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[CaaC (John)]

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Battered skulls of ancient farmers reveal violent conflicts

Skeletons discovered in Chile’s Atacama Desert suggest farmers brutalised each other.

Three thousand years ago, in one of the driest deserts in the world, farmers came to blows and fought to the death, often smashing each other’s skulls in, according to a new discovery in Chile’s Atacama Desert.

Graves reveal grave violence

Researchers, led by Vivien Standen of the University of Tarapacá, Chile, found scores of skeletons with grotesque head wounds buried in cemeteries in the Azapa Valley. This suggests that ancient horticulturalists lived during a time of great social tension and engaged in violent conflict.

“The emergence of elites and social inequality fostered interpersonal and inter- and intra-group violence associated with the defence of resources, socio-economic investments, and other cultural concerns,” the authors say in their paper, published in Journal of Anthropological Archaeology.

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Read more: Getting a drink in the Atacama Desert

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Found: 194 skeletons

The 194 skeletons found dated back to the Neolithic transition between 1000 BCE and 600 CE, and around 21% of them showed signs of violent conflict from weapons like maces, sticks or arrows. This included skull holes and fractures that would have caused extreme pain.

Half of the head traumas appeared to be fatal.

“Some individuals exhibited severe high-impact fractures of the cranium that caused massive destruction of the face – and outflow of brain mass,” the authors say.

The violence was local

Interestingly, the farmers’ conflicts were internal, as strontium isotopes showed that foreign people didn’t increase the levels of violence, suggesting that the conflicts were kept local. These may have been fights over water, land or other resources that were shared locally.

The ancient skeletons were extremely well preserved – some even still had hair – because of the dry conditions of the area, where there are less microbes to decompose soft tissue.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/history/civilisations/battered-skulls-of-ancient-farmers-reveal-violent-conflicts/

 

[Azeem]

Sher Shah Suri who briefly interrupted the Mughal Empire after ousting Mughal King Hamayun. He chased Hamayun and camped near a place where I live, build a cottage that is still known by his name.

When Hamayun was escaping to Iran to seek help from his maternal uncles he almost drowned to death but was saved by a man. He promised to make him King for a day if he regains his rule. After 15 years he did so and fulfilled his promise. That guy according to legend minted a coin in his name the only thing he did as a King. 

He is famously known as Nizam e Sikka (Nizam a title for ruler and Sikka means coin) and no one knows who he actually was.

[CaaC (John)]

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Huge new fossil species uncovered in Canada

Half-billion-year-old critter belonged to an extinct group of animals.

Palaeontologists have dug up a brand new animal species from the Cambrian era, more than 500 million years ago. Remarkably, Titanokorys gainesi was about half a metre long – which is giant compared to most of the other, pinky-finger-sized species alive at the time.

“The sheer size of this animal is absolutely mind-boggling,” says Jean-Bernard Caron, from the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) in Canada. “This is one of the biggest animals from the Cambrian period ever found.”

The Cambrian period spanned from around 541 to 485 million years ago. It was a critical time in the evolution of life on Earth because it marked a massive explosion in diversity, with most of the major groups of animals we know today emerging, from arthropods and molluscs to echinoderms and chordates (us).          

This new fossil, Titanokorys, belongs to a group of very early arthropods called radiodonts. It had compound eyes, a tooth-lined mouth, “flaps” for swimming, and spiny claws to capture prey.

According to co-author Joe Moysiuk from ROM and the University of Toronto, the species also had “an incredibly long head covered by a three-part carapace that took on myriad shapes. The head is so long relative to the body that these animals are really little more than swimming heads.”

A carapace is a hard shell – think of a tortoise, crab or lobster. Why some radiodonts developed a huge array of types of carapaces isn’t yet well-understood.

Since the carapace of Titanokorys was broad and flattened, palaeontologists think the creature lived on the seafloor.

“These enigmatic animals certainly had a big impact on Cambrian seafloor ecosystems,” says Caron. “Their limbs at the front looked like multiple stacked rakes and would have been very efficient at bringing anything they captured in their tiny spines towards the mouth.”

Radiodonts include some of the earliest large predators on Earth. One of the most famous representatives of the group is Anomalocaris (“abnormal shrimp”), an apex predator which would have dwarfed Titanokorys at nearly one metre in length. A fossil site at Emu Bay on Kangaroo Island in Australia has previously revealed excellent examples of this animal, including evidence for very early compound eyes.

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Read more: Qingjiang fossil site rivals Burgess Shale

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These new fossils of Titanokorys were discovered in the Burgess Shale formation in northern Kootenay National Park, in the Canadian Rockies. Palaeontologists have previously found another interesting species here: Cambroraster falcatus, named after the Millenium Falcon.

The findings were published in the journal Royal Society Open Science.

