  

The tale of the discoverer became almost as enthralling as the skeleton's story itself when Czechoslovakia was occupied by the Soviets and in 1945.

His anti-communist past condemned him to a Siberian gulag, but he narrowly escaped and fled the country.  

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/offbeat/archaeologists-remain-baffled-by-a-1000-year-old-skeleton-discovered-in-1928-which-was-used-by-nazis-and-the-soviet-union-as-propaganda-as-new-study-offers-no-clues/ar-AAGgwvH

Edited August 25, 2019 by CaaC (John)
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Pumice island size of Manhattan floating in Pacific

An underwater volcano is the likely source of a pumice stone island, the size of Manhattan, which has formed in the Pacific.

The huge mass of stone, near to Tonga, has been floating through the Pacific for the last two weeks and follows reports of plumes of smoke from the direction of a named submarine volcano.

But NASA reports that volcanologists at the Smithsonian in the US believe the pumice raft could be from an unnamed volcano, which hasn't had a reported explosion since 2001.

The NASA Earth Observatory wrote: "On August 13, 2019, the Operational Land Imager on Landsat 8 acquired natural-colour imagery of a vast pumice raft floating in the tropical Pacific Ocean near Late Island in the Kingdom of Tonga.

"NASA's Terra satellite detected the mass of floating rock on August 9; the discoloured water around the pumice suggests that the submarine volcano lies somewhere below.

"By August 13, the raft had drifted southwest. As of August 22, the raft had moved north again and was a bit more dispersed, but still visible."

Shannon Lenz, who sailed through the field of various size rocks making up the pumice island, wrote: "We sailed through a pumice field for six to eight hours, much of the time there was no visible water.

"It was like ploughing through a field. We figured the pumice was at least 6 inches thick."

Michael Hoult and Larissa Brill, who were sailing to Fiji in a catamaran, passed the raft and logged a detailed explanation of what they saw on Facebook.

They said: "We had heard the previous day on email of "pumice fields" 50NM North of Vava'u. We saw none as we rounded North of Vava'u earlier in the day on our route ex Bora Bora.

"Sailing on 255T we started seeing some floating rocks of random sizes (marbles to tennis balls) from position 18 46' S 174 55'W.

"We reduced sail to slow our speed."

They reported a smell of sulphur and started to see and strike larger rocks as they sailed through.

The pair reported seeing rocks the size of basketballs and have passed on a warning to other boats sailing in the same areas to travel as slowly as possible.

According to Scott Bryan of Queensland University, the travelling pumice stones may help the Australian Great Barrier Reef to recover.

He told The Guardian: "Based on past pumice raft events we have studied over the last 20 years, it's going to bring new healthy corals and other reef dwellers to the Great Barrier Reef.

"Each piece of pumice is a rafting vehicle. It's a home and a vehicle for marine organisms to attach and hitch a ride across the deep ocean to get to Australia."

Writing on Discover Magazine's blog, Volcanologist Erik Klemetti of Denison University said: "Pumice rafts can drift for weeks to years, slowly dispersing into the ocean currents. These chunks of pumice end up making excellent, drifting homes for sea organisms, helping them spread.

"The erupted pumice means this volcano erupts magma high in silica like rhyolite."

The raft is about 150 square km, and events similar to this happen about every five years.

Gallery: Earth from space: Spectacular volcanic eruptions seen from above (Espresso)

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https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/pumice-island-size-of-manhattan-floating-in-pacific/ar-AAGmTPC?ocid=chromentp

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Skull of humankind's oldest-known ancestor discovered

VIDEO

The face of the oldest species that unambiguously sits on the human evolutionary tree has been revealed for the first time by the discovery of a 3.8 million-year-old skull in Ethiopia.

The fossil belongs to an ancient hominin, Australopithecus anamensis, believed to be the direct ancestor of the famous “Lucy” species, Australopithecus afarensis. It dates back to a time when our ancestors were emerging from the trees to walk on two legs, but still had distinctly ape-like protruding faces, powerful jaws and small brains, and is the oldest-known member of the Australopithecus group.

