History

[CaaC (John)]

100-million-year-old plesiosaur reptile skeleton found in Australia's outback

 

[CaaC (John)]

Quote

Ice ages, they come and go. Until they don’t.

Humans have so polluted the atmosphere with carbon dioxide, it’s messed with natural ice age cycles.

Humans have pumped so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere we’ve overridden the natural and astronomical factors that cause ice ages to occur. 

“So this is a big deal, as a species. Through polluting and changing the level of greenhouse gasses, we have essentially knocked our climate system off its natural pattern,” says paleoclimatologist Professor Tim Naish from Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand.

“If we keep carbon dioxide above 350 parts per million (ppm) … and if it stays there long enough, then we can no longer go into a natural ice age,” he says.

For around three million years, ice ages have occurred in regular cycles triggered by astronomical factors – variations in radiation from the sun and changes in the Earth’s orbit – as well as tectonic activity and fluctuations in carbon dioxide.

But now, says Naish, if greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere remain at current levels – around 415 ppm – it’s virtually certain that we can no longer go back to a natural ice age. 

Scientists have been able to reconstruct the pattern of the Earth’s climate and its ice ages going back almost 50 million years, Naish says.

In the 1940s, Serbian astrophysicist and mathematician, Milutin Milankovich, developed a theory about how Earth’s orbit around the Sun changes on long timescales, controlling variations in solar radiation on Earth and affecting its climate.

In the 1970s, scientists, including geologist Sir Nicholas Shackleton, pioneered a process of drilling the ocean floor and taking sediment cores – covering millions of years – to analyse something called the ‘oxygen isotopic composition’ of the microfossils in the sediment. This works as a proxy for the volume of ice on the planet at different points in history. And it turns out those records align with Milankovich cycles. 

“So the combination of what we call the orbital forcing, the changes in Earth’s orbit around the sun, and the different concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, we think we can now explain Earth’s climate going back 50 million years. 

•  A barcode of Earth’s climatic past

“Which is really important, because we need to understand the natural pattern, the natural variability before we can extract, what we as humans are doing on top of that natural climate variability,” Naish says.

Learning about past climate can help scientists understand the future effects of global warming, he says. 

For instance, roughly 125,000 years ago during the last interglacial period, when the Earth was naturally 1.5 – 2 degrees warmer than today, sea levels were a lot higher. “We know there are fossil coral shorelines that are six to nine metres higher,” he says. 

“You have to go back 3 million years when geological records show us, for the last time CO₂ in the atmosphere was 400ppm. And then, sea levels were 20 metres higher.”

In contrast, Naish says, during the last ice age, sea levels were around 120 metres lower, “because all the water that’s currently in the ocean was on land, forming ice sheets”.

Carbon dioxide is a very important greenhouse gas that’s currently in the driver’s seat, controlling our climate, he says. 

“This is why the 1.5^oC target, the Paris Agreement, target is so important. Because the science tells us if we get above 1.5 degrees, or closer to two degrees, we may cause irreversible melting of both the Greenland and parts of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and be committed to multi-metre sea level rise.”

For more listen to “Which climate extreme would you rather – an ice age or a very warm interglacial?”

https://cosmosmagazine.com/podcast/ice-ages-come-and-go/

 

Edited January 6, 2023 by CaaC (John)
Spacing correction

[CaaC (John)]

Quote

5 stunning archaeological discoveries that may finally be unearthed in 2023

Here are five predictions about what archaeologists may dig up in 2023.

Predicting the future is tricky, but based on our research, we've made some educated guesses as to the archaeological discoveries and stories we may see in 2023. There's a possibility that the mummy of Nefertiti will be discovered, as archaeologists are conducting DNA tests in an Egyptian tomb to see if one of the mummies is the remains of the ancient Egyptian queen. We also may learn more about an underground city that flourished in Turkey about 2,000 years ago. Here are our five archaeological predictions for 2023.

FULL REPORT

 

[CaaC (John)]

Quote

First evidence of a dinosaur eating a mammal found in Chinese Microraptor fossil

A mammal foot was found in the 120-million-year-old remains of a crow-sized dinosaur.

For the first time, scientists have found direct evidence for a dinosaur eating a mammal.

The fossilised remains of a Microraptor which would have lived in what is now China more than 120 million years ago has been shown by UK palaeontologists to have a little surprise in its tum. In the crow-sized dinosaur’s digestive system is the remains of another animal – a small mammal foot.

“It’s so rare to find examples of food inside dinosaurs, so every example is really important, as it gives direct evidence of what they were eating,” says lead author Dr David Hone from Queen Mary University of London.

While pale in comparison to the scenes from Steven Speilberg’s 1993 film Jurassic Park of a lawyer being swallowed whole by a giant Tyrannosaurus rex, the discovery sheds important light on how these bird-like dinosaurs lived and ate.

“While this mammal would absolutely not have been a human ancestor, we can look back at some of our ancient relatives being a meal for hungry dinosaurs. This study paints a picture of a fascinating moment in time – the first record of a dinosaur eating a mammal – even if it isn’t quite as frightening as anything in Jurassic Park,” Horne adds.

Microraptor made headlines after being first described in 2000 for being a four-winged dinosaur. Like many other small theropod (two-legged, mostly carnivorous) dinosaurs discovered in China in recent decades, Microraptor marks a clear point in the evolution of dinosaurs into modern birds.

With its four feathered limbs, Microraptor prompted theories suggesting flight may have evolved as a result of four-winged gliding.

