History

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21 oldest continuously inhabited places in the world

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Edited July 17, 2019 by CaaC (John)

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King Tut’s coffin will be restored for the first time since the discovery in 1922

Kassidy Vavra

King Tut’s coffin will be restored for the first time since it was discovered in 1922, the Antiques Ministry of Egypt announced.

The Antiques Ministry announced Wednesday King Tutankhamun was transported from his tomb in Luxor to the Grand Egyptian Museum for restoration.

After the restoration, the coffin will be displayed in the museum exhibition of the King Tutankhamun collection at the Grand Egyptian Museum, Dr Eltayeb Abbas, director of general archaeological affairs said in a statement from the museum. It will appear alongside other golden coffins that are currently at the Cairo Egyptian Museum in a complete collection at the official opening.

“The coffin was moved amidst security procedures and under the supervision of the conservators and archaeologists in cooperation with the Tourism and Antiquities Police,” the museum said in a statement.

King Tut, born in 1341 B.C.E., served as the pharaoh of Egypt beginning when he was just nine years old in 1332 B.C.E., according to Biography. He ruled for 10 years, until around 1323 B.C.E. when he died at the age of 19.

Related Slideshow: Cursed tombs and discoveries through the years (Provided by Photo Services)

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Little was known about his life and death until 1922 when British archaeologist Howard Carter discovered his tomb in 1922. Inside the tomb was his coffin — containing his body, which had been mummified for more than 3,000 years.

Although bone fragments in his skull led scientists to initially believe King Tut had died from a blow to the head by political rivals, later investigations in 2006 including a full body scan indicated the skull damage happened after his death. Scientists later discovered he had malaria and was disabled, requiring a cane to walk. It was later suggested he died from gangrene that resulted from a broken leg, according to Biography.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/offbeat/king-tuts-coffin-will-be-restored-for-first-time-since-discovery-in-1922/ar-AAEyPmx

 

Edited July 23, 2019 by CaaC (John)
Spelling corrections

[CaaC (John)]

Grave of 'real-life Asterix' who fought Caesar found amid a trove of weapons and possessions in West Sussex

Henry Bodkin

© PA 'Unique find': the artefacts have been carefully studied for the last decade - PA

The grave of a real-life Asterix containing what is believed to be an ancient Gallic warrior who came to Britain and fought Julius Caesar has been discovered, archaeologists have announced.

The unique and highly-elaborate resting place was found on a West Sussex building site.

The Iron Age warrior, buried with his glamorous and ornate head-dress, is thought to have been a refugee French Gallic fighter who fled Julius Caesar's legionnaires as they swept across continental Europe in about 50BC.

Archaeologists have described the discovery, which will go on display at Chichester's Novium Museum in January 2020, as "the most elaborately equipped warrior grave ever found in England".

© PA Part of a headdress from a helmet belonging to the warrior

The grave was found during excavations ahead of a Berkeley Homes housing development in North Bersted in 2008, but it has taken years of conservation and scientific analysis to prepare the artefacts for display.

Dr Melanie Giles, senior lecturer in archaeology at the University of Manchester, said: "It really is absolutely a unique find in the British Isles and in the wider continent, we don't have another burial that combines this quality of weaponry and Celtic art with a date that puts it around the time of Caesar's attempted conquest of Britain.

"We will probably never know his name, what we know from the archaeology is that he is either someone from eastern England who may have gone and fought with the Gauls that we know was a problem for Caesar, we were allies with the French, helping them with their struggle against him.

Gallery: Amazing archaeological finds (Photo Services)

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"Or he might be a Frenchman himself who flees that conflict, possibly a real-life Asterix and coming to us, just as in Asterix in Britain, to lend us aid in terms of the knowledge he has about strategy, tactics, he knows Caesar is going to try to divide and rule."

"Also he brings with him his kit, extraordinary weaponry, a beautiful sword which is not like the swords we have, a new technology, style and design and helmet which is absolutely unique with these wonderful Celtic openwork crests which exaggerate his height and make him absolutely fabulous."

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/grave-of-real-life-asterix-who-fought-caesar-found-amid-trove-of-weapons-and-possessions-in-west-sussex/ar-AAEHkoJ?li=BBoPWjQ

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Age of Discovery ship found perfectly preserved in Baltic Sea

David Keys

VIDEO

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Edited July 23, 2019 by CaaC (John)
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Pictish man who was ‘brutally’ killed may have been royalty, researchers say

By Conor Riordan, PA Scotland

© Provided by The Press Association Researchers at the University of Dundee did a facial reconstruction of the Pictish man (University of Dundee)

A Pictish man who had a “brutal death” about 1,400 years ago could have been royalty, researchers now say.