While Lucy became celebrated in studies of human evolution, her direct predecessor has remained a shadowy trace on the record, with only a handful of teeth, some limb bones and a few fragments of the skull to provide clues about appearance and lifestyle.

The latest specimen, a remarkably complete adult male skull casually named MRD, changes this.

“It is good to finally be able to put a face to the name,” said Stephanie Melillo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, based in Germany, who is the co-author of an analysis of the find.

Prof Fred Spoor of the Natural History Museum, London, who was not involved in the research, said the discovery of MRD – and its dating to a period when the fossil record is very sparse – would substantially affect thinking on the evolutionary family tree of early hominins. “This cranium looks set to become another celebrated icon of human evolution,” he said.

The skull shows that MRD had a small brain – about a quarter of the size of a modern human – but was already losing some of its ape-like features. Its canines are smaller than those seen in even earlier fossils and it is already developing the powerful jaw and prominent cheekbones seen in Lucy and the famous Mrs Ples fossil (another later member of the Australopithecus group), which scientists think helped them chew tough food during dry seasons when less vegetation was available.

The dating of the skull also reveals that Anamensis and its descendent species, Lucy, coexisted for a period of at least 100,000 years. This discovery challenges the long-held notion of linear evolution, in which one species disappears and is replaced by a new one. Anamensis, which now spans from 4.2 million to 3.8 million years ago, is still thought to be Lucy’s ancestor but continued to hang around after the Lucy group branched off from the parent lineage. Geological evidence suggests the landscape would have featured extremely steep hills, volcanoes, lava flows and rifts that could easily have isolated populations, allowing them to diverge.

Divergent groups may have later crossed paths and competed for food and territory.

Yohannes Haile-Selassie, of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History and Case Western Reserve University, who led the research, said: “This is a game-changer in our understanding of human evolution during the Pliocene

Afarensis, which continued to appear on the fossil record until at least 3 million years ago, has often been put forward as a likely candidate ultimately giving rise to the Homo lineage to which modern humans belong. But the discovery that multiple different lineages coexisted makes this hypothesis much less certain, according to the researchers.

“Having multiple candidates ancestral species in the right time and place makes it more challenging to determine which gave rise to Homo,” said Melillo.

Spoor described Anamensis as the “oldest-known species that is unambiguously part of the human evolutionary tree”. Older fossils, like Ardi, which dates to 4.4 million years, are more contentious – some say it is on the human lineage, while others regard it as an extinct form of ape.

The first piece of the new fossil, the upper jaw, was found by a local worker in February 2016, in the Afar region of Ethiopia. “I couldn’t believe my eyes when I spotted the rest of the cranium. It was a eureka moment and a dream come true,” said Haile-Selassie.

Fossil pollen grains and chemical remains of fossil plant and algae taken from the sediment suggest that the individual lived by a river or along the shores of a lake surrounded by trees and shrubland.

The findings are published in the journal Nature.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/techandscience/skull-of-humankinds-oldest-known-ancestor-discovered/ar-AAGt1VO?li=BBoPWjQ

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The mysterious prehistoric city built on a coral reef

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The mysterious prehistoric city built on a coral reef

In a remote region of the western Pacific Ocean lies a stunning and spooky unsolved mystery: the ruins of the ancient city of Nan Madol.

Located next to the eastern shore of Micronesian island Pohnpei, this once-great, prehistoric city is comprised of nearly 100 geometrically shaped man-made stone islands, and it’s the only ancient city built atop a coral reef.

No one is sure of the origins, nor why anyone would want to build a city far from food and water, and yet its ruins are rife with stories and spirits. Check out the gallery for a brief tour of the space and travel back in time.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/offbeat/the-mysterious-prehistoric-city-built-on-a-coral-reef/ss-AAGGFvh

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A Lost Japanese Village Has Been Uncovered in the British Columbia Wilderness

The site is located on the Lower Seymour Conservation Reserve, about 12 miles northeast of Vancouver. It’s approximately the size of a football field and contains the remains of more than a dozen cabins, a bathhouse, a road made of cedar planks, and a cedar platform that may have been a shrine. Muckle and his students have also unearthed more than 1000 items, including sake and beer bottles from Japan, teapots, game pieces, medicine bottles, clocks, pocket watches, clothing buttons, coins, and hoards of ceramics.