The specimen studied by the Queen Mary University of London palaeontologists was first found in 2000, but it was many years later that the presence of the mammal foot was found between the dinosaur’s ribs.

Near complete, the mammal foot belonged to a tiny animal, about the size of a mouse. The bones suggest that the mammal predominantly lived on the ground and was not a good climber. It seems an interesting choice of food source for Microraptor which is believed to have soared from tree-to-tree hunting small animals.

Previous studies have revealed other Microraptor specimens with bird, lizard and fish in their stomach contents. Now, adding mammals to that mix tells of a dinosaur with a diverse diet, not a specialist.

It’s not clear if the dinosaurs were hunting these animals, or scavenging the remains of dead animals they found. Nevertheless, the find does give some insight into how the dinosaurs lived and fed.

“The great thing is that, like your housecat which was about the same size, Microraptor would have been an easy animal to live with but a terror if it got out as it would hunt everything from the birds at your feeder to the mice in your hedge or the fish in your pond,” adds co-author Dr Alex Dececchi from Mount Marty University in the US.

://cosmosmagazine.com/history/dinosaur-eating-mammal/

 

[CaaC (John)]

Quote

Viking-era populations weren’t so Viking after all

Just as Scandinavian raiders attacked Europe, their victims snuck in.

Genetic analyses of several Swedish archaeological sites have found unexpected gene flow in Scandinavia at the time of Viking raids against Medieval Britain and Europe.

The study published in Cell found while Vikings were launching their famous attacks on neighbouring regions, their victims were themselves migrating northward into Scandinavia.

Researchers pieced together two millennia of human migration into the region using gene samples from human remains at the site of the fifth century Sandby borg massacre, early medieval cemeteries and burial chambers, and bodies in the 1676 shipwreck of the warship Kronan.

Their results show an influx of British-Irish and Baltic ancestries into the Scandinavian gene pool up to the peak of the late Viking period.

But they were surprised to find these genes were substantially ‘diluted’ in samples extracted from the Kronan ruins, as well as in present-day Scandinavians.

This might indicate migrants failed to procreate successfully, while some migrant groups – like slaves or missionaries – may have been precluded from reproductive opportunities.

“Although still evident in modern Scandinavians, levels of non-local ancestry in some regions are lower than those observed in ancient individuals from the Viking to Medieval periods,” says the study’s lead author Ricardo Rodríguez-Varela.

“This suggests that ancient individuals with non-Scandinavian ancestry contributed proportionately less to the current gene pool in Scandinavia than expected based on the patterns observed in the archaeological record.”

As well as excavations suggesting a diverse range of people having migrated to the region, the analyses also suggest a higher proportion of females moving to Scandinavia among western and Baltic migrants.

Building further understanding of why the medieval period resulted in these ancestries disappearing from the gene pool by the 17th century is next on the list for the research team.

But that might be a challenge, given the scarcity of suitable individuals from that period, as well as ones in the preceding thousand years.

“Individuals from 1000 BCE to 0 are very scarce,” explains Rodríguez-Varela.

“Retrieving DNA from Scandinavian individuals with these chronologies will be important to understand the transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age in this part of the world.

“More individuals from the Medieval period until the present will help us to understand when and why we observe a reduction in the levels of non-local ancestry in some current regions of Scandinavia.

”https://cosmosmagazine.com/history/viking-genetics-kronan-warship-sandby-borg/

 

 

[CaaC (John)]

Quote

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? It’s a dinosaur with the body of a modern bird, but a head like T. rex

The 120-million-year-old Chinese fossil helps inform how modern birds evolved.

We know birds are descendants of dinosaurs like T. rex, but when and how did the transformation from dinosaur to modern bird happen?

This transition is one of the most dramatic in terms of morphology, functionality and ecology, but palaeontologists are still struggling to get to grips with exactly how modern birds came about.

A new fossil discovery by a team at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, of a bird ancestor dinosaur in China, might place another piece to this feathery puzzle.

Named Cratonavis zhui, the 120-million-year-old fossil has a dinosaur-like skull and modern bird-like body. It also shows surprisingly long scapula and first metatarsal bones, setting it apart from all other birds including ancient birds.

The skull was analysed using high-resolution CT scans before digitally removing the fossil from the surrounding rock to see their original shape.

Cratonavis’s skull is not bird like. Morphologically it’s almost identical to that of dinosaurs such as Tyrannosaurus rex.

“The primitive cranial features speak to the fact that most Cretaceous birds such as Cratonavis could not move their upper bill independently with respect to the braincase and lower jaw, a functional innovation widely distributed among living birds that contributes to their enormous ecological diversity,” says a lead author Dr. Li Zhiheng from the IVPP.

The palaeontologists believe that the elongated scapula and metatarsal were mechanical compensators for an overall underdeveloped flight apparatus in the early bird.

Cratonavis sits on the avian evolutionary tree somewhere between Archaeopteryx and other ancient birds which evolved many of the traits of modern birds. It suggests that early bird skeletons were subject to much variability and plasticity.

When they were discovered in Germany in the 1860s, the 150-million-year-old Archaeopteryx fossils were the first indication that dinosaurs and birds might be related. The fossils were the first to show dinosaurs with feather imprints.

The authors suggest that changes in the skeletons of theropods which began the transition to flight, and modern bird body plans, show that there was probably interplay between natural selection, skeletal development and ecological opportunities.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/history/bird-body-dinosaur/

 

[MUFC]

 

Edited January 11, 2023 by MUFC

[CaaC (John)]

Quote

What is hallucigenia?