This video shows a Cambroraster falcatus and then the even larger Titanokorys gainesi swimming along. Credit: Animation by Lars Fields, © Royal Ontario Museum

https://cosmosmagazine.com/history/palaeontology/huge-new-fossil-species-titanokorys-uncovered-in-canada/

 

 

Edited September 8, 2021 by CaaC (John)
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[CaaC (John)]

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Wondrous wooden carvings re-emerge after 1,000 years entombed in bird droppings

The carvings, depicting rope-bound captives, are shrouded in mystery.

Ceramic evidence found on the Peruvian mainland depicts a warrior from the Moche civilisation being taken on a reed boat to Macabi, a small rocky outcrop off the coast of northern Peru, but the island itself has never had proper archaeological work done on it.

The Moche culture existed in northern Peru from around 100AD to 800AD.

The wooden carvings were discovered in caves on the uninhabited island in the 19th century by a British company mining for guano, the solidified excrement produced by seabird colonies, which is an exceptionally effective fertiliser.

Its chemical properties are believed to have helped preserve the figurines, which date to between around 400 and 800AD.

“The toxic environment stops oxygen from getting in”, explained Dr Jago Cooper, the head of the Americas at the British Museum.

The sculptures were donated to the British Museum in 1871 and while curators knew of their existence, they had lain largely undisturbed and unstudied for 150 years until preparations began on the exhibition, entitled Peru: A Journey in Time.

As part of those preparations, five figures were selected to be displayed and had conservation work and basic analysis performed on them.

It is common for large museums, whose collections can total millions of items, to have many unstudied objects.

© Provided by The Telegraph A wooden figure depicting a bound prisoner with a headdress and rope around his neck, Moche, AD 100-800 - Yui Mok/PA

Dr Cecilia Pardo, who moved to London from Peru to co-curate the exhibition, said finding the unexhibited items were “ a kind of rediscovery”  

Despite the lack of archaeological research, the existence of the wooden figures suggests that special trips were being made to Macabi for ritual sacrifices.

Confirming such practices is not always easy, said Dr Pardo because effigies often had both human and supernatural features and “ the myth and the rituals were combined ".

Dr Cooper and Dr Pardo said they hoped that by displaying the figures they might spark more research into the Moche, including archaeological work on Macabi.

While unsettling to modern sensibilities, “ human sacrifice shouldn’t be thought of as bloodthirsty,” said Dr Cooper, “ in many ways, it shows how much life was highly valued among Moche society.” Death on the battlefield was considered to be wasteful and the main objective of combat was to capture prisoners.

The exhibition, which will run from Nov 11 to Feb 20, will cover Peruvian history from 1200BC to the fall of the Inca in 1532AD and will feature 40 objects loaned from museums across Peru, most of which have never been to the UK before, as well as 80 items from the British Museum’s collections.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/travel/news/wondrous-wooden-carvings-re-emerge-after-1000-years-entombed-in-bird-droppings/ar-AAOc8Dg?li=BBoPWjQ

 

Edited September 8, 2021 by CaaC (John)
Spelling check

[CaaC (John)]

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Junior fossil hunters discover extinct giant penguin

A fossilised penguin found in New Zealand may have been 1.4 metres tall.

Back in 2006, children from the Hamilton Junior Naturalist Club went on a fossil-hunting field trip and stBumbled across the bones of a giant fossil penguin. Little did they know that those bones belonged to an entirely new species.

Extinct giant penguin fossil was a new species

The fossilised penguin had to be cut out of the rock where it was found in Kawhia Harbour, in New Zealand (Aotearoa). It was dated to between 27–36.6 million years old, from a time when the region was underwater.

Now, researchers from Massey University in NZ have identified the bones as belonging to a 1.4-metre tall penguin – a new species.

“The penguin is similar to the Kairuku giant penguins first described from Otago but has much longer legs, which the researchers used to name the penguin waewaeroa – Te reo Māori for ‘long legs’,” says Daniel Thomas, senior author of the study, which was published in The Journal of Vertebrate Palaeontology.

“These longer legs would have made the penguin much taller than other Kairuku while it was walking on land, perhaps around 1.4 metres tall, and may have influenced how fast it could swim or how deep it could dive.”

Thomas says that it has been “a real privilege” to contribute to the study of this penguin.

“Kairuku waewaeroa is emblematic for so many reasons. The fossil penguin reminds us that we share Zealandia (ancient Aotearoa) with incredible animal lineages that reach deep into time, and this sharing gives us an important guardianship role. The way the fossil penguin was discovered, by children out discovering nature, reminds us of the importance of encouraging future generations to become kaitiaki [guardians].”

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Read more: Clues to the evolution of modern penguins

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The discovery also shows the power of citizen science and curiosity.

“It was a rare privilege for the kids in our club to have the opportunity to discover and rescue this enormous fossil penguin,” says Mike Safey, President of the Hamilton Junior Naturalist Club.