Japanese businessman Eikichi Kagetsu secured logging rights to the area near the camp around 1918, so it’s likely that the settlers were originally loggers and their families. Though the trees were cleared out by 1924 and Kagetsu continued his business ventures on Vancouver Island, there's evidence to suggest that some members of the logging community didn't leave right away.

Muckle believes that at least some of the 40 to 50 camp inhabitants chose to remain there, protected from rising racism in Canadian society, until 1942, when the Canadian government started moving Japanese immigrants to internment camps in the wake of the outbreak of World War II.

Muckle thinks the residents must have evacuated in a hurry since they left so many precious and personal items behind. “When people leave, usually they take all the good stuff with them,” he told North Shore News. His team even uncovered parts of an Eastman Kodak Bulls-Eye camera, a house key, and an expensive cookstove that someone had hidden behind a stump on the edge of the village. “They were probably smart enough to realize people might loot the site,” he added.

Related Slideshow - Amazing archaeological finds (Provided by Photo Services)

SLIDES - 1/14

According to Smithsonian.com, Japanese immigrants had been victims of racism and discrimination in Canada since the first wave of immigration from Japan in 1877. They were generally met with hostility across the country, and kept from voting, entering the civil service, and working in law and other professions. Anti-Japan sentiment dramatically worsened after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, and The Canadian Encyclopedia estimates that more than 90 per cent of Japanese Canadians—many of them citizens by birth—were displaced during the war.

To Muckle, this all contributes to the likelihood that villagers would have chosen to stay insulated by the forest for as long as they could. “The impression that I get, generally speaking, is it would have been a nice life for these people,” he said. It wouldn't be the first time a remote, wild area served as a refuge for a persecuted community—farther south and east, escaped enslaved people settled in the swamplands bordering North Carolina and Virginia for the century leading up to the Civil War.

While Muckle believes people stayed in the Canadian camp until the 1940s, it's hard to prove—there are no records for the inhabitants of the camp or where they might have gone. If there’s evidence in the village that can prove residents did stay until the 1940s, it will soon fall to other curious archaeologists to find it: Muckle thinks this will be his last season at the site.

Or, maybe the smoking gun will be discovered by someone who isn’t an archaeologist at all. Here are 10 times ordinary people (and one badger) unearthed amazing archaeological finds.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/offbeat/a-lost-japanese-village-has-been-uncovered-in-the-british-columbia-wilderness/ar-AAGTsVt

 

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'Nearly-complete' skeleton of a 26-foot long duck-billed dinosaur that roamed modern-day Japan 72 million years ago is unearthed

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A magnificent dinosaur that lived 72 million years ago has been unearthed in Japan.

The crested creature is one of the best prehistoric fossils ever found - with virtually the entire remains perfectly preserved.

It includes the skull, jawbones, spine, ribs and teeth, plus the front and back legs.

Experts believe the discovery is globally significant because it shows Asia and the United States were joined by land in the age of dinosaurs.

HOW DID THEY LOOK? 

Kamuysaurus was a member of the species known as Edmontosaurus that roamed Earth during the Late Cretaceous. 

They were among the most successful and diverse group of dinosaurs. They were large-bodied with stiff tails. 

They had specialised jaws and teeth that enabled them to grind down tough ferns and leaves. 

Related slideshow: The world's most valuable dinosaurs ever found (Provided by Lovemoney)

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The front of the snout was flattened, like a duck's bill. 

They walked on all fours. Some had elaborate crests and other headgear, possibly for attracting mates.

Corresponding author Professor Yoshitsugu Kobayashi said: 'It is rare and pretty astonishing to find an almost complete skeleton.

'There is no doubt that this is the best-preserved large dinosaur skeleton from Japan.'

It has been named Kamuysaurus japonicus after a spiritual being worshipped by people on Hokkaido Island, in northern Japan, where it was dug up.

The plant-eater was more duck-billed than most with a face like a shovel at the end of a long neck.

