Discovery & Weird News

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Recently Discovered Ancient Fossils May Be the 'Missing Link' Between Apes and Humans

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Fossils from a new species of ape have been discovered in Bavaria, and the discovery may shed light on how the ancestors of humans may have evolved to walk on two legs. 

The fossil of the great ape was unearthed with complete limb bones. He lived during the Miocene about 11.62 million years ago.

"The finds in southern Germany are a milestone in palaeoanthropology because they raise fundamental questions about our previous understanding of the evolution of the great apes and humans," Professor Madelaine Böhme from the University of Tübingen told BBC News.

Böhme also said this ape could be the best model we have to the "missing link" between apes and humans.

© Associated Press A man holds bones of the previously unknown primate species Danuvius Guggemos in his hand in Tuebingen, Oct.17, 2019.

The species was named Danuvius Guggemos by the palaeontologists. "Danuvius" is derived from the Celtic-Roman river god and "Guggemos" is to honour Sigulf Guggenmos, who discovered the site where they found the fossils.

Böhme said when Danuvius was alive, the area was a hot, flat landscape with forests and rivers not far from the Alps. 

A new study found that the ape creature may have used an unusual locomotion never seen until now, which could reveal how the ancestors of humans may have evolved to walk on two feet.

The fossils—two females, a juvenile and a male, who had the most complete set of limbs—were discovered in a clay pit in Bavaria between 2015 and 2018. 

© Atypeek/Getty Paleontologists unearthed 21 bones of the most complete partial skeleton of a male Danuvius.

The male animal's build, posture and locomotion are unique traits among primates. His strong ape-like arms were made for swinging from tree limbs but he also possessed human-like legs.

Researchers said Danuvius didn't favour either its arms or legs in movement but appeared to use them equally. Böhme and her colleagues suggested this newly identified type of locomotion—which they called "extended limb clambering"—could be the ancestral form of movement for both modern great apes and humans, reports Live Science.

One of the key traits that distinguish humans from our closest living relatives like modern great apes, chimpanzees, gorillas, bonobos and orangutans is how we walk upright on our feet. This allowed us to free our hands for using tools, which ultimately helped humanity spread across the planet.

In contrast, modern great apes possess long arms and traits that allow them to swing from branches using only their arms, which is called brachiation. Chimpanzees, bonobos and gorillas practice knuckle-walking.

The new research and where the fossils were found suggests our upright posture could have originated in a common ancestor of great apes and humans who lived in Europe. For many years, scientists thought those ancestors originated from Africa. 

Understanding how humans came to walk on two feet promises to answer many of the fundamental questions about the evolution of our species.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/techandscience/recently-discovered-ancient-fossils-may-be-the-missing-link-between-apes-and-humans/ar-AAJY8a4?ocid=chromentp

Edited November 7, 2019 by CaaC (John)
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World War II submarine found off the coast of Japan, ending the 75-year mystery

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A team of ocean explorers discovered the likely resting place of 80 U.S. sailors presumed dead when one of the most successful American submarines of World War II sank after leaving Pearl Harbor more than 75 years ago.

Private explorers found the USS Grayback about 1,400 feet below the ocean surface, off the coast of Japan, ending a decades-old mystery and bringing closure to relatives of those who went down with the ship.

Gloria Hurney, who lost her uncle Raymond Parks, an electrician's mate, first-class, and Kathy Taylor, who lost her uncle and Godfather John Patrick King, an electrician's mate, third class, were among the first to find out about the miraculous discovery.

"I committed from the very beginning, from a little girl, that I was gonna find him or follow him or keep his memory alive, whatever I could do," Taylor told ABC News in an interview. "I thought it was probably blown to pieces. That's what I thought. And obviously it's not." 

The Grayback, credited with sinking 14 enemy ships, was discovered south of Okinawa with much of its body still intact. Its plaque was still affixed to the front, but there was evidence that the sub likely was bombed.

Undersea explorers Tim Taylor and his wife Christine Dennison discovered the warship back in June and spent months searching for relatives of its crew who perished. Together, they've set out to find the wrecks of every American submarine lost in the war, an effort they dubbed the Lost 52 Project. So far, they've found five of 52 subs.

"We do not tell people that we're looking for these because we don't want to disappoint people, and we don't want to blast it across the internet until it's done properly through the Navy," Taylor told ABC News. "With the technology that we're using, and the ability to cover large swaths of ground, we're looking at the potential to find several more."

Researchers recently discovered a flaw in the translation of Japanese war records that misrepresented the spot where the Grayback may have sunk.

"The numbers that came out we're wrong, and that's how we found it," Taylor said. "It was mistranslated after post-WWII, and they changed one number -- an 8 to a 6 -- and our Japanese translator re-translated it, found it, put us 100 miles to a different area."

Dennison said the most important part of their work is about bringing closure to the families of those who died.

"It's very vital that we remember them, and that they feel that they haven't been forgotten, that their sacrifice wasn't in vain," Dennison said. "We are grateful for their sacrifices, and we will never forget our veterans. The most important thing is, they're here, now they can be celebrated again, they can be honoured again, and we know where they are."

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/world-war-ii-submarine-found-off-coast-of-japan-ending-75-year-mystery/ar-BBWAhn7?li=AAnZ9Ug

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Secrets of the largest ape that ever lived

A fossilised tooth left behind by the largest ape that ever lived is shedding new light on the evolution of apes.

Gigantopithecus blacki was thought to stand nearly three metres tall and tip the scales at 600kg.

In an astonishing advance, scientists have obtained molecular evidence from a two-million-year-old fossil molar tooth found in a Chinese cave.

The mystery ape is a distant relative of orangutans, sharing a common ancestor around 12 million years ago.

"It would have been a distant cousin (of orangutans), in the sense that its closest living relatives are orangutans, compared to other living great apes such as gorillas or chimpanzees or us," said Dr Frido Welker, from the University of Copenhagen

Human evolution hopes

The research, reported in Nature, is based on comparing the ancient protein sequence of the tooth of the extinct ape, believed to be a female, with apes alive today.

• 'Astonishing' fossil ape discovery revealed
• Mystery ape found in an ancient tomb.

Obtaining skeletal protein from a two-million-year-old fossil is rare if not unprecedented, raising hopes of being able to look even further back in time at other ancient ancestors, including humans, who lived in warmer regions.

There is a much poorer chance of being able to find ancient DNA or proteins in tropical climates, where samples tend to degrade quicker.

"This study suggests that ancient proteins might be a suitable molecule surviving across most of the recent human evolution even for areas like Africa or Asia and we could thereby in the future study our own evolution as a species over a very long time span," Dr Welker told BBC News.

Extinction clues

Gigantopithecus blacki was first identified in 1935 based on a single tooth sample. The ape is thought to have lived in Southeast Asia from two million years ago to 300,000 years ago.

Many teeth and four partial jawbones have been identified but the animal's relationship to other great ape species has been hard to decipher.

The ape reached massive proportions, exceeding that of living gorillas, based on analysis of the few bones that have been found.

It is thought to have gone extinct when the environment changed from forest to savannah.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-50409541

Edited November 14, 2019 by CaaC (John)

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In a first, fossil dinosaur feathers found near the South Pole

© Illustration by Peter Trusler A cache of fossilized feathers found in Australia provides solid evidence that small carnivorous dinosaurs, like the one illustrated here, sported insulating plumage to help them survive life within the southern polar circle.