When scientists first studied the fossilised remains of this strange, spiky, worm-like creature, they couldn’t tell its ‘up’ from its ‘down’, or its front from its back.

Named for its ‘bizarre and dream-like’ appearance, hallucigenia was a finger-sized ocean-dweller that lived during the Cambrian Period around 508 million years ago. It belonged to a group called the panarthropods, which later gave rise to velvet worms, water bears and arthropods.

In 1977, British palaeontologist Simon Conway Morris determined that it had seven pairs of stilt-like legs sticking down, and seven pairs of mouth-tipped tentacles pointing up. Then more specimens were analysed, and this interpretation was turned upside down… literally. Scientists realised that the ‘tentacles’ were, in fact, claw-tipped legs that pointed down, and the ‘legs’ were actually pointy spines that protruded upwards.

Hallucigenia was now the right way up, but no one knew which end was the head. Then in the mid-2000s, modern microscopy methods were applied, and hey presto, the longer of the two ‘sticky-out bits’ was found to contain, not just eyes, but a mouth too. Behind the head, three hitherto unknown pairs of appendages were discovered, and the legs were shown to be jointless.

Hallucigenia, it’s thought, may have walked by altering the pressure of the fluid inside its legs, much like a modern-day starfish.

https://www.sciencefocus.com/nature/what-is-hallucigenia/

 

[CaaC (John)]

Quote

Fossils reveal wondrous dinosaur diversity just before mass extinction

Among the fossils are the first recorded theropods from Chilean Patagonia.

A more complete picture of what the world looked like in the age of dinosaurs is being created by palaeontologists in fossil rich Patagonia in the southernmost reaches of South America.

Scientists like Marcelo Leppe, director of the Antarctic Institute of Chile, says the fossil record is key to understanding life today. This latest research provides a glimpse into the dinosaurs and birds that lived in the region during the Late Cretaceous just before the mass extinction 66 million years ago which saw the disappearance of non-avian dinosaurs.

“We still need to know how life made its way in that apocalyptic scenario and gave rise to our southern environments in South America, New Zealand and Australia,” Leppe says.

But we can now build a snapshot of the diverse dinosaurs that roamed prehistoric Patagonia thanks to the study led by Leppe and palaeontologists at the University of Texas at Austin.

Patagonia has been a treasure trove of fossil discoveries for decades. Among the significant fossils found in southern Argentina and Chile are Dreadnoughtus, a 70 tonne long-necked sauropod thought to be the largest land animal ever, and one the largest carnivorous dinosaurs, Giganotosaurus, which, at 14 metres from nose to tail, is longer than T. rex!

This latest study focuses on the late Cretaceous period 66 to 75 million years ago.

The region where they were found is believed to be an ancient river delta.

Among the fossils are the first recorded theropods from Chile. Theropods are the dinosaur group that includes both modern birds and their close non-avian dinosaur relatives. Most famous among them are Tyrannosaurus rex, Allosaurus and the raptors such as Velociraptor.

Included in the finds are giant megaraptors with large sickle-like claws and birds closely related to modern species.

“The fauna of Patagonia leading up to the mass extinction was really diverse,” says lead author Sarah Davis. “You’ve got your large theropod carnivores and smaller carnivores as well as these bird groups coexisting alongside other reptiles and small mammals.”

As a group, theropods are mostly carnivorous. The top predators found in the Patagonian study included dinosaurs from two groups – megaraptors and unenlagiines.

The megaraptors reached lengths of over seven metres, making them among the larger theropod dinosaurs in South America’s Late Cretaceous.

Unenlagiines ranged from chicken-sized to more than three metres tall and were likely covered with feathers. The unenlagiine fossils found in Patagonia are the southern-most found in the world.

Bird fossils also came in two groups – enantiornithines and ornithurines.

Enantiornithines are now extinct, but were the most diverse and abundant birds millions of years ago. They resembled sparrows, but with toothed beaks.

Ornithurines includes all birds living today. The fossils are too fragmentary to tell for sure, but the palaeontologists believe the ones living in ancient Patagonia may have been similar in appearance to geese or ducks.

Davis says the team found mainly small fossil fragments including teeth, toes and small bone pieces. The enamel on dinosaur teeth glinted out of the rocks, making them easier to spot.

Some scientists suggest that climatic changes in the southern hemisphere after the asteroid impact 66 million years ago were less extreme and more gradual than in the north.

Patagonia and other places in the southern hemisphere, including Australia and Antarctica, may have been a refuge for birds, mammals and other creatures which survived the extinction. Davis says this study is another piece in the puzzle and may help investigate this theory.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/history/patagonia-dinosaur-diversity/

---

 

[Panflute]

"Prehistory? In MY history thread?"

It's more likely than you think. 

[CaaC (John)]

Quote

Why does Roman concrete last so much longer than ours?

Concrete with a two thousand year lifespan.

Roman concrete has mostly stood the test of time. The Pantheon for example was dedicated in 128 CE and has the world’s largest unreinforced concrete dome. Today, it’s still intact.

Even some ancient Roman aqueducts still deliver water to Rome.

On the other hand – In your town or city you probably have at least one piece of brutalist architecture. Big in the 50s and 60s, these now controversial concrete structures were considered utilitarian and long lasting. Yet today, without restoration, some of these reinforced concrete buildings have begun to crumble.

Researchers from MIT think they have the answer to Roman concrete’s millennia long success – white specks called lime clasts.