“We always encourage young people to explore and enjoy the great outdoors. There’s plenty of cool stuff out there just waiting to be discovered.”

The junior naturalists thrilled their find was a new species

The new research is especially impactful to the kids who found the bones back in 2006.

Steffan Safey, who was there for both the discovery and rescue missions, adds: “It’s sort of surreal to know that a discovery we made as kids so many years ago is contributing to academia today. And it’s a new species, even!

“The existence of giant penguins in New Zealand is scarcely known, so it’s really great to know that the community is continuing to study and learn more about them. Clearly the day spent cutting it out of the sandstone was well spent!”

Another one of the other junior naturalists – Esther Dale – went on to become a plant ecologist in Switzerland.

“I’m excited to see what we can learn from it about the evolution of penguins and life in New Zealand,” she says.

“It was definitely one of those slightly surreal things to look back on – absolute bucket list moment for me,” says another former junior naturalist, Alwyn Dale.

“[It’s] a real testament to all the parents and volunteers who gave their time and resources to make unique and formative memories for the club members.”

https://cosmosmagazine.com/history/palaeontology/junior-fossil-hunters-discover-extinct-giant-penguin/

 

[CaaC (John)]

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Saudi Arabia camel carvings dated to prehistoric era

A series of camel sculptures carved into rock faces in Saudi Arabia are likely to be the oldest large-scale animal reliefs in the world, a study says.

When the carvings were first discovered in 2018, researchers estimated they were created about 2,000 years ago.

This was based on their similarity to reliefs at Jordan's famous ancient city of Petra.

But a fresh study puts the camels at between 7,000-8,000 old.

Precisely ageing rock sculptures is a challenge for researchers. Unlike cave paintings, say, there is often no organic matter to sample. Rock art of this size is also rare in the region.

FULL REPORT & MORE PHOTOS

 

[CaaC (John)]

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First ancient human DNA from the gateway between Asia and Australia

Genomic clues from the grave of an ancient ‘princess’ reveal a vanished people.

When Griffith University archaeologist Adam Brumm heard from local villagers on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi about a vast cave used to house local games of badminton, his scientific spidey-senses started to tingle.

Brumm, from Griffith’s Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution, specialises in the archaeology of the region known as Wallacea, the cluster of islands between Borneo and New Guinea which are the seafaring gateway between Asia and Australia. He intuited that a cave of that size would have been attractive to ancient humans living on the island, and could potentially unravel the secrets of one of the region’s most mysterious peoples.

He visited the cave, known as Leang Panninge (“bat cave”) in 2013, but was unable to carry out extensive investigations. Then, in 2015, his colleagues from Indonesia’s University of Hasanuddin went back and made a startling discovery.

An unprecedented find

“Bessé” was a roughly 17-year-old hunter-gatherer woman when she died some 7,200 years ago. She was buried carefully in a grave under the overhang of Leang Panninge, her body curled into the foetal position. Someone placed stone tools and red ochre in the ground with her and then, perhaps gently, covered her body with rocks.

After her discovery and painstaking excavation, the international team of researchers decided to send a piece of her petrous bone – the bone of the inner ear – to the Max Planck Institute in Germany, in the hopes of extracting genetic material for genomic analysis. “By some miracle, there’s ancient DNA preserved in the dense inner ear bone of this woman,” Brumm says.

This was particularly amazing because ancient DNA is so difficult to find in the hot, humid tropics, where genetic material breaks down quickly. “It’s the first time we’ve really had the story told to us by the ancient DNA in this part of the world,” Brumm says.

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Read more: Denisovan DNA may have aided Pacific migration

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Genomic analysis identified Bessé, named by archaeologists from Indonesia’s University of Hasanuddin after the customary Bugis nickname for a newborn princess, as a distant relative of Aboriginal Australians and Papuans, as well as belonging to a newly discovered ancient population with no genetic links to any previously known human groups.

The exciting discovery, published today in the journal Nature, marks the first time ancient human DNA has been found in Wallacea. Moreover, Brumm says the find is the first relatively complete skeleton from the Toalean culture, a people who lived and foraged in the region for thousands of years.

Who were the mysterious Toaleans?

The Toaleans are a “rather mysterious culture”, says Brumm, “who lived a secluded existence in the forests of South Sulawesi from around 8,000 years ago until 1,500 years ago, hunting wild pigs and collecting edible shellfish from rivers.”

Map of Southeast Asia and South Sulawesi, showing Wallacea. Image credit: Kim Newman

The Toaleans appear to have lived a private life: artefacts are only found in a tiny corner – just 6% – of Sulawesi’s vast expanse (the island is the 11^th largest on Earth). “This suggests that this past culture had limited contact with other early Sulawesi communities or people in nearby islands, existing for thousands of years in isolation,” says study co-author Adhi Agus Oktaviana, a researcher in Indonesia’s National Research Centre for Archaeology (Pusat Penelitian Arkeologi Nasional) and a doctoral candidate in the Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research. 