It was 26 feet (eight metres) long and weighed more than five tons. It was at least nine years old at the time of its death, making it a juvenile.

It had a thin, bony crest on its head - a feature of the hadrosaur family to which it belonged.

Kamuysaurus was a member of the species known as Edmontosaurus that roamed Earth during the Late Cretaceous. They inhabited North America with fossils found in places such as Montana, Nebraska and New Jersey. 

Genetic analysis found it is closely related to the dinosaurs Kerberosaurus and Laiyangosaurus from Russia and China, respectively.

Comparing it with 70 other hadrosaurs also detected so many unique characteristics that it was identified as a dinosaur completely new to science.

Its discovery in marine sediment adds to evidence that hadrosaurs, although spending most of their time on land, liked to live by the water.

They were among the most successful and diverse group of dinosaurs. They were large-bodied with stiff tails. They had specialised jaws and teeth that enabled them to grind down tough ferns and leaves. The front of the snout was flattened, like a duck's bill.

They walked on all fours. Some had elaborate crests and other headgear, possibly for attracting mates.

Co-author Dr Anthony Fiorillo, the chief curator at the Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Texas, said: 'This discovery is not only significant for the people of Hokkaido and all of Japan. 

'It has global significance because this dinosaur shows us how the world has been connected through time. Kamuysaurus is closely related to the animal we study from Alaska, Edmontosaurus, a duck-billed dinosaur also found throughout much of western North America.

'Because these dinosaurs are so closely related, they provide further evidence that long ago, Asia and North America were connected.'

Known as the Bering Land Bridge, it ran between Siberia and Alaska. It has been described as 'a dinosaur migration highway'.

The first 13 ribs of Kamuysaurus were stumbled upon by a local resident in 2003. They were originally thought to belong to a prehistoric sea creature called a plesiosaur.

It was only eight years later that it was identified as a dinosaur. So Prof Kobayashi's team carried out two expeditions to the fossil site in 2013 and 2014.

While exploring the same hill, they came across so many more bones they were able to perform a total reconstruction.

The preparation has taken nearly a decade, with the help of a large number of volunteers. Many miscellaneous bones remain to be identified.

Dr Fiorillo added: 'But the fossils clearly demonstrate this is a nearly complete skeleton including multiple skull elements and a nearly complete series of vertebrae and fore and hind limbs.'

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/offbeat/nearly-complete-skeleton-of-a-26-foot-long-duck-billed-dinosaur-that-roamed-modern-day-japan-72-million-years-ago-is-unearthed/ar-AAGS1WM

Edited September 6, 2019 by CaaC (John)

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Remarkable 2,100-year-old 'iPhone' found deep in young woman's grave

VIDEO

A remarkable 2,137-year-old object - said to resemble an "iPhone" - has been dug from a grave of a young woman.

The structure is made of black gemstone jet - a type of lignite - with inlays of semi-precious stones.

It was found after the Ala-Tey necropolis, a reservoir near Sayano-Shushenskaya Dam, Russia's biggest power plant, was drained.

Experts say the deceased was a fashionable young woman who lived in the Hunnu-era (Xiongnu) in rural south Russia. It is believed she actually wore the object like a belt buckle.

"Natasha’s’ burial with a Hunnu-era (Xiongnu) iPhone remains one of the most interesting at this burial site.

"Hers was the only belt decorated with Chinese wuzhu coins which helped us to date it," said Dr Pavel Leus, who led the team of archaeologists in the summer.

© IHMC RAS/Pavel Leus Archaeologists were in awe to find a 2,100-year-old object in a grave

Photos of the accessory capture its extraordinary turquoise and red inlays.

The buckle, around seven by three and a half inches in size, was discovered in the normally submerged "Atlantis necropolis" near the dam.

The region is Tuva, a largely mountainous sprawl of beautiful countryside - a holiday spot frequented regularly by Vladimir Putin.

Other graves of prehistoric civilisations dating from the Bronze Age to the time of Genghis Khan are located in the area.

Two more partly-mummified prehistoric fashionistas - buried with the tools of their trade - were unearthed earlier this year.