Lime clasts are small white chunks which originate from lime, found ubiquitously through Roman concrete but not in modern day concrete.

“Ever since I first began working with ancient Roman concrete, I’ve always been fascinated by these features,” says Professor Admir Masic, an MIT civil and environmental engineer.

“These are not found in modern concrete formulations, so why are they present in these ancient materials?”

We understand quite a bit about how the Romans used to make concrete from ancient scholars Vitruvius and Pliny, who wrote about the strict specifications for the materials.

However, Masic wasn’t sure which type of lime the Romans would have been using.

It was assumed that when lime was incorporated into Roman concrete, it was first slacked –combined with water to form a highly reactive paste-like material. But this process alone could not account for the presence of the lime clasts

“Was it possible that the Romans might have actually directly used lime in its more reactive form, known as quicklime?” he says.

Researchers used spectroscopic examination to provide clues that the calcium carbonate had been formed at extreme temperatures. This would be expected from the exothermic reaction produced by using quicklime instead of, or in addition to, the slaked lime in the mixture.

Hot mixing, the team has now concluded, was actually the key to the super-durable nature.

“The benefits of hot mixing are twofold,” Masic says.

“First, when the overall concrete is heated to high temperatures, it allows chemistries that are not possible if you only used slaked lime, producing high-temperature-associated compounds that would not otherwise form. Second, this increased temperature significantly reduces curing and setting times since all the reactions are accelerated, allowing for much faster construction.”

The team believe that these lime clasts could be ‘self-healing’ when cracks begin to form.

To prove that this was the mechanism responsible for the durability of the Roman concrete, the team produced samples of hot-mixed concrete that incorporated both ancient and modern formulations, deliberately cracked them, and then ran water through the cracks.

Within two weeks the cracks in the ancient formula had completely healed and the water could no longer flow. An identical chunk of concrete made without quicklime never healed, and the water just kept flowing through the sample.

However, this isn’t the first time that we thought we’d uncovered the secret to Roman concrete’s longevity. Researchers back in 2017 discovered that seawater in the manufacturing process also strengthened Roman concrete.

Concrete is one of the most used substances on earth – second only to water. With tens of billion tonnes of concrete used every year, finding ways to make it last longer or use less is an important goal.

Perhaps Roman concrete still has more secrets deep inside its long-lasting shell.

The research has been published in Science Advances.

Correction: 11/01/2023. The original post used an image of the Parthenon, which was corrected to Pantheon.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/technology/roman-concrete-lime-mit-brutalism-hot/

 

Edited January 19, 2023 by CaaC (John)
Spacing correction

[CaaC (John)]

Quote

Scientists put a 2,000-year-old mummy through a CAT scan and, boy oh boy, that’s a little too much detail!

Ancient burial practices give new meaning to the term ‘golden boy’

Meet Golden Boy: A wealthy Egyptian teenager who’s waited a very long time for his first CAT scan.

Over two millennia, in fact.

The cloth wrapped and embalmed mummy of the adolescent, encased in an elaborate sarcophagus, was fed into the scanner by Egyptian scientists curious to see what was within its burial container.

In doing so, the wooden coffin, first discovered more than a century ago in a cemetery south of Cairo, will remain closed, ensuring the child continues to rest easy.

Analysis of the scans found Golden Boy’s name is well deserved – his family were evidently high up in during Late Ptolemaic Egyptian society.

He was decorated with dozens of amulets – mostly gold – carefully arranged on top or within his body.

A golden heart scarab amulet was placed within his chest cavity and a golden tongue within his mouth.

The detail of the scan even detected a two-finger amulet – exclusively given to the Egyptian dead – next to his uncircumcised penis.

Dr Sahar Saleem from Cario University who led the study says the mummy is an important example of burial rituals practised by the ancient Egyptians.

“This mummy’s body was extensively decorated with 49 amulets, beautifully stylised in a unique arrangement of three columns between the folds of the wrappings and inside the  body cavity,” Saleem says.

“These include the Eye of Horus, the scarab, the akhet amulet of the horizon, the placenta, the Knot of Isis, and others. Many were made of gold, while some were made of semiprecious stones, fired clay, or faience.

“Their purpose was to protect the body and give it vitality in the afterlife.”

Golden Boy was, in real life, aged around 14-15, around 128cm and, according to the researchers, the possessor of an impressive dental record: no cavities, tooth loss or disease.

Aside from his evident wealth detected in the CT scan, he was also found wearing a golden head mask and white sandals, which Saleem says were “probably meant to enable the boy to walk out of the coffin”, upon entering the afterlife.

“Bouquets of plants and flowers were placed beside the deceased at the time of burial: this was done with the mummies of the New Kingdom kings Ahmose, Amenhotep I, and Ramesses the Great.”

While Golden Boy’s heart remained in place, most of his other internal organs were removed.

His heart was protected – as described in the Book of the Dead – by a scarab, which is intended to quell the Egyptian’s heart when it was judged. The researchers suggest this finding indicates ancient Egyptians valued their children and sought to protect them as they passed into the afterlife. 

Despite spending two millennia in the Nag el–Hassaya cemetery, and the last century sleeping soundly in the museum’s basement, Golden Boy is now set for a noisier future as part of the main display upstairs.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/history/2000-year-old-mummy-cat-scan/

 

[CaaC (John)]

Quote

Arctic monkeys: 52-million-year-old primate relatives are earliest sign of primates near prehistoric north pole

Their environment would have been a warm swamp.