“We can call them a culture because they made very distinctive, very complex types of stone tools, including these beautiful, exquisitely shaped stone arrowheads,” Brumm says. But until now, no human Toalean remains had been found.

Brumm says that understanding who the Toaleans were has been a “century-old archaeological mystery”, and all archaeological traces of them vanish around the 5th century AD, suggesting they were supplanted by the Neolithic farmers from Taiwan – the Austronesians – that populated Sulawesi some 3,500 years ago.

Some archaeologists suspect the Toaleans may have been responsible for providing Australia with one of its most iconic species, the dingo.

“[The dingo] is embedded in Aboriginal society and culture, and it’s become an important part of the Australian ecosystem. But it’s an Asian dog and somehow it got to Australia three or four thousand years ago,” Brumm says. “It must have been brought here by prehistoric Asian voyagers, but no one has ever had any idea who the hell these people were.”

The ancient DNA they’ve extracted doesn’t tell us whether the Toaleans brought the dingo to our shores, but Brumm says it does tell us important information about who they were from a genetic perspective.

Ancient DNA in Wallacea: Tracing the ancestry of Australasia

The genomic analysis of ancient DNA from Bessé’s inner ear bone confirmed existing suspicions that Toalean foragers were related to the first modern humans to enter Wallacea some 65,000 years ago, the ancestors of Aboriginal Australians and Papuans. 

“These seafaring hunter-gatherers were the earliest inhabitants of Sahul, the supercontinent that emerged during the Pleistocene [Ice Age] when global sea levels fell, exposing a land bridge between Australia and New Guinea,” Brumm says.

“To reach Sahul, these pioneering humans made ocean crossings through Wallacea, but little about their journeys is known.”

So, Brumm says, “this region has been host to a very ancient human story about which we know relatively little.”

Bessé shares about half her genetic makeup with present-day Indigenous Australians and people in New Guinea and the Western Pacific Islands. This includes DNA inherited from now-extinct Denisovans, an archaic hominin related to Neanderthals whose fossils have only been found in Siberia and Tibet.

“In fact, the proportion of Denisovan DNA in Bessé, relative to other ancient as well as present-day groups in the region, may indicate that the crucial meeting point between our species and Denisovans was in Sulawesi or another Wallacean island,” says Cosimo Posth of the University of Tübingen, Germany, who contributed to the genomic analysis alongside Selina Carlhoff from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History and Johannes Krause from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.

This suggests that Bessé’s ancestors may have been among the first humans to migrate to Wallacea, but instead of following their island-hopping relatives onwards to Sahul, they settled in Sulawesi. This may also mean that it was Bessé’s forebears who created the 45,000-year-old cave paintings found in South Sulawesi depicting a vibrant cosmology of animal-human hybrids.

An undiscovered human population

Surprisingly, the analysis also revealed an unexpected signature in Bessé’s genome: the genetic fingerprints of an ancient early-modern human population of Asian origin previously unknown to science. This group did not share genetic material with the predecessors of Aboriginal Australians and Papuans, suggesting they may have entered the region after the peopling of Sahul.

“It is unlikely we will know much about the identity of these early ancestors of the Toaleans until more ancient human DNA samples are available from Wallacea,” says senior author Akin Duli from the University of Hasanuddin. “But it would now appear that the population history and genetic diversity of early humans in the region were more complex than previously supposed.”

What’s more, the researchers found that the modern people of Sulawesi share no DNA with Bessé, though Brumm notes that more extensive sampling of Sulawesi’s population may reveal closer genetic links to this vanished culture.

“The discovery of Bessé and the implications of her genetic ancestry show just how little we understand about the early human story in our region, and how much more there is left to uncover,” Brumm says.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/history/archaeology/ancient-human-dna-from-gateway-between-asia-and-australia/

 

 

Edited September 19, 2021 by CaaC (John)
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[CaaC (John)]

1 hour ago, CaaC (John) said:

The NHS can be a fucking joke sometimes, that's the wife just received a letter from the NHS about her flu jab coming up, they only booked her a place 10.6 miles away out of town for the jab that will take her around 40 minutes to get there plus it's at 08.15 in the morning.

Surely they could check out her age on the NHS database and note she is 73 years old with medical problems and live in Leith where there is other facilities around locally that will do the job, I spent all morning and afternoon trying to ring up and get it cancelled but all we got was " Sorry, lines are busy..."

I managed to ring up our local chemist shop who will cater for us both at the end of the month, the pharmacy is a 15-minute walk away from where we live.

@nudge, just realised this is posted in the wrong thread 

I meant to post it in the Medical & Health issues, could you do the honours and move, please. 