Ten exquisitely preserved fossil feathers found in Australia represent the first solid evidence that feathered dinosaurs lived at Earth’s poles, palaeontologists report in an upcoming study in the journal Gondwana Research.

The feathers date back 118 million years to the early Cretaceous period when Australia was much farther south and joined with Antarctica to form Earth’s southern polar landmass. Although the environment would have been warmer than Antarctica today, the dinosaurs that sported this plumage probably endured many months of darkness and potentially freezing temperatures during winter. (By the late Cretaceous, Antarctica was warm enough for South American sauropods to trek across the south polar region and into Australia.)

“Fossils feathers have never been found in polar settings before,” says study coauthor Benjamin Kear, a palaeontologist at Uppsala University in Sweden. “Our discovery … shows for the first time that a diverse array of feathered dinosaurs and flight-capable primitive birds inhabited the ancient polar regions.”

While the delicate bones of dinosaur-era birds have been found in polar places before, none have so far sported fossilized feathers. Fossils of an extinct type of penguin found in Peru included plumage, but they date to about 36 million years ago when that landmass was seated farther north. (Find out why today’s birds are the dinosaurs that didn’t die.)

Finding Cretaceous feathers in this part of Australia is, therefore, a vital clue to the many uses ancient animals found for these distinct body coverings, from mating displays to flight. In this case, feathers may have been important for insulation, allowing small carnivorous dinosaurs to survive the difficult winter months.

Related Slideshow: Treading the footsteps of giants - where in the world to see dinosaur tracks (Provided by StarInsider)

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“It makes perfect sense that these feathers would have helped to keep dinosaurs and primitive birds warm at high latitudes during the Cretaceous,” says Ryan McKellar, an expert on fossil feathers and a curator at the Royal Saskatchewan Museum in Regina, Canada.

“It is spectacular to see data from rocks this old and this far south,” he adds. “The report provides a really important snapshot of early Cretaceous polar plumage.”

Lost to the lake

The newly described feathers were all found at a site called Koonwarra, about 90 miles southeast of Melbourne in the state of Victoria. A road cut into a hillside in the 1960s revealed a rich seam of fossils, and over the past 60 years, digs there have uncovered numerous fossil fish and plants, as well as the array of well-preserved plumage.

None of the feathers are currently associated with distinct dinosaur or bird bones. Instead, they were probably lost during moulting or preening and drifted on the wind onto the surface of an ancient lake, where they sank to the bottom and were preserved in the fine mud. (Also find out about a huge pterosaur that once soared over the Antarctic Peninsula.)

For the new study, Tom Rich of the Melbourne Museum and Patricia Vickers-Rich of Monash University, who have led digs at Koonwarra over the past 37 years, worked with an international team to analyze the finds, showing that the 10 feathers are highly diverse. The fossils include downy feathers for insulation, a fluffy protofeather that most likely belonged to a nonavian dinosaur, and one complex flight feather-like those on the wings of modern birds.

Most of these feathers are an inch or less in length and perhaps belonged to enantiornithines, an extinct group of primitive birds that were very diverse during this time in the early Cretaceous, Kear says. Some of the feathers are so tiny that there is the tantalizing possibility they came from hatchlings, he adds.

However, all but one of the feathers could not have sustained any kind of flight, further hinting that some of them may have belonged to ground-dwelling carnivorous dinosaurs, says lead author Martin Kundrát, a palaeontologist at of Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Slovakia.

The protofeather “is entirely consistent with some of the tufted [dinosaur] protofeathers identified from the early Cretaceous rocks of China, and from Canadian Cretaceous amber,” McKellar says. (See a whole dinosaur-era bird found trapped in amber.)

Based on its size, the protofeather was probably left by a relatively small dinosaur-like a dromaeosaur, the group of speedy carnivores that includes Velociraptor and Deinonychus. A few fossil bones and teeth have been found in Victoria that belonged to slender-snouted dromaeosaurs called unenlagiids, which are well known from South America and may have eaten fish. It makes sense, then, for similar dinosaurs to have been hunting next to a Cretaceous lake.

“We know from the abundant fossil fish in the lake that there would have been possibly a food source for them,” says Stephen Poropat, a palaeontologist at Swinburne University in Melbourne.

Seasonal colours?

The study authors also found fossilized traces of packets of the pigment called melanosomes in the feathers, suggesting that many of the animals would have been black, grey, or brown, or that they had dark stripes.

This is somewhat surprising for polar animals since dark colouration wouldn’t have been good camouflage in snowy, wintery environments, Poropat noes. Maybe these dinosaurs and birds were changing colour seasonally, as Arctic ptarmigans do today, he says.

“But it’s also possible that it wasn’t getting that cold at the South Pole during this part of the Cretaceous, and they didn’t need to be pale-coloured to blend in with snowdrifts,” he says.

Solving the puzzle will require more fossils, and Rich is hopeful that one day the team may find entire fossilized dinosaurs or birds at Koonwarra similar to the beautifully preserved feathered dinosaurs of northeastern China.

“To actually find the skeleton of a feathered dinosaur here in Australia would be amazing,” Poropat says. “And as far as we know, Koonwarra is the site from which it is likely to come.”

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/offbeat/in-a-first-fossil-dinosaur-feathers-found-near-the-south-pole/ar-BBWWkd8

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Archaeologists found ancient babies wearing skulls like helmets

Archaeologists in Ecuador have uncovered the remains of babies buried over 2,000 years ago. It would be an interesting find no matter the context, but these infants are leaving researchers scratching their heads for a very specific reason: The children were buried in “helmets” made from the skulls of other, older children.

The discovery is the subject of a new paper published in Latin American Antiquity. The team studying the site, led by Dr Sara Juengst, was left struggling to explain the symbolism behind the apparently rare custom, as it’s the first time archaeologists have found anything like it.

A total of 11 bodies were discovered at the ancient gravesite. Most of the remains were “normal,” but two infants buried there were laid to rest wearing the “cranial vaults” of others, specifically other older children. The researchers believe that these skull “helmets” were added at the time of burial, but they have no idea why.

The archaeologists can only guess what the reason behind this bizarre custom may have been. As LiveScience notes, the authors of the research have offered some interesting theories. One possible explanation is that the bone helmets were applied to protect the souls of the infants, who never had a chance to live their own lives.

It’s worth noting that scientists have also been unable to determine the causes of death. It’s unclear how the infants died, and the researchers are equally unsure of the cause of death of the children whose skulls were used as helmets.

Rituals and burial customs vary dramatically from one culture to the next, and when you’re looking back 2,100 years, some of the traditions carried out after a person’s death can seem incredibly bizarre to us. Whatever belief system led to this strange circumstance is unclear, but the archaeologists are continuing to explore possibilities.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/offbeat/archaeologists-found-ancient-babies-wearing-skulls-like-helmets/ar-BBWZpvu

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German scientists find a 44-million-year-old caterpillar

Scientists say it's the first time a fossil from a large butterfly species has been discovered preserved inside an ancient block of amber. They've described it as an "exceptional" find.

German researchers discovered a 44-million-year-old caterpillar, according to a paper published in the journal Scientific Reports on Wednesday.

The critter is the first caterpillar of its kind to be discovered in Baltic amber, according to researchers from the Bavarian State Collection of Zoology in Munich.

The 5-millimetre (0.2-inch) larva has been given the name Eogeometer vadens under the family of Geometridae butterflies, which comprises around 23,000 different species.