Fossil primate relatives from 52-million-years ago have been found north of the Arctic circle for the first time. Two early primates have been identified from fragments of jaws and teeth.

Today, primates almost exclusively live in warm, tropical environments, so it may come as a surprise that their ancestors lived so far north.

But, 50 million years ago during the geological epoch called the Eocene, substantial global warming effects made the Earth much warmer. In fact, the Eocene (which lasted from around 56 million to 34 million years ago) was the warmest period during the Cenozoic era – the era which spans the last 66 million years since the Age of Dinosaurs.

The Eocene is, therefore, a crucial case study of how ecosystems react to climate change.

“Global warming is transforming Arctic ecosystems in ways that are difficult to predict, but ancient episodes of global warming show how future changes in the Arctic might unfold. The first primate-like fossils ever recovered north of Arctic Circle show that these tropically adapted mammals were able to colonize the Arctic during an ancient episode of global warming approximately 52 million years ago, by adopting a new diet of nuts and seeds that enabled them to survive six months of winter darkness,” the authors write in a paper published in PLOS ONE.

Both the ancient primate relatives, named Ignacius mckennai and Ignacius dawsonae, were found on Ellesmere Island in Canada.

Sitting well above the Arctic circle, average temperatures on the island today average 3.3°C in the warmest month, July, plummeting to an average of -38°C in February.

But during the Eocene, global mean annual surface temperatures are estimated to have been 13°C higher than in the late 20^th century. There were no permanent ice caps. And the polar regions were very different.

Ellesmere Island 52 million years ago would have been home to a swamp-like environment.

But even with the warmer temperatures, fossils of early primate relatives in North America have been restricted to much lower latitudes, prompting palaeontologists to suggest that the two newly discovered species were descended from a common ancestor who possessed a spirit “to boldly go where no primate has gone before.”

“No primate relative has ever been found at such extreme latitudes,” says lead author Kristen Miller, a PhD student at the University of Kansas. “They’re more usually found around the equator in tropical regions. I was able to do a phylogenetic analysis, which helped me understand how the fossils from Ellesmere Island are related to species found in midlatitudes of North America – places like New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming and Montana. Even down in Texas we have some fossils that belong to this family as well.

”None of these species are related to squirrels, but I think that’s the closest critter that we have that helps us visualize what they might have been like. They were most likely very arboreal – so, living in the trees most of the time.”

The pair also have teeth and jaws which suggest they ate hard food items, likely for feeding on tougher foods during long, dark Arctic winters where softer meals were hard to come by.

“A lot of what we do in paleontology is look at teeth – they preserve the best,” Miller explains. “Their teeth are just super weird compared to their closest relatives. So, what I’ve been doing the past couple of years is trying to understand what they were eating, and if they were eating different materials than their middle-latitude counterparts.”

The team think the early primate relatives were forced to survive on nuts and seeds during the relatively harsh polar winter.

“That, we think, is probably the biggest physical challenge of the ancient environment for these animals,” adds corresponding author Dr Chris Beard, also at the University of Kansas. “How do you make it through six months of winter darkness, even if it’s reasonably warm? The teeth, and even the jaw muscles of these animals, changed compared to their close relatives from midlatitudes. To survive those long Arctic winters, when preferred foods like fruits were not available, they had to rely on ‘fallback foods’ like nuts and seeds.”

The researchers suggest that, while warmer temperatures prompted some organisms to move north, long periods of Arctic darkness may still have been a limiting factor in which animals and plants survived.

“It does show how something like a primate, or a primate relative that’s specialized to one environment, can change based off of climate change,” Miller says. “I think probably what it says is primates’ range could expand with climate change or move at least towards the poles rather than the equator. Life starts to get too hot there, perhaps we’ll have a lot of taxa moving north and south, rather than the intense biodiversity we see at the equator today.”

https://cosmosmagazine.com/history/earliest-arctic-primate/

---

 

Edited January 28, 2023 by CaaC (John)
Spacing correction

[CaaC (John)]

Quote

Dozens of animal skulls found in Neanderthal cave, suggesting they had symbolic use

The discovery has left scientists scratching their heads.

Neanderthals placed a large number of animal skulls in a Spanish cave 40,000 years ago. But why?

The discovery has scientists puzzled.

Cueva Des-Cubierta is a multi-level cave system in the Madrid region of Spain, first discovered in 1978. Archaeologists have studied the caves for decades as the location possesses indications that they were used in Neanderthal rituals.

Researchers climbed to the third level of the cave and found 35 large animal skulls. All the crania came from animals which sported either horns or antlers. Among them were 28 bovine animals including bison and aurochs, five deer and two rhinoceroses.

Nearby, Neanderthal teeth and tools indicate that the ancient humans called the cave systems home.

Plenty of Neanderthal caves have been found in the past. And many of them have animal bones within them. But this discovery is different.

The scientists argue in a paper published in Nature Human Behavior, that the presence of the skulls indicates something other than Neanderthal feasts.

Finding a collection of large animal skulls in a cave is highly irregular. Today’s hunter gather communities will rarely take the heads of prey back to their dwellings. The skulls are heavy, cumbersome and provide little by way of meat. That very few animal teeth and other bones are present in the cave also indicates the creatures were butchered elsewhere and only their decapitated heads brought inside.

Therefore, the authors conclude, “the introduction of the crania, and not of other parts of the carcasses of greater nutritional interest, into the Cueva Des-Cubierta seems to have been deliberate and not related to subsistence.”