[nudge]

1 minute ago, CaaC (John) said:

@nudge, just realised this is posted in the wrong thread 

I meant to post it in the Medical & Health issues, could you do the honours and move, please. 

Done  

[Azeem]

My dad once took me to the place where Alexander believed to have fought King Porus when he came to subcontinent. I was a kid vaguely remember it but that place was weird. Big plain, the trees were short and their stems were awkward.

Like most ancient conflicts the local accounts of the war portray a different outcome than Greek victory, stalemate. Nevertheless all accounts agree Alexander had it tough and bcz of this war didn't decided to go further east. 

 

[CaaC (John)]

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A cosmic meteor brought desolation to an ancient city – Did it inspire Sodom?

No need to be salty: there’s a Lot more to this story if you just take a look.

The Bible story describing the destruction of Sodom is at the centre of iconic “fire and brimstone” judgement day predictions. But what if it was caused by other celestial origins – like a cosmic meteor airburst?

Now, researchers have discovered 3600-year-old evidence that the ancient city of Tall el-Hammam – an archaeological site in Jordan – was destroyed by a “cosmic airburst” that was so hot it melted brick and clay.

The researchers believe the catastrophic cosmic event may have inspired the story of the destruction of Sodom – after all, that sounds a Lot like fire and brimstone raining from the heavens.

An impact so hot it melted clay

FULL REPORT

 

[CaaC (John)]

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Footprints in New Mexico are oldest evidence of humans in the Americas

Humans reached the Americas at least 7,000 years earlier than previously thought, according to new findings.

The topic of when the continent was first settled from Asia has been controversial for decades.

Many researchers are sceptical of evidence for humans in the North American interior much earlier than 16,000 years ago.

Now, a team working in New Mexico has found scores of human footprints dated to between 23,000 and 21,000 years old.

The discovery could transform views about when the continent was settled. It suggests there could have been great migrations that we know nothing about. And it raises the possibility that these earlier populations could have gone extinct.

The footprints were formed in soft mud on the margins of a shallow lake which now forms part of Alkali Flat in White Sands. The research has been published in the journal Science.

FULL REPORT

 

[CaaC (John)]

On 10/07/2021 at 15:32, nudge said:

Thought this was cool... The oldest existing piece of literature.

 

 

 

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The epic adventures of the Gilgamesh Dream tablet

An ancient clay tablet displaying part of the story of a superhuman king has been formally handed over to Iraq by the US.

Known as the Gilgamesh Dream Tablet, the 3,600-year-old religious text shows a section of a Sumerian poem from the Epic of Gilgamesh.

It is one of the world's oldest works of literature and was looted from an Iraqi museum during the Gulf War in 1991.

Over the past 30 years, it has been smuggled through many countries, accompanied by false documents. Until just two years ago, it was prominently displayed in a museum near the seat of the US government.

But on Thursday, the text began a new journey back to its homeland when it was formally handed over at a ceremony in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC.

FULL REPORT

 

[CaaC (John)]

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Stegosaurus: The enigmatic icon of the Jurassic

Why one of the most famous dinosaurs ever discovered is still keeping researchers guessing today.

With its huge back plates, long tail spikes and teeny tiny head, Stegosaurus is one of the most distinctive dinosaurs we know about. Comparable in size to the largest animals we share the Earth with today, this plodding herbivore has captured imaginations 150 million years after the species died out.

The remains of 80 of these animals have been unearthed around the world, from the United States to Portugal, including one acquired by the Natural History Museum in London in 2014. One of the most complete fossils of any dinosaur ever found, its discovery led to renewed study and greater understanding of this gentle giant.

FULL REPORT & PHOTOS

 

 

[nudge]

Stegosaurus is the coolest dinosaur!

[Azeem]

The real sad thing is bureaucracy of today maintains these imperialistic traditions in their own countries. I just learned that top judges here go for holidays from July to September like fucking school kids. Another British days thing cause they couldn't handle the heat.

Bureaucracy is the elephant in the room for a lot of developing world problems. Politicians and militarily dictators get some unnecessary stick. Think about it you did a coup and power is your good but who are you going to need to run the country ? 

I'm all for adopting the CCP model on these guys. 

 

[CaaC (John)]

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25-million-year-old eagle fossil adds new branch to family

“Exquisite” fossil, found in the desert, is previously unknown to science.

Artists impression. Credit Jacob Blokland

 

Palaeontologists have uncovered the fossilised bones of a 25-million-year-old eagle. It’s a previously unknown species – and one of the oldest eagles in the world.

“This species was slightly smaller and leaner than the wedge-tailed eagle, but it’s the largest eagle known from this time period in Australia,” says Ellen Mather, a PhD candidate at Flinders University and first author on a paper describing the fossil, published in Historical Biology.

“I have studied this system for many years now, and this is the most exquisite fossil we have found to date,” says Trevor Worthy, associate professor of palaeontology at Flinders and co-author on the paper. The partial skeleton has 63 bones.