Scientists said the little caterpillar likely got trapped in a drop of tree resin, which ultimately hardened into amber and preserved the worm's unique structure over millions of years.

"Caterpillar finds in amber are rarities in any instance, and this is the first-ever large butterfly fossil to be found in Baltic amber," study co-author Axel Hausmann said. "This may be due to the nocturnal activity of most caterpillars," he added, given that resin would likely be closer to liquid in direct sunlight or warmer daytime temperatures.

Unlike most other butterfly species, Geometridae caterpillars only have two or three pairs of legs instead of the usual five pairs. This means they move forward with an unusual gait — by pushing their hind legs to their rear legs, then stretching out and repeating the action.

The researchers said the fossil would provide an insight into evolutionary processes during the Eocene period (about 34-56 million years ago) when flowering plants butterfly species would have been interacting with were already well established.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/offbeat/german-scientists-find-44-million-year-old-caterpillar/ar-BBX6z7a

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Nodosaur Dinosaur ‘Mummy’ Unveiled With Skin And Guts Intact

"We don't just have a skeleton," said one of the nodosaur researchers involved. "We have a dinosaur as it would have been."

The nodosaur is the crown jewel of a dino exhibit at the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology in Alberta, Canada. 

You can’t even see its bones, but scientists are hailing it as perhaps the best-preserved dinosaur specimen ever unearthed. That’s because those bones remain covered by intact skin and armour — 110 million years after the creature’s death.

The Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology in Alberta, Canada recently unveiled a dinosaur so well-preserved that many have taken to calling it not a fossil, but an honest-to-goodness “dinosaur mummy.”

With the creature’s skin, armour, and even some of its guts intact, researchers are astounded at its nearly unprecedented level of preservation.

“We don’t just have a skeleton,” Caleb Brown, a researcher at the Royal Tyrrell Museum, told National Geographic. “We have a dinosaur as it would have been.”

A National Geographic video about the nodosaur, the best-preserved fossil of its kind ever discovered.

When this dinosaur — a member of a newly discovered species called nodosaur — was alive, it was an enormous four-legged herbivore protected by a spiky, plated armour and weighed in at approximately 3,000 pounds.

Today, the mummified nodosaur is so intact that it still weighs 2,500 pounds.

How the dinosaur mummy could remain so intact is something of a mystery, although as CNN says, researchers suggest that the nodosaur may have been swept away by a flooded river and carried out to sea, where it eventually sank to the ocean floor.

As millions of years passed, minerals may have eventually taken the place of the dinosaur’s armour and skin. This might help explain why the creature was preserved in such a lifelike form.

How “lifelike” are we talking? According to Science Alert, the preservation was so good that researchers were able to find out the dinosaur’s skin colour.

By using mass spectrometry techniques, researchers detected pigments on the scales of the dinosaur. Apparently, the nodosaur’s colouring was a dark reddish-brown on the top of the body — and lighter on the underside.

The dinosaur was about 18 feet long and apparently built like a tank.

Scientists think the colouring was an early form of countershading — a camouflage technique that uses two tones to protect an animal from predators. Considering this dinosaur was a herbivore, its skin colour likely played a role in protecting it from the enormous carnivores of the time.

“Strong predation on a massive, heavily-armoured dinosaur illustrates just how dangerous the dinosaur predators of the Cretaceous must have been,” said Brown.

As if the preservation of skin, armour, and guts weren’t impressive enough, the dinosaur mummy is also unique in that it was preserved in three dimensions — meaning that the original shape of the animal was retained.

“It will go down in science history as one of the most beautiful and best-preserved dinosaur specimens — the Mona Lisa of dinosaurs,” said Brown.

The nodosaur has been described by some scientists as the “rhinoceros of its day.”

Although the nodosaur dinosaur mummy was exceptionally well-preserved, getting it to its current display form was still difficult. The creature was, in fact, first discovered in 2011 when a heavy-machine operator accidentally found the specimen while digging through oil sands in Alberta.

Since that lucky moment, it has taken researchers 7,000 hours over the course of six years to test the remains and prepare them for display at the Royal Tyrrell Museum. Now, visitors finally have the chance to gaze upon the closest thing to a real-life dinosaur that the world has likely ever seen.

https://allthatsinteresting.com/nodosaur-dinosaur-mummy?fbclid=IwAR23G0BehOEsqa6ftT-phKVvaamG6gx1lH13gq3sQEfGllycuOzPLRVNqQg

 

 

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Humpback Whale Carcass Mysteriously Discovered In The Amazon Jungle

The 36-foot-long whale was only discovered in the remote jungle when swooping scavenger birds alerted local officials with their screeching.

The whale is 36 feet long and weighs 10 tons.

While it’s no surprise that the Amazon rainforest is teeming with life, one particular discovery last week left even a seasoned team of wildlife experts and biologists in awe — when they came across the carcass of a 10-ton humpback whale in the shrubbery of Brazil’s Marajó Island.

Preliminary theories suggest that the whale washed ashore during a storm or that it was already dead when rising tides carried it on land — but scientists are confused as to how it managed to travel so far inland, or why it was swimming off the Marajó coast at all.

Pará state officials from the health, sanitation and environment department explained that only swooping scavengers hovering above the whale’s decomposing, 36-foot-long body alerted them to its presence, The Independent reported.

One possibility is that the animal was already dead when it washed ashore.

The animal is now being examined by marine specialists from local conservation group Bicho D’agua Institute, with preliminary assessments suggesting that the young whale died a few days before being found some 50 feet from the shore. Project leader Renata Emin, however, is still captivated by the mammal’s discovery and intrigued about its journey.

“We’re still not sure how it landed here, but we’re guessing that the creature was floating close to the shore and the tide, which has been pretty considerably over the past few days, picked it up and threw it inland, into the mangrove,” she said.

“Along with this astonishing feat, we are baffled as to what a humpback whale is doing on the north coast of Brazil during February because this is a very unusual occurrence,” she added.

Humpback whales are typically found in late summer and fall seasons, and much farther south. They have ventured north to the mouth of the Amazon River before — but it’s extremely rare. Emin posited that the young animal was separated from its mother, but the cause of death is still unknown.

“Depending on the state of decomposition, some information may already have been lost,” said Emin. “We are collecting as much information as we can get and identifying marks and wounds on its body to see if it was caught in a net or hit by a boat.”

State department official Dirlene Silva explained that access to the carcass and its region of discovery is so challenging that it has to be examined and pulled apart where it was found.

Experts are taking samples in an effort to narrow down the possible causes of death.

“It’s very difficult to get there and there’s no way we can send a bulldozer because it would not get through,” said Silva. “There is no way to remove it. To get there, we need to cross the swamp.”

As for the whale’s skeleton, however, the plan is to dismantle and preserve it — so that the natural history museum in the nearby capital of Belém can conserve it, study, and learn from it. Hopefully, this will begin to reveal what exactly happened to this baby humpback — so that the same thing might not also happen to others.

https://allthatsinteresting.com/humpback-whale-amazon-jungle?fbclid=IwAR2X5uJwan2tG_zYxWNFZqsVFUsa1LzmFJG-lozseU7MyIS8zd1ztW2B0U4

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Siberia: 18,000-year-old frozen 'dog' stumps scientists

Researchers are trying to determine whether an 18,000-year-old puppy found in Siberia is a dog or a wolf.