“Rather, it seems more related to their symbolic use,” they add.

It’s not clear exactly what the skulls meant to the ancient humans or how they were used. Neanderthals aren’t known to have performed rituals with animal heads – this is something that has only been seen in the archaeological record in relation to early modern humans.

By analysing the bones, the team was able to determine that the animal heads were carefully removed from the bodies and had been “worked” in different ways involving tools and, in some cases, fire.

The fact that the skulls still had their horns and antlers lead the researchers to suggest that they may have been hunting trophies.

Whatever the purpose of the skulls, the Neanderthals appear to have been stockpiling the skulls for quite some time. The animal crania occupy an entire sediment layer, representing “years, decades, centuries or even millennia” according to the researchers.

Neanderthal caves in the past have typically been related exclusively to fairly mundane activities like hunting or tool-making.

“[T]o date, no site exclusively related to symbolic activity has been identified in the Neanderthal archaeological record,” the authors write.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/history/neanderthal-skull-cave/

 

Edited January 30, 2023 by CaaC (John)

[CaaC (John)]

Quote

Nearly 600 obsidian handaxes from 1.2 million years ago found in Ethiopia show early humans were smarter than we think

Handaxes are the longest-used tool in human history.

A trove of nearly 600 obsidian handaxes, dating back at least 1.2 million years, has been unearthed in Ethiopia, indicating the presence of a prehistoric “knapping workshop”.

Knapping is the technique used to create handaxes, which are often referred to as humanity’s “first great invention.”

Made by chipping shards off a piece of stone to make a sharp edge, handaxes were not attached to handles, but held in the hand. They have a distinctive teardrop or pear shape. They were made out of flint or, later, obsidian – a type of volcanic glass.

The first handaxes in the palaeontological record date back to at least 1.5 million years ago and were found in Tanzania’s Olduvai Gorge. Handaxes are believed to have spread throughout Africa, south Asia, the Middle East and Europe around 500,000 years ago. They were still being made as recently as 40,000 years ago.

No other cultural artefact is known to have been made for such a long time.

Prior research has suggested that knapping workshops first cropped up in the prehistoric record in Europe several hundred thousand years ago – up to 774,000 years ago. The Ethiopian find nearly doubles the earlier estimates.

The researchers found 578 handaxes buried in sediment, all but three of which were made of obsidian. They were able to estimate the age of the tools by analysing the material around them.

Studying the axes revealed that their construction was similar, indicating an ancient knapping workshop had been discovered.

It is unclear exactly which hominins produced the tools. A likely candidate appears to be Homo erectus, which emerged around 2 million years ago in Africa and disappears from the fossil record as recently as around 100,000 years ago.

What the research does show, however, is a level of planning often ascribed to later human ancestors. The handaxes were pre-crafted and stored, suggesting the concept of imagination and preparation existed in these prehistoric human ancestors 1.2 million years ago.

“It has been argued that, in earlier times, multiple activities of everyday life were all uniformly conducted at the same spot. The separation of focused activities across different localities, which indicates a degree of planning, according to this mindset, characterizes later hominins,” the researchers write.

The study is published in Nature Ecology & Evolution.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/history/obsidian-handaxe-workshop/

 

[CaaC (John)]

Quote

Decrypted letters discovered to come from a shock source: Mary, Queen of Scots

Found by accident, from people who decrypt for a hobby.

A computer scientist, a pianist and a physicist walk into an archive…and stumble upon over 50,000 words of encrypted letters, written by Mary, Queen of Scots, more than 400 years ago.

Or, more seriously: three cryptologists have, in their spare time, cracked the code on a stack of encrypted letters they found in an online archive – and discovered that the letters had been penned by Mary Stuart.

Their discovery is published in the journal Cryptologia.

Mary, Queen of Scots had a tumultuous life, concluding with a 19-year imprisonment in England by her cousin Queen Elizabeth I followed by a charge of treason and her execution on 8 February 1587.

During imprisonment, she had an extensive and largely secret correspondence with her supporters in the outside world. These newly decrypted letters were written between 1578 and 1584, and mostly addressed to Michel de Castelnau de Mauvissière, the French ambassador in England at the time.

The letters are held by the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (France’s national library) and available in their online archive, but they were listed in the catalogue as being from the 1520s and 1530s, and linked to Italian affairs.

“Upon deciphering the letters, I was very, very puzzled and it kind of felt surreal,” says first author Dr George Lasry, a computer scientist and member of the DECRYPT Project – a multidisciplinary group from several European universities, which aims to map, digitise and decrypt historical ciphers.

“We have broken secret codes from kings and queens previously, and they’re very interesting, but with Mary Queen of Scots it was remarkable as we had so many unpublished letters deciphered and because she is so famous.”

Lasry, along with cryptology enthusiasts Norbert Biermann and Satoshi Tomokiyo (who are a pianist and a physicist in their day jobs, respectively), used a combination of computer and manual techniques to decode the letters.

“The code was moderately complex compared to other ciphers of the time and took us a while to crack,” says Lasry.

“There are 191 distinct symbols, and this required multiple rounds of analysis, the first one being computerized (30-40% of the text decrypted), and the rest requiring manual work – linguistic and contextual analysis.”

Mary employed techniques like using multiple different symbols for common letters, which prevents people from using frequency analysis to break the code, as well as using single symbols to denote common names or places.