“With eagles at the top of the food chain, they are always few in number – and so are infrequently preserved as fossils,” adds Worthy.

“It’s rare to find even one bone from a fossil eagle. To have most of the skeleton is pretty exciting, especially considering how old it is.”

The eagle has been named Archaehierax sylvestris, which translates from ancient Greek as “ancient hawk of the forest”.

“The foot span was nearly 15 cm long, which would have allowed it to grasp large prey,” says Mather.

“The largest marsupial predators at the time were about the size of a small dog or large cat, so Archaehierax was certainly ruling the roost.”

The researchers found the eagle bones on the shores of Lake Pinpa, in northwestern South Australia. Lake Pinpa has previously been the site of other 25-million-year-old fossil discoveries, like giant wombats.

During this time period – the late Ogliocene – the local environment would have been a verdant forest. Mather says that the bones of the eagle reflect this.

“The fossil bones reveal that the wings of Archaehierax […] were short for its size, much like species of forest-dwelling eagles today. Its legs, in contrast, were relatively long and would have given it considerable reach.”

The shorter wingspan means that the bird was less likely to collide with trees and branches mid-flight.

“The combination of these traits suggest Archaehierax was an agile – but not particularly fast – flier and was most likely an ambush hunter,” says Mather.

While fearsome, the ancient eagle is likely a distant relative of living eagle species.

“The completeness of the Archaehierax skeleton allowed us to determine where it fits on the eagle family tree. It shows a range of features unlike any seen among modern hawks and eagles,” says Mather.

“It’s unlikely to be a direct ancestor to any species alive today.”

https://cosmosmagazine.com/news/25-million-year-old-eagle-fossil-adds-new-branch-to-family/

 

[Azeem]

Malaria add during WWII times

[CaaC (John)]

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Uncovering the secrets of an ancient Mayan city

New discovery further reveals the connections between the Mesoamerican cities of Teotihuacan and Tikal.

A recent lidar analysis revealed that an area once assumed to be natural hills (centre) near Tikal's Lost World complex (right) is actually an 1,800-year-old ruined citadel. Credit: Thomas Garrison/PACUNAM

 

Archaeologists and researchers decoding the secrets of one of the most magnificent ruins of the Mayan empire – the ancient city of Tikal – have made a ground-breaking discovery that potentially rewrites our understanding of interactions in the ancient Americas.

Tikal, in the north of modern-day Guatemala, has been extensively studied since at least the 1950s. The sprawling city – which itself covers 400 hectares – is the crowning jewel of 570 square-kilometre Tikal National Park, a lush region of tropical forests and wetlands that sequesters potentially thousands of archaeological ruins within its borders.

A major political and cultural centre for the ancient Maya, Tikal is one of the best understood and most deeply studied archaeological sites in the world. So it came as a surprise when researchers engaged in the Pacunam Lidar Initiaive, a research consortium using light detection and ranging software (lidar) to image the surface of the Earth, made a startling new discovery about the city.

Just a short walk from the centre of Tikal, in an area previously thought to be natural hills, the team discovered a neighbourhood of ruined buildings built in the style of Teotihuacan, the largest and most powerful city in the ancient Americas, more than 1000km away in modern-day Mexico.

Stephen Houston, co-author of the new study published today in the journal Antiquity, says the lidar analysis, coupled with a subsequent excavation by a team of Guatemalan archaeologists led by Edwin Román Ramírez, raises big questions about Teotihuacan’s influence on the Maya civilisation.

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More reading: Mayan ‘total war’ earlier than thought

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“What we had taken to be natural hills actually were shown to be modified and conformed to the shape of the citadel — the area that was possibly the imperial palace — at Teotihuacan,” Houston says. “Regardless of who built this smaller-scale replica and why, it shows without a doubt that there was a different level of interaction between Tikal and Teotihuacan than previously believed.”

Houston says that Tikal and Teotihuacan were radically different cities. Tikal, a Maya city, was densely populated but small: “you could have walked from one end of the kingdom to the other in a day, maybe two.”

Teotihuacan, on the other hand, was a vast empire. Unlike Tikal, little is known about the civilisation that founded and governed Teotihuacan, but their influence reverberates across the continent.

Archaeologists have known for a long time that the two population hubs traded goods before the people of Teotihuacan conquered Tikal in around 378 AD. There’s also some evidence that people from the Mayan empire may have lived in Teotihuacan and brought the great city’s cultural influence home with them, including funerary rites, architectural styles and green obsidian. But Houston says these latest lidar findings suggest a more intimate connection between the two cities.

“The architectural complex we found very much appears to have been built for people from Teotihuacan or those under their control,” Houston says. “Perhaps it was something like an embassy complex, but when we combine previous research with our latest findings, it suggests something more heavy-handed, like occupation or surveillance. At the very least, it shows an attempt to implant part of a foreign city plan on Tikal.”