The canine - which was two months old when it died - has been remarkably preserved in the permafrost of the Russian region, with its fur, nose and teeth all intact.

DNA sequencing has been unable to determine the species.

Scientists say that could mean the specimen represents an evolutionary link between wolves and modern dogs.

Radiocarbon dating was able to determine the age of the puppy when it died and how long it has been frozen. Genome analyses showed that it was male.

Researcher Dave Stanton at the Centre for Palaeogenetics in Sweden told CNN the DNA sequencing issue meant the animal could come from a population that is a common ancestor of both dogs and wolves.

"We have a lot of data from it already, and with that amount of data, you'd expect to tell if it was one or the other," he said.

• New story for the domestication of dogs
• Study reveals the wolf within your pet dog

Another researcher from the centre, Love Dalen, tweeted a question about whether the specimen is a wolf cub or "possibly the oldest dog ever found".

Scientists will continue with DNA sequencing and think the findings could reveal a lot about the evolution of dogs.

The puppy has been named "Dogor", which means "friend" in the Yakut language and is also the start of the question "dog or wolf?"

Modern dogs are believed to be descendants of wolves, but there is debate over when dogs were domesticated.

A study published in 2017 suggested domestication could have occurred 20,000 to 40,000 years ago.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-50586508

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Britain's largest golden nugget worth £80,000 found in a river by a treasure hunter

A treasure hunter has found the largest gold nugget in Britain - at the bottom of a Scots river.

The diver, who wishes to remain anonymous, discovered the 22-carat lump using a method called "sniping".

It sees the prospector use a snorkel, dry suit and hand tools to search the bed of a river.

Weighing 121.3 grams it is the biggest of its kind in the UK and is thought to be worth £80,000.

It was found in two pieces which fit together perfectly but leave a small hole in the middle, earning it the name the Reunion Nugget.

The exact location of the discovery is being kept under wraps to avoid a Scottish Gold Rush. Lee Palmer, the author of Gold Occurrences In The UK, was approached by the finder of the nugget while researching for his book.

© Paul Jacobs/pictureexclusive.com People panning for gold in the Mennock Water, Scotland in 2017

He said: "This is now the largest nugget in existence in the UK. When you look at it, it's doughnut-shaped.

"There are no impurities in it, it is just pure gold nugget of about 22 carats. It really is a remarkable find."

The nugget was found in May in a location which is being kept a secret by the finder and the land's owner.

The prospector unearthed the larger piece first.

Mr Palmer, 50, said: "The man just threw the bigger piece in his bucket, he knew it was big but didn't realise how big."

He hopes it will be bought by a national museum. 

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2000-Year-Old Roman Tweezers and Metal Ear Swab Discovered in the UK

The ancient Romans took hygiene seriously. They pioneered indoor plumbing, deodorant, and the practice of bathing daily. A recent discovery made at a bridge construction site in the UK reinforces just how committed to cleanliness the Roman civilization was. As Geek.com reports, workers unearthed an ear cleaner and a pair of tweezers thought to date back 2000 years to the Roman Empire.

The artefacts were dug up by the Ebbsfleet Development Corporation at the location of the new Springhead Bridge in Ebbsfleet Garden City, a development in Kent. One small tool appears to be designed for pinching and plucking small items just like modern-day tweezers. The other object is thought to have been built for cleaning ears—but instead of cotton, the "swab" is made entirely of metal. They're thought to date back thousands of years, but the scientific analysis will need to be done to determine the exact age.

Grooming items weren't the only artefacts uncovered at the site. Workers also found a piece of timber believed to have been meant for an ancient structure. The Ebbsfleet River, where the new bridge is being built, was once a shipping hub and a Roman settlement called Vagniacis. Historical finds are so common in the area that the Ebbsfleet Development Corporation employs full-time archaeologists.

The personal hygiene tools have been removed from the archaeological site by experts who will study them to learn more about their origins. The fate of the artefacts is unclear, but the construction company behind the discovery hopes they can remain in the same city where they were found

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/offbeat/2000-year-old-roman-tweezers-and-metal-ear-swab-discovered-in-uk/ar-BBXMuwA

 

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Lavish Ancient Roman Villa Built With Timber Imported From Over 1,000 Miles Away Discovered Under City

An ancient Roman villa with a portico built from wood imported over 1,000 miles away has been discovered under the Italian city.

Finding well-preserved ancient wood is rare as it degrades and is rarely in good enough condition to analyze—so discovering timber at the site has allowed researchers to better understand the trading routes that existed 2,000 years ago.

The site was found between 2014 and 2016 during an archaeological excavation while construction took place on the Rome Metro. Researchers uncovered a villa and portico that once stood in the gardens of Via Sannio. "The portico was part of a rich Roman villa," Mauro BernabeiI, from the National Research Council, Italy, told Newsweek. "There were mosaics and columns and, as always happens in Rome, many different layers of buildings and constructions."

Bernabeil and his team were interested in studying 24 oak timber planks that were found at the site. Initially, they had just hoped to identify the tree species and potentially how old they were through tree-ring dating, he explained. However, while comparing their tree ring sequences to those from other European references, they realized they were able to find the exact location of where the trees had come from—the Jura mountains in eastern France, over 1,000 miles from Rome. They also found they were cut down between 40 and 60 AD. Findings are published in PLOS One.

"We were extremely excited...when we discovered the origin of the timber. [We were] very, very surprised. This long transportation [of timber] was not known," Bernabeil said. He added that the wood would have had to be moved overland by animals, then across both the Saone and Rhone rivers, then transported across the Mediterranean Sea until reaching the Tiber River and arriving in the centre of Rome.

The construction practices of the ancient Romans are of huge interest. For example, there has been much research into how they used concrete, in which they used volcanic ash to prevent cracking. Their advanced building techniques are why many structures, including the Pantheon and the Colosseum, have survived for so long.

Understanding where wood used for building the city would help researchers understand this vast empire's economy, its trade routes and structure.

Finding that timber used to build a villa in Rome came from so far away shows the huge logistical and administrative efforts that would have been made to get high-quality construction products for buildings in the capital. "Considering the distances, calculated to be over 1700 km [1056 miles], the timber's dimensions, road transport with all the possible obstacles along the way, floating the timber down rivers and finally shipping it across the sea, the logistic organization of the Romans must have been formidable," they said.

Considering the planks were used in the foundations of the portico, rather than being transported for aesthetic purposes, the researchers say the effort is even more surprising.

Bernabeil added: "I hope that this research opens new perspectives to the study of wood in archaeology, in Rome in particular, where the richness of remains left the wood as a neglected material of secondary importance."

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/offbeat/lavish-ancient-roman-villa-built-with-timber-imported-from-over-1000-miles-away-discovered-under-city/ar-BBXNsrs

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Sulawesi art: Animal painting found in a cave is 44,000 years old

A painting discovered on the wall of an Indonesian cave has been found to be 44,000 years old.

The art appears to show a buffalo being hunted by part-human, part-animal creatures holding spears and possibly ropes.

Some researchers think the scene could be the world's oldest-recorded story.

The findings were presented in the journal Nature by archaeologists from Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia.

Adam Brumm - an archaeologist at Griffith - first saw the pictures two years ago, after a colleague in Indonesia shimmied up a fig tree to reach the cave passage.

"These images appeared on my iPhone," said Mr Brumm. "I think I said the characteristic Australian four-letter word out very loud."