Archaeologists found the skeleton in a recess of a cave in the Black Isle in the Highlands.

He was discovered in a cross-legged position with stones weighing down his limbs while his head had been battered multiple times.

Analysis carried out on behalf of the Rosemarkie Caves Project now suggests he was a prominent member of the community, such as royalty or a chieftain.

The findings show he had a high-protein diet, which researchers have few other examples of during that period.

Simon Gunn, the founder of the project, said: “He was a big, strong fella – built like a rugby player – very heavily built above the waist.

“It’s rather peculiar that he had a very high-protein diet throughout his life, to the extent that it’s as if he had been eating nothing but suckling pigs.

“He was a bit special, that could be royalty or a chieftain.

“Obviously he had a rather brutal death, but he was buried quite carefully in that cave.”

© Provided by The Press Association The remains were discovered while archaeologists were trying to establish how long the caves had been in use (Rosemarkie Caves Project)

Mr Gunn added he was only aware of two examples of people in Scotland around that time having a similar diet.

A bone sample sent for radiocarbon dating indicates that he died sometime between 430 and 630.

The man stood at 5ft 6ins and was aged about 30 at the time of his death.

His skeleton had no injuries other than those inflicted during his death. This suggests he was not a warrior or engaged in arduous labour.

Mr Gunn also said the cave burial could have been a way to place his body at an “entrance to the underworld” as part of a ritual.

The team believe there was a feast after Rosemarkie Man’s death, either in celebration or reverence of his passing, as there were piles of animal bones near where he was discovered.

Forensic anthropologist Dame Sue Black previously helped to detail his injuries.

Earlier analysis from 2017 shows the first three impacts broke the man’s teeth, fractured his left jaw and back of his head.

The fourth strike went through his skull from one side and out the other as he lay on the ground, while the fifth blow was to the top of his head.

Professor Black added: “It could well be that we are looking at someone prominent.

“If you have a high-protein diet you are eating well and are not in the poor of the community.”

Researchers at the University of Dundee later did a facial reconstruction of the man.

The Rosemarkie Caves Project has been surveying a series of caves along the coast of the Black Isle.

Evidence shows the caves were being used in some way from 2,300 years ago until the recent past.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/pictish-man-who-was-brutally-killed-may-have-been-royalty-researchers-say/ar-AAEIvbP?li=AAnZ9Ug

[CaaC (John)]

Scientists Just Discovered A 310-Mile Coral Reef Corridor In The Gulf Of Mexico

Yessenia Funes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Edited July 24, 2019 by CaaC (John)

[CaaC (John)]

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

Maya Wei-Haas

© Photograph by Francesco d’Errico & Luc Doyon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Discovering a doodle

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mysterious artists

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[CaaC (John)]

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

Ian Randall For Mailonline

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

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

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

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

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

'It's very moving.'

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

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

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

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

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

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

[CaaC (John)]

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[CaaC (John)]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

[CaaC (John)]

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

Kat Eschner

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

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

[CaaC (John)]

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

By Candida Moss

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[CaaC (John)]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

VIDEO

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

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

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

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

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

[CaaC (John)]

100 years ago, French daredevil flies under Arc de Triomphe

Early on a Thursday morning 100 years ago, a French WWI veteran took off on a secret mission that would propel him into the record books: a daredevil flight under the monumental Arc de Triomphe in Paris.

Charles Godefroy pulled off the stunt on August 7, 1919, to the astonishment of crowds gathered below on the Champs-Elysees.

Dozens fled or threw themselves on the ground as the biplane whizzed just a few metres over their heads.

Like other airmen who fought during World War 1, Godefroy took offence when pilots were ordered to march alongside other soldiers during the national Bastille Day military parade just a few weeks earlier on July 14.

He was determined to remind the country of pilots' exploits and sacrifices during the war, and began preparing his flight with the help of a journalist friend, Jacques Mortane.

Other aviation pioneers had already renounced the attempt, including Roland Garros who claimed that trying to fit through the narrow 14.5-metre (48-foot) opening would lead to an untimely death, according to French historian Philippe Gras.

But Godefroy had practised by flying under a bridge at Miramas on the Mediterranean coast and chose a Nieuport fighter plane with a wingspan of just nine metres.