The archaeological excavations of the site found that some buildings were built of mud plaster rather than the traditional Maya limestone, and were designed to be replicas of the buildings that make up Teotihuacan’s citadel – accurate down to the intricate cornices and the 15.5-degree east-of-north orientation.

“It almost suggests that local builders were told to use an entirely non-local building technology while constructing this sprawling new building complex,” Houston says. “We’ve rarely seen evidence of anything but two-way interaction between the two civilizations, but here, we seem to be looking at foreigners who are moving aggressively into the area.”

At a nearby set of residential buildings, archaeologists also found projectile points made of flint (a material used by the Maya) and green obsidian (used at Teotihuacan), a find they interpreted as evidence of a conflict. And nearby to the replica citadel, the archaeologists found a burial surrounded by vessels, ceramics, bones and projectiles, surrounded by the remains of a fire. Houston says this is unlike other burials and sacrifices at Tikal, but characteristic of warrior burials at Teotihuacan.

“Excavations in the middle of the citadel at Teotihuacan have found the burials of many individuals dressed as warriors, and they appear to have been sacrificed and placed in mass graves,” Houston says. “We have possibly found a vestige of one of those burials at Tikal itself.”

Houston says the intricacies of sites like Tikal and Teotihuacan may yet help us understand more about the machinations and impacts of waves of colonial expansion and interaction.

“At this time, people are quite interested in the process of colonisation and its aftermath, and in how our views of the world are informed or distorted by the expansion of economic and political systems around the globe,” he says.

“Before European colonisation of the Americas, there were empires and kingdoms of disproportionate influence and strength interacting with smaller civilisations in a way that left a large impact. Exploring Teotihuacan’s influence on Mesoamerica could be a way to explore the beginnings of colonialism and its oppressions and local collusions.”

https://cosmosmagazine.com/history/civilisations/uncovering-the-secrets-of-an-ancient-mayan-city/

 

[CaaC (John)]

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New species of dinosaur unearthed by Isle of Wight fossil hunters

The discovery of two new species of dinosaur, which likely roamed the south of England 125 million years ago, has shed new light on the predators.

Palaeontologists have described one of the carnivorous reptiles as a " hell heron", comparing its hunting style to a fearsome version of the bird.

The remains of the three-toed dinosaurs were found on an Isle of Wight beach.

They belonged to the spinosaurid group and are thought to have been 9m (29ft) in length with 1m-long (3ft) skulls.

The collection of about 50 bones took several years to unearth.

The first specimen - named Ceratosuchops inferodios - has been labelled a " horned crocodile-faced hell heron".

With low horns and bumps around the brow region, the name also refers to the predator's heron-like hunting style.

The second has been called Riparovenator mineral, which translates as " Milner's riverbank hunter", in honour of British palaeontologist Angela Milner, who died recently.

Fossil collectors initially found parts of two skulls before a team from the island's Dinosaur Isle Museum uncovered a large section of a tail.

It comes after the last spinosaurid skeleton, which belonged to Baryonyx, was discovered in a quarry in Surrey in 1983. Only single bones and isolated teeth had been found since.

PhD student Chris Barker, author of the University of Southampton study, said: " We found the skulls to differ not only from Baryonyx but also from one another, suggesting the UK housed a greater diversity of spinosaurids than previously thought."

Co-author Darren Naish, an expert in British theropod dinosaurs, said: " We' ve known for a couple of decades now that Baryonyx-like dinosaurs awaited discovery on the Isle of Wight, but finding the remains of two such animals in close succession was a huge surprise."

The study also suggested how spinosaurids might have first evolved in Europe, before dispersing into Asia, Africa and South America.

The collection of about 50 bones will go on display at the Dinosaur Isle Museum in Sandown.

Curator Dr Martin Munt said the finds cemented the Isle of Wight's status as one of the top locations for dinosaurs remains in Europe.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-58728161

 

[CaaC (John)]

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Decoding the secrets of a forgotten human history during the Pleistocene

Dogged archaeologists continue to make discoveries that extend knowledge of early human history in this part of the world.

An international team of researchers has discovered the first fossilised bone from a Pleistocene-era human in Wallacea, the cluster of Indonesian islands, including Lombok, Sulaewsi, Timor and Sumba, that were the likely seafaring gateway for the first humans to populate Australia.

The new find, published today in the journal PLOS one, offers a tantalising glimpse of a forgotten people, but one of the archaeologists behind the research says that the information we currently don’t know about these people vastly outweighs the fascinating crumbs they’ve left behind.

FULL REPORT

 

[Azeem]

The word Pakistan was first coined by a student group in their pamphlet for political autonomy, an acronym made from the names of contiguous geographical units which constitute modern day Pakistan.