Dr Marina Kilunovskaya from the St Petersburg Institute of Material History Culture, who leads the Tuva Archeological Expedition, said: "This site is a scientific sensation.

© IHMC RAS/Pavel Leus It is understood the object was used as a belt buckle

"We are incredibly lucky to have found these burials of rich Hun nomads that were not disturbed by (ancient) grave robbers."

Scientists admit they are in a race against time to examine the sites and save priceless treasures from damage by water.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/offbeat/remarkable-2100-year-old-iphone-found-deep-in-young-womans-grave/ar-AAH02mN

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History buff finds ships that sank in 1878 in Lake Michigan

© Provided by The Associated Press In this Aug. 24, 2019, photo provided by John Janzen, diver John Scoles manoeuvres around the wreckage of the schooners Peshtigo and St. Andrews, lost in 1878 near Beaver Island in northern Lake Michigan. A group of maritime history enthusiasts led by Boyne City, Michigan diver and explorer, Bernie Hellstrom have announced the discovery of the schooners. The site was located in 2010 by Hellstrom during one of his many trips to explore the Beaver Island archipelago. (John Janzen via AP)

A diver and maritime history buff has found two schooners that collided and sank into the cold depths of northern Lake Michigan more than 140 years ago.

Bernie Hellstrom, of Boyne City, Michigan, said he was looking for shipwrecks about 10 years ago when a depth sounder on his boat noted a large obstruction about 200 feet (60 meters) down on the lake bottom near Beaver Island.

"I've made hundreds of trips to Beaver Island and every trip I go out the sounder is on," he told The Associated Press on Friday. "But if you happen to see something that's not normal, you go back. A lot are nothing but fish schools. This was 400 feet of the boat. There's nothing out there that big that's missing."

© Provided by The Associated Press This Aug. 24, 2019, photo provided by John Janzen, shows part of the wreckage of the schooners Peshtigo and St. Andrews, lost in 1878 near Beaver Island in northern Lake Michigan. A group of maritime history enthusiasts led by Boyne City, Michigan diver and explorer, Bernie Hellstrom have announced the discovery of the schooners. The site was located in 2010 by Hellstrom during one of his many trips to explore the Beaver Island archipelago. (John Janzen via AP)

He returned to the area in June with a custom-made camera system and discovered the Peshtigo and St. Andrews about 10 feet (3 meters) apart with their masts atop one another. The hull of one of the ships has a huge gash.

It had been believed the ships sank in 1878 farther to the east in the Straits of Mackinac in Lake Huron. But only one ship could be found and that was thought to be the St. Andrews.

"They never found the second boat," said Hellstrom, 63.

Hellstrom brought technical divers in to record video of the wrecks. Madison, Wisconsin-based marine historian Brendon Baillod was recruited to help solve the mystery.

Baillod said he searched through old news reports and learned that the Peshtigo and St. Andrews did hit each other and sink between Beaver and Fox islands, northwest of Charlevoix, Michigan.

The Peshtigo was 161 feet (49 meters) long and carrying coal. The St. Andrews was 143 feet (43 meters) long and carrying corn. The collision was blamed on confusion in signal torches, he said.

Two of the Peshtigo's crewmen were lost. Survivors from both ships were rescued by another passing schooner, according to Baillod.

Wayne Lusardi, Michigan's state maritime archaeologist, calls finding the actual resting place of the Peshtigo and St. Andrews a "fantastic discovery."

"You can argue that any new discovery is important because it really gives you a first-time look at something that has been lost and missing for such a long time," Lusardi said.

He added that the Peshtigo and St. Andrews "had been mistakenly identified as two vessels up in the Straits for decades."

"Now, it begs the question: What are those wrecks?" he said.

An estimated 6,000 shipwrecks sit on the bottoms of the Great Lakes, according to Cathy Green, executive director of the Wisconsin Maritime Museum in Manitowoc.

"If you think about it, cities like Chicago, Detroit and Milwaukee would never have been able to develop without the water highway," Green said. "When material remains of that history is found, it's a big deal to historians and archaeologists."

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/offbeat/history-buff-finds-ships-that-sank-in-1878-in-lake-michigan/ar-AAHDkts