The Indonesian drawing is not the oldest in the world. Last year, scientists said they found "humanity's oldest drawing" on a fragment of rock in South Africa, dated at 73,000 years old.

What do the drawings show?

The drawings were found in a cave called Leang Bulu'Sipong 4 in the south of Sulawesi, an Indonesian island east of Borneo.

The panel is almost five metres wide and appears to show a type of buffalo called an anoa, plus wild pigs found on Sulawesi.

Alongside them are smaller figures that look human - but also have animal features such as tails and snouts.

In one section, an anoa is flanked by several figures holding spears.

• 'Oldest animal painting' discovered
• Red dot becomes 'oldest cave art'

"I've never seen anything like this before," said Mr Brumm. "I mean, we've seen hundreds of rock art sites in this region - but we've never seen anything like a hunting scene."

However, other researchers have questioned whether the panel represents a single story - and say it could be a series of images painted over a longer period.

"Whether it's a scene is questionable," says Paul Pettitt, an archaeologist and rock-art specialist at Durham University told Nature.

How do we know it's 44,000 years old?

The team analysed calcite "popcorn" that had built up on the painting.

Radioactive uranium in the mineral slowly decays into thorium, so the team measured the levels of different isotopes of these elements.

They found the calcite on a pig began forming at least 43,900 years ago, and the deposits on two buffalo were at least 40,900 years old.

There are at least 242 caves or shelters with ancient imagery in Sulawesi alone - and new sites are being discovered annually.

How does it compare to other prehistoric art?

It may not be the oldest drawing, but researchers say it could be the oldest story ever found.

"Previously, rock art found in European sites dated to around 14,000 to 21,000 years old were considered to be the world's oldest clearly narrative artworks," said the paper in Nature.

The Sulawesi drawings could also be the oldest animal drawing ever found.

Last year, a cave painting in Borneo - thought to be the oldest of an animal - was found to be at least 40,000 years old.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-50754303

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DNA from Stone Age woman obtained 6,000 years on

This is the face of a woman who lived 6,000 years ago in Scandinavia.

Thanks to the tooth marks she left in ancient "chewing gum", scientists were able to obtain DNA, which they used to decipher her genetic code.

This is the first time an entire ancient human genome has been extracted from anything other than human bone, said the researchers.

She likely had dark skin, dark brown hair and blue eyes.

Dr Hannes Schroeder from the University of Copenhagen said the "chewing gum" - actually tar from a tree - is a very valuable source of ancient DNA, especially for time periods where we have no human remains.

"It is amazing to have gotten a complete ancient human genome from anything other than bone,'' he said.

What do we know about her?

The woman's entire genetic code, or genome, was decoded and used to work out what she might have looked like. She was genetically more closely related to hunter-gatherers from mainland Europe than to those who lived in central Scandinavia at the time, and, like them, had dark skin, dark brown hair and blue eyes.

She was likely descended from a population of settlers that moved up from western Europe after the glaciers retreated.

How did she live?

Other traces of DNA gave clues to life at Syltholm on Lolland, an island of Denmark in the Baltic Sea. The DNA signatures of hazelnut and mallard duck were identified, showing these were part of the diet at the time.

"It is the biggest Stone Age site in Denmark and the archaeological finds suggest that the people who occupied the site were heavily exploiting wild resources well into the Neolithic, which is the period when farming and domesticated animals were first introduced into southern Scandinavia," said Theis Jensen from the University of Copenhagen.

The researchers also extracted DNA from microbes trapped in the "chewing gum". They found pathogens that cause glandular fever and pneumonia, as well as many other viruses and bacteria that are naturally present in the mouth but don't cause disease.

Where did the DNA come from?

The DNA was stuck in a black-brown lump of birch pitch, produced by heating birch bark, which was used at that time to glue together stone tools.

The presences of tooth marks suggest the substance was chewed, perhaps to make it more malleable, or possibly to relieve toothache or other ailments.

What does the information tell us?

The researchers said the information preserved in this way offers a snapshot of people's lives, providing information on ancestry, livelihood and health.

DNA extracted from the chewing gum also gives an insight into how human pathogens have evolved over the years.

"To be able to recover these types of ancient pathogen genomes from material like this is quite exciting because we can study how they evolved and how they are different to strains that are present nowadays," Dr Schroeder told the BBC. "And that tells us something about how they have spread and how they evolved."

The research is published in the journal Nature Communications.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-50809586

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Israelis find rare Roman fish sauce factory

Israeli archaeologists have discovered the well-preserved remains of a 2,000-year-old factory for making garum, the fabled fish sauce that the Romans took with them on all their journeys of conquest.

The Israel Antiquities Authority came across the small cetaria, or factory for making the prized sauce, while inspecting the site of a planned sports park on the outskirts of the southern city of Ashkelon, Israel's Kan public broadcaster reports.

The dig was funded by the local authorities, and young people and school children from the Ashkelon area came to help out.

It is one of the very few garum factories found in the eastern Mediterranean, despite the Romans' long presence in the area and the premium they put on the pungent fermented sauce.

Most surviving examples are to be found in the Iberian Peninsula and southern Italy.

"We have something really unusual here," Israel Antiquities Authority archaeologist Dr Tali Erickson-Gini told The Times of Israel, as the Romans added garum to almost all their dishes to give them a salty savoury kick.

"It's said that making garum produced such a stench that cetaria were located some distance from the towns they served, and in this case, the factory is about two kilometres from ancient Ashkelon," Dr Tali Erickson-Gini said, according to Kan.

Although the garum factory was gradually abandoned after the Romans left, later rulers found the site was also suitable for cultivating grapes.

In the fifth century CE, a local Byzantine monastery made a living from producing wine there, and the remains of three winepresses have also been discovered at the site.

Anyone curious to see what a garum factory looked like is welcome to visit on the afternoon of 22 December, when the Israel Antiquities Authority will open the site to the public free of charge.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-50825512

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Hernan Cortés: Conquistador anchors found off Mexico Gulf Coast

Two 500-year-old iron ship anchors have been discovered on Mexico's Gulf Coast, potentially offering an insight into the Spanish invasion.

Archaeologists say they may have belonged to the fleet led by Spain's Hernán Cortés, who conquered the Aztec empire in the 16th Century.

Last year another anchor was discovered nearby, containing wood originating from a Spanish tree.

All three were found on the coast just north of the port city of Veracruz.

Originally known as Villa Rica, this was where Cortés' fleet landed in 1519. It became a bustling harbour town in the years following Spain's conquest over the Aztecs in 1521.

Divers located the anchors 10-15m (33-49ft) below the sea, under a thick layer of sediment.

Archaeologists hope the latest discovery will lead to the unearthing of more marine artefacts that can illustrate the history of the Spanish invasion. A further 15 potential sites containing anchors have been identified.

"The Conquest of Mexico was a seminal event in human history, and these shipwrecks, if we can find them, will be symbols of the cultural collision that led to what is now the West," said marine archaeologist Frederick Hanselmann.

Cortés is thought to have destroyed the ships - either by burning, deliberate sinking or beaching - in order to prevent his men from abandoning the voyage.

Earlier this year, Mexico's President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador asked Spain to apologise to indigenous Mexicans for abuses committed during the invasion.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-50835844

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World's oldest fossil trees uncovered in New York

The earliest fossilised trees, dating back 386 million years, have been found at an abandoned quarry in New York.

Scientists believe the forest they belonged to was so vast it originally stretched beyond Pennsylvania.