Mortane was waiting when Godefroy zoomed under the monument at around 8:00 am and captured the feat on film. ****

Despite having flouted any number of military rules, Godefroy got off with a mere warning from his superiors and became a hero in his hometown of La Fleche in western France, which erected a plaque in his honour.

Since then, several illicit flights under the arch have been made over the years while other daredevils have buzzed under the much wider arches of the Eiffel Tower.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/offbeat/100-years-ago-french-daredevil-flies-under-arc-de-triomphe/ar-AAFsx4F

VIDEO ****

 

Edited August 7, 2019 by CaaC (John)
Spacing correction

[CaaC (John)]

Drought reveals lost Buddhist temple in Thailand

By Jeremy Schultz, Reuters

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[CaaC (John)]

A knight's trail: New bridge joins King Arthur's Tintagel Castle to the mainland for the first time in 400 years as part of £5million redevelopment

The original bridge was said to be so narrow that three knights could have defended Tintagel Castle against an entire kingdom

 A family day out Tintagel Castle has been closed since last October and work was not finished in time for the start of the busy school holidays. There was also concern over the impact the new structure would have on the natural landscape

But more than four centuries after that bridge collapsed, visitors to the supposed birthplace of the mythical King Arthur can gaze in awe at the views from its ultra-modern replacement.

 Tintagel Bridge in north Cornwall will reopen to the public on Friday. The sleek new bridge is set over a 190ft gorge made from oak and Cornish slate and leading to Tintagel Castle

The sleek new bridge of steel, oak and Cornish slate over a 190ft gorge mean tourists are no longer confronted with a demanding trek up and down a steep path.

Built as part of a £5million redevelopment of the site, it's unveiling today – before it opens to the public – will bring a sigh of relief from local businesses. Tintagel Castle has been closed since last October and work was not finished in time for the start of the busy school holidays. There was also concern over the impact the new structure would have on the natural landscape.

Picturesque: In the 13th century a rock bridge linked one part of the castle on the mainland to the rest and inspired its name, which comes from the Cornish Din Tagell, meaning ¿the Fortress of the Narrow Entrance¿

Inspired by the legend of King Arthur, Richard, Earl of Cornwall, built a castle on the jagged headland in the 13th century. A rock bridge linking one part of the castle on the mainland to the rest inspired its name, which comes from the Cornish Din Tagell, meaning ‘the Fortress of the Narrow Entrance’. Medieval scholar Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote that ‘three armed men would be able to defend [it], even if you had the whole kingdom of Britain at your side’.

The bridge is part of a £5million redevelopment of the site. Richard, Earl of Cornwall, built a castle on the jagged headland in the 13th century after he was inspired by the legend of King Arthur

But the link collapsed in the 15th or 16th centuries. English Heritage chief executive Kate Mavor said: ‘Tintagel has been made whole again. Our new bridge both protects the castle’s archaeology and brings its story to life.’

The original bridge was said to be so narrow that three knights could have defended Tintagel Castle against an entire kingdom

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/a-knights-trail-new-bridge-joins-king-arthurs-tintagel-castle-to-the-mainland-for-the-first-time-in-400-years-as-part-of-£5million-redevelopment/ar-AAFuD7Z?MSCC=1565246755&ocid=chromentp

Edited August 8, 2019 by CaaC (John)

[Azeem]

Just saw a video that Stonehenge is very close to a busy highway that it might danger its foundations.

Why did they build Stonehenge right next to a road anyway 

Edited August 8, 2019 by Stick With Azeem

[CaaC (John)]

 

 

 

 

1 hour ago, Stick With Azeem said:

Just saw a video that Stonehenge is very close to a busy highway that it might danger its foundations.

Why did they build Stonehenge right next to a road anyway 

More than likely didn't know traffic would damage foundations, also the governments could not give 2 shits about historical sites like Stonehenge as the roads, motorways and cars have right of way over this.

Imagine if the government wanted to build a motorway or road right through Buckingham Palace...that beggars belief as HM the Queen would have something to say about that and if she did they would arrest her...I think... after she started a fight...cough, cough  

 

 

 

[CaaC (John)]

Bizarre fossils reveal Asia’s oldest known forest

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

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

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

 

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

MORE

[CaaC (John)]

Student recreates the face of a druid from Stornoway

The face of a woman believed to have been a Scottish druid has been recreated by a student from the University of Dundee.

The woman could have been more than 60 years old when she died during the Iron Age, sometime between 55BC and AD400.

Nicknamed Hilda, she is thought to have lived near Stornoway.