[CaaC (John)]

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Human evolution: a last archaic hominin stronghold in India

New research reveals some of the last practitioners of an archaic human culture.

Human history can be characterised perhaps by one skill above all else: the ability to make tools that vastly expand our technological abilities. In fact, for scientists tracing the fascinating, branching tree of human evolution, non-perishable stone tools provide a priceless window into the past.

The Acheulean is the name given to the longest-lasting tool-making tradition in history; Acheulean hand-axes and cleavers emerged around 1.5 million years ago in Africa, and persisted in Eurasia until just a few hundred thousand years ago, made by our ancestral and cousin species, like Homo erectus and, later, Neanderthals.

Scientists have been able to trace the evolution and migration of ancient hominins by mapping the occurrence of these crafted hand-axes around the world; now, new evidence suggests one of the Acheulean culture’s final strongholds was at the edges of the monsoonal region of modern-day India.

The new study, led by researchers at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Germany, re-examined ancient stone tools unearthed at a site called Singi Talav, in Rajasthan, and found that they were used by some of the last creators of Acheulean stone tools in the world, dating to around 177,000 years ago – just before the earliest expansions of Homo sapiens across Asia.

Singi Talav is a set on a lakeside close to the modern town of Didwana, on the edge of the Thar Desert. It was first excavated in the early 1980s, and was long assumed one of the oldest Acheulean sites in India. But, armed with modern dating techniques, the researchers used luminescence to determine the age of the sediments in which the tools were found, disproving earlier theories.

“The lakeside setting has ideal preservation conditions for an archaeological site, enabling us to return 30 years after the first excavation and readily re-identify the main occupation horizons again,” says Jimbob Blinkhorn of the Max Planck Institute, lead author of the study.

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More reading: Skulls and skills varied in archaic Homo erectus

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“We’ve applied a range of modern methods to re-examine this critical site, including new approaches to directly date the occupation horizons and to reveal the vegetation in the landscape that Acheulean populations inhabited.”

“Ours is the first study to directly date the occupation horizons at Singi Talav, enabling us to understand both when ancient humans lived here and created the stone tool assemblages, and how these occupations compare with other sites across the region,” adds co-author Julie Durcan, of the University of Oxford.

   

On the margins of the monsoon

The Thar Desert, where these last Acheulean toolmakers held out, is at the western edge of India’s summer monsoon system; it’s a fluctuating landscape of wild extremes, and its habitability will have varied across time.

In order to piece together the landscape these early hominins would have known, the researchers examined plant microfossils, also known as phytoliths, and features of the soil’s geochemistry.

“The results from the two methods we applied complement each other to reveal a landscape rich in the types of grasses that flourish during periods with enhanced summer monsoons,” says Hema Achyuthan, of Anna University, Chennai. These conditions would have helped the population flourish.

“This is the first time the ecology of an Acheulean site in India has been studied using these methods, revealing the broader character of the landscape that these populations inhabited,” Achyuthan adds.

When hominins meet

The researchers say that these remnant Acheulean populations are some of the last strongholds of their material culture in the world.

“This supports evidence from across the region indicating that India hosted the youngest populations using Acheulean toolkits across the world,” says Blinkhorn.

“Critically, the late persistence of the Acheulean at Singi Talav and elsewhere in India directly precedes evidence for the appearance of our own species, Homo sapiens, as they expanded across Asia.”

It suggests that, just maybe, these rich monsoonal grasslands could have hosted a chance encounter between two cousin species, one that had clung on for hundreds of thousands of years, and another whose expansive journey was just beginning.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/history/archaeology/archaic-hominin-india/

 

[CaaC (John)]

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New species of ancient tardigrade found preserved in amber

Miocene age Dominican amber yields 16-million-year-old fossil.

A brand-new species of ancient tardigrade has been discovered in 16-million-year-old Dominican amber.

The newly found fossil, described in Proceedings of the Royal Society, dates back to the Miocene epoch, looks like a modern-day tardigrade, and represents a whole new genus and species: Paradoryphoribius chronocaribbeus (aka beusty boi).

This is only the third tardigrade amber fossil to be described and named to date. The other two fossils are Milnesium swolenskyi (aka swole boi) and Beorn leggi (aka leggi boi), which are older than the new fossil – both date back to the Cretaceous age. This means that Paradoryphoribius fills a gap in the evolutionary history of modern-day tardigrades.

“Scientists know where tardigrades broadly fit in the tree of life, that they are related to arthropods, and that they have a deep origin during the Cambrian Explosion,” says senior author Ortega-Hernández, of Harvard University, US.

FULL REPORT & more photos

 

[Azeem]

In reference to the multiple Mongol raids repelled by the Delhi Sultanate of India. It's actually a very underrated achievement of the dynasty. 

India would've suffered the same feat as of Middle East at the hands of Mongol.