This discovery in Cairo, New York, is thought to be two or three million years older than what was previously the world's oldest forest at Gilboa, also in New York State.

The findings throw new light on the evolution of trees.

What did they find?

It was more than 10 years ago that experts from Cardiff University, UK, Binghamton University in the US and the New York State Museum began looking at the site in the foothills of the Catskill Mountains in the Hudson Valley.

Since then, they have mapped over 3,000 square metres of the forest and concluded the forest was home to at least two types of trees: Cladoxylopsids and Archaeopteris.

The third type of tree has yet to be identified.

Palaeobotanist Dr Chris Berry from Cardiff University is a co-author of the study in the journal Current Biology.

"This is the oldest place where you can wander around and map out where fossil trees were standing back in the middle part of the Devonian era."

Researchers say they also discovered very long, woody roots that transformed the way plants and soils gather water.

"It's a very ancient forest from the beginnings of the time where the planet was turning green and forests were becoming a normal part of the Earth's system," said Dr Berry.

It's understood the forest was wiped out by a flood. The researchers have found fish fossils on the surface of the quarry.

How does this help us understand the planet's past?

The point in time that the fossil trees date to marks a transition between a planet with no forests and a planet that is largely covered in trees.

Dr Berry says studying the site can give us a better understanding of how trees evolved and how they draw down carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere.

"We're well aware at the moment that having forests is a good thing and burning down forests and deforestation is a bad thing.

Prof Howard Falcon-Lang from Royal Holloway, London says there's no doubt this is the earliest fossilised forest that we know of.

"It may well be that in the future, something even older pops up - palaeontology is full of surprises!

"But for the time being, this is incredibly exciting."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-50840134

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Mount Vesuvius eruption: Extreme heat 'turned man's brain to glass'

Extreme heat from the Mount Vesuvius eruption in Italy was so immense it turned one victim's brain into glass, a study has suggested.

The volcano erupted in 79 AD, killing thousands and destroying Roman settlements near modern-day Naples.

The town of Herculaneum was buried by volcanic matter, entombing some of its residents.

A team of researchers has been studying the remains of one victim, unearthed at the town in the 1960s.

A study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Thursday, said fragments of a glassy, black material were extracted from the victim's skull.

Researchers behind the study believe the black material is the vitrified remains of the man's brain.

Vitrification, the study says, is the process by which material is burned at high heat and cooled rapidly, turning it into glass or a glaze.

"The preservation of ancient brain remains is an extremely rare find," said Dr Pier Paola Petrone, a forensic anthropologist at the University of Naples Federico II and lead author of the study.

"This is the first-ever discovery of ancient human brain remains vitrified by heat."

The victim, believed to be a man in his mid-20s, was "found lying on a wooden bed, buried by volcanic ash" at Herculaneum. He was probably killed instantly by the eruption, Dr Petrone said.

Analysis of charred wood found near the body showed a maximum temperature of 520C was reached.

This suggests "extreme radiant heat was able to ignite body fat and vaporise soft tissues", before a "rapid drop in temperature", the report says.

"The detection of glassy material from the victim's head, of proteins expressed in the human brain, and of fatty acids found in human hair indicates the thermally induced preservation of vitrified human brain tissue," the study says.

The glassy material was not found in other locations at the archaeological site.

• Narcissus fresco uncovered by archaeologists in Pompeii
• Vesuvius eruption may have been later than thought
• Italy stops UK tourist with Pompeii mosaic tiles

During the eruption of Vesuvius, Herculaneum was buried by pyroclastic flows, fast-moving currents of rock fragments, ash and hot gases.

That volcanic matter carbonised and preserved parts of the town, including the skeletons of residents who were unable to flee.

Archaeologists have been investigating the remains of Herculaneum, and Pompeii - the other famous Roman settlement destroyed by Vesuvius - for centuries.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-51221334

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Ship That Mysteriously Vanished in Bermuda Triangle Almost a Century Ago Discovered

The wreckage of a ship that mysteriously went missing in the Bermuda Triangle almost 100 years ago has been discovered off the coast of Florida, a team of researchers has said.

The SS Cotopaxi—an American merchant steamer—left Charleston, South Carolina on November 29, 1925, loaded with coal. But the vessel vanished without a trace before arriving at its final destination, Havana, Cuba.

The fate of the Cotopaxi and the 32 people on board has long puzzled experts, and the ship's disappearance has become one of the famous stories associated with the legend of the Triangle—a notorious region of the western North Atlantic Ocean where several ships and aircraft are said to have gone missing in strange circumstances.

"The Cotopaxi was on a routine voyage," marine biologist and underwater explorer Michael Barnette told Newsweek. "She was employed in the coal trade and so this was just another trip at the end of November of 1925. We know that on that voyage something happened because she delivered a mayday message early December saying she's in distress.

"And then that was it. They never found any wreckage. They never found any lifeboats, bodies or anything. The vessel just disappeared after that point. So we've been trying to determine what happened."

The story of the disappearance of the Cotopaxi has had a colourful past. Film director Steven Spielberg included the vessel in his sci-fi classic Close Encounters of the Third Kind, in which it was discovered in the Gobi Desert, having apparently been placed there by extraterrestrials. In 2015, a news report said the ship had reappeared near a restricted military zone off the coast of Cuba. Various versions of this story emerged in the years that followed. All have been dismissed as hoaxes, however.

Now, after almost a century of uncertainty and speculation, a more realistic explanation has emerged. Barnette and colleagues say they have located the wreck around 35 miles off the coast of St. Augustine, on Florida's northeast coast.

The discovery is revealed in an episode of Shipwreck Secrets, a new Science Channel series that starts next month.

"I've always been fascinated by history," Barnette, who has discovered the wrecks of numerous lost ships over the course of his career, said. "I'm a marine biologist by profession. But maritime history is my real passion. I like going out and trying to identify wrecks because everyone has a fascinating story. I'm just a very curious guy."

The search for the wreck began thousands of miles away from the Bermuda Triangle in London, England. Barnette contacted British historian Guy Walters and asked him to dig through the archives of Lloyd's of London, which contains insurance documents related to the ship's fateful voyage.

During his search, Walters managed to uncover evidence that the Cotopaxi had sent out a distress signal on December 1, 1925—a key piece of information that historians had not previously known about.

"A lot of times, it's more important to spend more time in the archives researching than it is on the water because that's when you will make the discoveries in all these articles for insurance or things of that nature," he told Newsweek.

According to the documents he uncovered, the distress signals were picked up in Jacksonville, Florida, placing the ship in the vicinity of the so-called Bear Wreck—located off the coast of St. Augustine—which has baffled experts for decades.

The waters off the coast of St. Augustine—a thriving port in colonial times—are filled with 16th and 17th-century shipwrecks. The Bear Wreck, however, stands out from these in a number of ways. Firstly, it appears to be from the late 19th or early 20th century and is located much further off the coast than most of the other older shipwrecks. The ship's real name and the reason it sank have long remained a mystery.

With the evidence uncovered by Walters, Barnette and his dive partner Joe Citelli decided to conduct a series of dives at the Bear Wreck in order to look for an artefact that could link it to the Cotopaxi. Specifically, they wanted to find an object with the vessel's name on it—something commonly found on the bell of ships.

However, such discoveries are rare and despite the use of a remotely operated underwater vehicle, the divers did not find what they were looking for, in part, because the wreck is covered in large quantities of sand.