A computer algorithm called hill climbing got the researchers an initial key to work with, from which they could start to decrypt manually. But the most intensive work, according to Lasry, was transcribing the 150,000-some symbols in the letters for a computer to read in the first place.

“It took a few weeks to start cracking the code and reading some parts, but the transcription work and the deciphering & interpretation of the decrypted text – 50,000 words in total – took most of the time.

“We started this project in early 2022 and worked until the end of 2022, all in our free time. But this was a more rewarding effort, to read Mary Stuart’s secret correspondence for the first time after 400 years.”

As they began to decipher fragments, they noticed a few clues in the letters as to who may have written them.

“It emerged that the writer was in captivity, had a son, and was a woman, which could match Mary Stuart,” says Lasry.

“The definitive clue was the mention of Francis Walsingham, Queen Elizabeth’s first secretary and spymaster, who is well known for having spied on Mary during her captivity.”

British archives already had copies of a few of the letters, which helped confirm their source. But most of the 57 total letters found were unknown to historians.

The researchers suspect that inspecting physical documents, and more comprehensive online searches, would reveal yet more letters.

“These discoveries will be a literary and historical sensation. They mark the most important new find on Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, for 100 years,” says Dr John Guy, a historian at the University of Cambridge, UK.

“I’d always wondered if Michel de Castelnau’s original versions of Mary’s 55 ciphered letters could turn up one day, buried in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris or perhaps somewhere else, unidentified because of the ciphering. And now they have.

“The letters show definitively that Mary, during the years of her captivity in England in the Earl of Shrewsbury’s custody, closely observed and actively involved herself in political affairs in Scotland, England and France, and was in regular contact, either directly, or indirectly through de Castelnau, with many of the leading political figures at Elizabeth I’s court.”

An example of this is a letter dated 20 January, 1580, reproduced and translated in the paper.

“If in this next parliament the succession is dealt with, please remember to speak to the queen of England on my behalf and to make the same pleas that I previously wrote to you,” writes Mary.

While they’ve provided summaries of the letters and a few complete reproductions in their paper, the codebreakers didn’t analyse the letters in depth – they say that’s a job for historians, and will likely take some time.

“It would also be great, potentially, to work with historians to produce an edited book of her letters deciphered, annotated, and translated,” says Lasry.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/history/decryption-mary-queen-of-scots/

 

[CaaC (John)]

Quote

150-kg penguin that lived in New Zealand 55 million years ago is the new all-time heavyweight

The penguin would have been as tall as an average human.

Imagine a penguin waddling toward you. Adorable, right? Who doesn’t love penguins? Now imagine that penguin weighing more than 150 kilograms, looking you straight in the eye?

If you were to travel to New Zealand 55 million years ago, you might have exactly that experience. Fossil bones of penguins unearthed in 2016 and 2017 include two newly discovered penguin species, one of which is the largest known to science – more than three times the size of the largest living penguins.

The fossils were discovered in boulders that date to between 55.5 and 59.5 million years old on a beach in North Otago on New Zealand’s south island. That means the penguins were around within a few million years of the extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs 66 million years ago.

Emperor penguins, the tallest and heaviest of all modern penguins, can reach approximately 120-130 centimetres in height and typically weigh between 25 and 45 kg.

Kumimanu fordycei, the larger of the two newly discovered prehistoric penguin species, would have tipped the scales at 154 kg and been as tall as an average human.

Even Petradyptes stonehousei, the other species discovered in North Otago, would have dwarfed today’s biggest penguins with a mass of 50 kg.

Palaeontologists, led by researchers from the University of Cambridge, used laser scans to create digital models of the fossil bones of Kumimanu and Petradyptes. These models allowed the team to compare the fossil species with other prehistoric birds, and flying diving birds like auks, and modern penguins.

They were able to estimate the dimensions of the birds by measuring hundreds of modern penguin bones and predicted the long-extinct penguins’ mass using the dimensions of the flipper bones.

“Fossils provide us with evidence of the history of life, and sometimes that evidence is truly surprising,” says Dr Daniel Field from Cambridge in a Science X article. “Many early fossil penguins attained enormous sizes, easily dwarfing the largest penguins alive today.” For comparison, Field adds that K. fordycei would have weighed more than basketball player Shaquille O’Neal at his peak!

Kumimanu knocks out the previous all-time penguin heavyweight champion, Palaeeudyptes klekowskii, which lived in Antarctica about 37 million years ago and weighed in at 116 kg.

Both new species show that penguins got very large very early in penguin evolution, millions of years before their flipper apparatus was fine-tuned. The team described their flippers as more primitive, with slender and exhibiting muscle attachment points that more closely resemble those of flying birds.

Dr Daniel Ksepka tells Science X: “Size conveys many advantages. A bigger penguin could capture larger prey, and more importantly it would have been better at conserving body temperature in cold waters. It is possible breaking the [45 kg] size barrier allowed the earliest penguins to spread from New Zealand to other parts of the world.”

The researchers also postulate that the penguins’ size may have allowed them to dive to greater depths than modern penguins.

Dr Daniel Thomas from Massey University in Auckland, NZ says large, warm-blooded marine animals living today can dive to great depths. “This raises questions about whether Kumimanu fordycei had an ecology that penguins today don’t have, by being able to reach deeper waters and find food that isn’t accessible to living penguins,” Thomas says.

The findings are detailed in a paper published in the Journal of Paleontology.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/history/largest-penguin-ever-nz/

 

Edited February 13, 2023 by CaaC (John)
Spacing correction

[CaaC (John)]

Quote

2.9-million-year-old butchery site is the oldest evidence of human ancestors consuming very large animals

The site calls into question who was the first to use stone tools.