Barnette got in touch with Al Perkins, a diver who has been exploring the Bear Wreck for more than three decades, collecting numerous objects from it in the process. One of the items in his collection seemed to provide a clue to the wreck's origins.

The object was a valve that had been manufactured by a company based around 12 miles from where the Cotopaxi was built—in Ecorse, Michigan. But was this a coincidence or a piece of evidence linking the Bear Wreck to the Cotopaxi?

Barnette reached out to Chuck Meide and Brendan Burke from the St. Augustine Lighthouse & Maritime Museum—two experts on the shipwrecks in the waters surrounding the city.

Under the guidance of Meide and Burke, Barnette conducted more dives to collect measurements of the Bear Wreck. These were then compared with the original plans of the Cotopaxi. The team discovered that numerous features—including the length of the vessel and dimensions of the boilers—matched the measurements they had taken.

Finally, Barnette received a crucial piece of information from Walters, who had been carrying out research at the National Archives of New York. There, the historian found documents from a legal case that the families of some of the missing crewmen had brought against the Cotopaxi's operator—the Clinchfield Navigation company. They argued the ship was unseaworthy and unsuited to rough ocean conditions.

In the documents, the president of the company countered that this was not the case and the only reason the ship sunk was because she had been caught in a large storm off the Florida coast—one that is attested in historical weather records on the day that the Cotopaxi sent out distress signals.

In his testimony, the president reported the last known coordinates of the Cotopaxi, which were dated to November 30, 1925. Barnette plotted these coordinates on a map, placing the ship 22 miles north of the Bear Wreck on this date, on what would appear to be the vessel's expected course if it was travelling its regular route from Charleston to Havana.

For the team, this was the final piece of the puzzle linking the Cotopaxi to the Bear Wreck. Given that a storm would strike the area the next day—and the evidence from the legal documents indicating that the vessel was not seaworthy—the researchers also appeared to have uncovered a possible explanation for the ship's sinking.

The team believes these final coordinates, coupled with a distress signal being sent from the ship the next day, and historic records showing a storm had hit the area, are further evidence to show the Bear Wreck the site of the sunken Cotopaxi.

"We approach all these shipwrecks kind of like a cold case murder case, right? You know, you have the body there. You try and gain whatever information you can. There's a whole bunch of tools that we use to try to identify these wrecks," Barnette said.

He described the moment of realization that the Bear Wreck is probably the final resting place of the Cotopaxi as like a "jolt of electricity."

"A lot of times it is very emotional because first you are excited that your theory is correct. There's also an emotional rollercoaster because you realize, 'wait a second, this is a gravesite which marks the final resting spot of the crew members that went down with the vessel.' So there's a responsibility to try and reach out to the families so we can help give closure to them," he said.

"Myself and other wreck divers around the world, when we identify these wrecks, sometimes we're writing the final chapter in the story or sometimes we're actually rewriting history," he said. "What people assume actually happened sometimes is not the case."

Barnette adds that paranormal explanations for the disappearances of ships and aircraft in the Bermuda Triangle—which have frequently been debunked by experts—often distract from what's really important.

"Each one of these shipwreck stories is their own saga, and a lot of times you kind of hit on the Bermuda Triangle. But the Bermuda Triangle is not the story, it's the drama that unfolds on these individual shipwrecks, and aircraft." 

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/offbeat/ship-that-mysteriously-vanished-in-bermuda-triangle-almost-a-century-ago-discovered/ar-BBZpkZb

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Rare fossil of bone-crushing crocodile cousin found in Brazil

Rodrigo Müller was working a block of rock and dirt at the base of Agudo Hill, an hour from Porto Alegre when he first saw an unusual set of osteoderms, bony deposits that form plates on the skin of a reptile or amphibian.

“It was a surprise because we had never seen anything like this in Brazil before,” Müller, a palaeontologist at the Federal University of Santa Maria, says of what was otherwise an ordinary visit to the Janner dig site, once home to some of the earliest dinosaurs to roam Earth.

As he continued his delicate work, he brushed dirt from an intact cranium and several other fossilized bones. Together, the collection formed a well-preserved and almost complete skeleton of a rare Ornithosuchidae reptile, a family considered cousins to today’s crocodiles and alligators that had been previously recorded only in Argentina and Scotland.

Dated to 230 million years ago, Dynamosuchus collisensis—newly named for its powerful bite and the location of the find—was described January 31 in the journal Acta Palaeontologica Polonica by a team that includes Müller’s colleagues at Argentina’s Museo de La Plata and Virginia Tech in the United States. Only three other species of Ornithosuchid have been discovered in the world, the last of which was found in Argentina and described 50 years ago.

While its bite could crush bones and its blade-like teeth tore through meat, Müller and company believe Dynamosuchus collisensis was a slow scavenger, or necrophagous, similar to the vultures and hyenas of today. It fed mostly off animal carcasses and easy-to-catch prey, meaning it filled a crucial part of the food chain that palaeontologists hadn’t known existed in this region of Brazil until now.

“It helps us understand better how that ecosystem worked,” Müller says.

Without scavengers like the Dynamosuchus collisensis, carcasses and other organic waste would pile up rather than breaking down. This decay allows plants to absorb essential nutrients. Those plants then feed herbivores and omnivores, allowing the cycle to continue.

Bone bonanza

This Triassic reptile was quite large compared to other animals that lived during the period, measuring roughly seven feet in length. Unlike its modern relatives, Dynamosuchus collisensis was terrestrial. Its four limbs swung underneath its body and not at its sides, while its osteoderms ran in two protective rows down its back.

It stalked around forested areas surrounded by rivers, alongside some of the oldest known dinosaurs in the world, mammal ancestors called cynodonts and other reptiles like rhynchosaurs.

The newly revealed fossils connect the evolution and interactions between the landmasses where Ornithosuchidae lived, which at the time, were all part of the supercontinent Pangaea. The animal discovered in Brazil is more closely related to one of the specimens found in Argentina than the two specimens in Argentina are to each other. This finding indicates the fauna exchanged members over long distances and didn’t evolve in an isolated fashion, Müller says.

“The fact that you have organisms that are very close in terms of kinship in Brazil and Argentina during the same time period indicates a similarity in environment and ecologies, although each region had differences that promoted speciation,” says Marco Aurélio Gallo de França, a palaeontologist from the Federal University of the Valley of San Francisco who did not take part in the discovery.

Thanks to the intactness of the Dynamosuchus collisensis fossil, Müller and the other researchers can run further tests on the strength of the reptile’s bite, using CT scans to create 3D digital models.

“It’s really well preserved. There’s practically no deformation in any of the bones, and there’s a good part of the cranium and the postcranial skeleton, so it’s very complete for this type of animal,” Müller says of the fossil. “There’s so much information in those bones.”

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/offbeat/rare-fossil-of-bone-crushing-crocodile-cousin-found-in-brazil/ar-BBZHnvW?ocid=mailsignout

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Neolithic Czech well claimed as the world's oldest wooden structure

Wooden well uncovered in the Czech Republic is the ‘World's Oldest Manmade Timber Structure'

Archaeologists claimed Tuesday that a Neolithic well found in the Czech Republic was the world's oldest uncovered wooden structure, citing extensive tests.

"We have carried out a dendrochronological analysis and confirmed it with radiocarbon dating," said Jaroslav Peska from the Archeological Centre in the eastern Czech city of Olomouc.

"The well dates back to 5,256-5,255 BC. There is currently no older man-made wooden structure dated by dendrochronology in the world, although this may change in the future," Peska told AFP.

Originally about four metres (yards) deep, the well was found in 2018 at the site of a future motorway about 120 kilometres (75 miles) east of the capital Prague.

"We dug up a lower wooden part of the well that is 1.4 metres high and which rose to the surface," said Peska.

The CTK news agency reported the well had wooden posts in corners with grooves for planks, a technology that scientists thought had been used much later.

The archaeologists removed the well together with soil which is also being tested to give scientists an idea of the environment of the Neolithic era, the last period of the Stone Age.

"The well is under conservation now, and when that's done, it will be taken to a museum in (the nearby city of) Pardubice in about two or three years," said Peska.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/offbeat/neolithic-czech-well-claimed-as-worlds-oldest-wooden-structure/ar-BBZETtX#image=1

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The 'Ghost' of an Unknown Extinct Human Has Been Found in DNA of Modern West Africans

The gene pool of modern West Africans contains the 'ghost' of a mysterious hominin, unlike any we've detected so far. Similar to how humans and Neanderthals once mated, new research suggests this ancient long-lost species may have once mingled with our ancestors on the African continent.

Using whole-genome data from present-day West Africans, scientists have found a small portion of genetic material that appears to come from this mysterious lineage, which is thought to have split off from the human family tree even before Neanderthals.

Today, it's thought (although still being debated) that anatomically modern humans originated in Africa, and that once these populations migrated to Europe and Asia, they interbred with closely-related species like Neanderthals and Denosovans.

FULL REPORT

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Storm reveals 130 million-year-old dinosaur footprint on the Isle of Wight

VIDEO

A 130-million-year-old dinosaur footprint was uncovered on the Isle of Wight during Storm Ciara last week, according to fossil hunters.

The track was left preserved in clay by a large three-toed reptile such as the meat-eating predator Neovenator, which can grow up to 10 metres long and weigh up to 4,000kg.

It was found in Sandown Bay on Wednesday by members of the Wight Coast Fossils group after the area was lashed by 60mph winds and heavy rain over the weekend.

“All this weather is revealing traces of vanished worlds along our coastline,” the group wrote on their Facebook page.

“Shifting sands at Sandown Bay revealed this beautiful 130 million-year-old dinosaur track yesterday, preserved in the brightly coloured floodplain clays.”

The group, which runs tours of the area, said that the footprint was preserved in what would have been an area of marshland that regularly dried and flooded.

“Our track maker was crossing this environment 130 million years ago, heading southwest in what is now Sandown Bay, leaving these huge tracks in the boggy soil,” they wrote.

“Behind the animal lay a range of low forested hills, while ahead lay a flat floodplain landscape dotted with floodplain forests, river channels, and herds of herbivorous dinosaurs.”

However, the footprint may soon disappear as the tide wears down the soft clay on what is known as the “Wessex Formation”.

Violent storms along the south coast have previously revealed a large number of dinosaur footprints near Hastings, East Sussex.

Those tracks included a species of stegosaur, the armoured ankylosaurus and predatory theropod dinosaurs.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/techandscience/storm-reveals-130-million-year-old-dinosaur-footprint-on-isle-of-wight/ar-BB100KLq?li=AAnZ9Ug

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Neanderthal 'skeleton' is first found in a decade

Researchers have described the first "articulated" remains of a Neanderthal to be discovered in a decade.

An articulated skeleton is one where the bones are still arranged in their original positions.

The new specimen was uncovered at Shanidar Cave in Iraq and consists of the upper torso and crushed skull of a middle-aged to an older adult.

Excavations at Shanidar in the 1950s and 60s unearthed partial remains of 10 Neanderthal men, women and children.

During these earlier excavations, archaeologists found that some of the burials were clustered together, with clumps of pollen surrounding one of the skeletons.

The researcher who led those original investigations, Ralph Solecki from Columbia University in New York, claimed it was evidence that Neanderthals had buried their dead with flowers.

This "flower burial" captured the imagination of the public and kicked off a decades-long controversy. The floral interpretation suggested our evolutionary relatives were capable of cultural sophistication, challenging the view - prevalent at the time - that Neanderthals were unintelligent and animalistic.

FULL REPORT

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Look at These Mind-Blowing Fossils of 1 Billion-Year-Old Seaweed

Strange, vein-like shadows imprinted in ancient rocks are some of the most important clues yet in piecing together the timeline of photosynthesis. At 1 billion years old, the tiny fossils are the oldest example of green algae we've ever discovered.

Even from all those aeons ago, the fossils show evidence of characteristics in common with modern algae. They represent multicellular organisms with branching structures and even root systems.

Palaeontologists have named the newly discovered, ancient algae Proterocladus antiquus, and it beats the previous record-holder - the fragmentary Proterocladus, 800 million years old (it's possible they're both the same species).

This discovery suggests seaweed were already thriving in the ocean, long before plants migrated to dry land.

"The entire biosphere is largely dependent on plants and algae for food and oxygen, yet land plants did not evolve until about 450 million years ago," said palaeontologist Shuhai Xiao of Virginia Tech.

"Our study shows that green seaweeds evolved no later than 1 billion years ago, pushing back the record of green seaweeds by about 200 million years."

The fossils themselves are tiny, just a few millimetres long - flea-sized smears on a sedimentary rock found in the Nanfen Formation in Liaoning Province, North China. But when studied under a microscope, their delicate, branching forms are crystal clear.

Older algae fossils have been found - a red alga called Bangiomorpha pubescens, which was dated to around 1.047 billion years ago. It's also an important find for our understanding of photosynthesis, but P. antiquus is different because it's green.

It's thought that green plants - Viridiplantae - emerged sometime between 2.5 billion and 635 million years ago. Because ancient plant fossils are rare, narrowing that timeline down has been extremely difficult. Scientists also don't know when they evolved from single-celled to multicellular organisms, or even where they started out.

Some believe that, just like multicellular animals, Viridiplantae started off in the ocean as seaweeds before moving onto dry land and evolving into all the different plants we have today, from the mightiest redwood to the smallest moss.

Others, however, believe that freshwater rivers and lakes gave birth to plants; from there, they moved into the ocean, before finally ending up on land.

P. antiquus supports an oceanic origin - because it's extremely similar to seaweeds that are around today.

"There are some modern green seaweeds that look very similar to the fossils that we found," Xiao said. "A group of modern green seaweeds, known as siphonocladaleans, are particularly similar in shape and size to the fossils we found."

The branching structures and tiny sizes have led the team to hypothesise that P. antiquus is a type of ancient siphonocladalean, although they note that it cannot be ruled out that P. antiquus developed a siphonocladalean morphology independently, and is now extinct.

Nevertheless, even if they were distinct species, their similarity suggests a similar environment; that is, the ocean. That finding, in turn, can help us also understand the ancient ocean environment.

And, of course, it tells us more about the complicated and mysterious plant family tree.

"These seaweeds display multiple branches, upright growths, and specialised cells known as akinetes that are very common in this type of fossil," Xiao said.

"Taken together, these features strongly suggest that the fossil is a green seaweed with complex multicellularity that is circa 1 billion years old. These likely represent the earliest fossil of green seaweeds."

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/offbeat/look-at-these-mind-blowing-fossils-of-1-billion-year-old-seaweed/ar-BB10m5Lq