Early human ancestors were using some of the oldest stone tools in the palaeontological record 2.9 million years ago to butcher hippos and pound plant material.

The findings come from a site on the shores of Lake Victoria in Kenya.

The horn of Africa is known as the “cradle of humanity” because it is so rich in early hominin fossils and artefacts, suggesting it as the birthplace of the primate lineage from which humans evolved.

Among the finds from this part of Africa are the oldest stone tools ever, dating back 3.3 million years, discovered in 2015 near Lake Turkana, also in Kenya.

Lake Turkana is also home of the 1.6-million-year-old fossil of a Homo ergaster dubbed “Turkana Boy,” the most complete early hominin skeleton ever found.  Turkana Boy is a scientific marvel, representing one of the earliest hominins with features beginning to resemble those of modern humans.

Though not the oldest stone tools ever discovered, the recent Lake Victoria finds are the oldest of a particular kind of stone tool belonging to what is called the “Oldowan toolkit.”

Oldowan tools are extremely significant in the development of early hominin production. They include simple flaked tools like choppers, scrapers and rudimentary cutting instruments.

The handaxes that were to replace Oldowan tools emerged hundreds of thousands of years later, around 1.7 million years ago.

There are three types of Oldowan tools: hammerstones, cores and flakes.

Hammerstones are used for hitting. Cores are typically angular or oval in shape. When a core is struck with a hammerstone, it creates flakes that can be used as a cutting or scraping edge. 

“With these tools you can crush better than an elephant’s molar can and cut better than a lion’s canine,” says palaeoanthropologist Dr Rick Potts, head of the Smithsonian’s Human Origins Program. “Oldowan technology was like suddenly evolving a brand-new set of teeth outside your body, and it opened up a new variety of foods on the African savannah to our ancestors.” 

To date the tools, scientists used radioactive decay measurements of the sediment; reversal of Earth’s magnetic field; and other fossil finds in the same layer.

These multiple dating techniques place the tools from Lake Victoria at around 2.9 million years old, but more conservative estimates give a range of their construction between 2.58 million and 3 million years ago.

The site holds the fossil remains of at least three hippopotamus individuals – two of which bear the tell-tale signs that they were butchered. Similarly, antelope remains at the site show indications that the flesh was sliced off the bone, and that bones were crushed to get at the marrow inside.

“What’s really interesting is that here at this site you have some of the earliest evidence of butchery of megafauna, even before the advent of the use of fire,” says Associate Professor Julien Louys from Australia’s Griffith University. “This indicates that exploitation of megafauna began millions of years before the so-called megafauna extinction event.”

Fire hadn’t been invented for another two million years, so the meat may have been cut up to make it easier to chew.

Wear patterns on 30 of the stone tools discovered show they were also used to pound plants.

But which early hominins made the tools?

The site, and nearby sites, have produced molars belonging to close revolutionary relatives of humans, Paranthropus.

“The assumption among researchers has long been that only the genus Homo, to which humans belong, was capable of making stone tools,” Potts said. “But finding Paranthropus alongside these stone tools opens up a fascinating whodunnit.”

https://cosmosmagazine.com/history/stone-tools-butcher-site-kenya/

 

[CaaC (John)]

 

Ancient “toothy” wombat cousin found near Alice Springs sheds light on how today’s marsupials evolved

The animal is described as a cross between wombats and the extinct “marsupial lion”.

Mukupirna nambensis, a close relative of Mukupirna fortidentata. Credit: Peter Schouten (supplied).

 

[CaaC (John)]

Quote

New hair testing uncovers drug use in Bronze Age cultures

Toxic plants used as part of burial ceremonies induced delirium, hallucinations.

Hairs found in an ancient cave in Spain have shed light on the use of drug plants in ancient Europe....

 

[CaaC (John)]

Quote

Animal sacrifice and cult activity in Arabia revealed in 7,000-year-old stone monument

Animal sacrifice and cult activity in Arabia revealed in 7,000-year-old stone monument.

Seven millennia ago, humans living in ancient Arabia built massive stone monuments where they sacrificed wild and domesticated animals as part of complex religious practices.....

 

[CaaC (John)]

Quote

Waiter! There’s a sauropod in my soup! Dinosaur footprints in Chinese restaurant confirmed

The dino diner booked a reservation at the restaurant 100 million years before it was built.

A diner at a restaurant in China found what appeared to be footprints in the venue’s courtyard in July last year. Analysis has now verified that what the restaurant-goer found were indeed 100-million-year-old dino tracks......

 

[CaaC (John)]

Quote

Archaeology shows how hunter-gatherers fitted into southern Africa’s first city, 800 years ago

Where the Limpopo and Shashe Rivers meet, forming the modern border between Botswana, South Africa and Zimbabwe, lies a hill that hardly stands out from the rest. One could easily pass it without realising its historical significance. It was on and around this hill that what appears to be southern Africa’s earliest state-level society and urban city, Mapungubwe, appeared around 800 years ago.....

 

[CaaC (John)]

Quote

Oldest skeletons add to understanding of evolution in time for International Bat Appreciation Day

The 52-million-year-old bat fossils were found in Wyoming, USA.

 

A new species of bat has been described based on the oldest bat skeletons ever discovered – 52-million-year-old fossils found in the Green River Formation of Wyoming in the US........

 

[CaaC (John)]

Deleted