She is thought to be of Celtic origin and her skull now resides in the Anatomy Collection at the University of Edinburgh.

The skull was first presented to the Phrenological Society of Edinburgh in 1833, described as one of the six "Druids of the Hebrides"...

FULL STORY

 

[CaaC (John)]

'Human-sized penguin' lived in New Zealand

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

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

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

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

Why was the penguin gigantic?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why isn't it around anymore?

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

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

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

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

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

Where was it found?

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

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

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

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

[CaaC (John)]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[CaaC (John)]

Ancient reptile the size of a gecko with 'large, blunt, tusk-like teeth' lived on the supercontinent Gondwana 237 million years ago

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An ancient reptile the size of a gecko with 'large, blunt, tusk-like teeth' lived on the southern supercontinent Gondwana 237 million years ago, a new study reveals.

Fossilised jaws and skull bones from the creature were discovered in rocks dating back to the Triassic period.

That makes it the oldest known fossil of its kind in Gondwana, which would eventually become Africa, Antarctica, Australia, India, and South America.

Researchers from Midwestern University discovered the fossils in the Rio Grande do Sul state in southern Brazil.

They say the new species, known as Clevosaurus hadroprodon, was a small animal, similar in size with common house geckos.  

It belongs to the Sphenodontia, a group of lepidosaurs, which also includes snakes, lizards and amphisbaenians. 

This group was very diverse and widespread during the Mesozoic era - which includes the Triassic, Jurassic and Creataceous periods around 250 to 65 million years ago - but today has only one remaining living species in New Zealand.

The name 'hadroprodon' is Greek for 'larger first tooth' in reference to the tusk-like teeth found on the creature.

'Clevosaurus hadroprodon is an important discovery because it combines a relatively primitive sphenodontian-type tooth row with the presence of massive tusk-like teeth, said Annie Schmaltz Hsiou, associate professor at the University of São Paulo and head of the study.

Gallery: Species that have gone extinct in our lifetime (Photo Services)

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'These were possibly not for feeding, but rather used for mate competition or defence.'

The dentition of Clevosaurus hadroprodon is an unexpected mix of primitive and derived teeth. 

It is the oldest occurrence of the typical fully acrodont dentition - teeth fused to the top of the jawbones - of sphenodontians, but most of its teeth are relatively simple and blade-like.

This differs from other, only slightly younger Clevosaurus species that possess well-developed medial-posteromedial - side-to-side - expansions of the teeth for complex grinding.

In addition to its unique dentition, the authors stress that also adds to the growing evidence that the early diversification of sphenodontians occurred in the widely separated regions of Gondwana destined to become South American and India. 

This illustrates the importance of the role of the Gondwanan lepidosaur fauna in our growing understanding of the earliest stages of sphenodontian evolution and the global biogeographic distribution of lepidosaurs.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/offbeat/ancient-reptile-the-size-of-a-gecko-with-large-blunt-tusk-like-teeth-lived-on-the-supercontinent-gondwana-237-million-years-ago/ar-AAFQ8TN

[CaaC (John)]

Mural from 3,800 years ago unveiled by Peru archaeologists

A mural thought to be 3,800 years old has been revealed by archaeologists in Peru.

The wall, unveiled on Monday, was found inside a public ceremonial building at the Vichama site, north of Lima.

The complex carved scene depicts iconography including a human-like toad and representations of people.

Dr Ruth Shady Solís, director of the Caral Archaeological Zone (ZAC), believes the scene represents the "arrival of water" through rainfall.

She says that in Andean civilisation, toads represented water and says the face below it represents humans waiting for rainfall to give continuity of life.

Another depiction found nearby shows four human heads with snakes encircling them and what appears to be a seed with a face.

Researchers said the sculptures would probably have been produced in a period of scarcity and famine.

Tatiana Abad, another archaeologist at the site, said at a news conference on Monday the carving represented a time of "crisis" for the people living there.

The Vichama site is located in Huaura province in modern-day Peru, about 150km (90 miles) north of the capital Lima.

Excavation started there in 2007 and experts believe it was an ancient agricultural and fishing community.

They consider it one of the most important population centres from the Caral civilisation, also known as Norte Chico, thought to date back 5,000 years.

The Secret City of Caral, in Peru's Barranca Province, is described as the oldest centre of civilisation found in the Americas. The site was declared a Unesco World Heritage Site in 2009.

The civilisation is thought to have mysteriously declined in about 1800 BC - and Dr Shady said on Monday that the new Vichama murals, representing changes to the local climate, may point to why.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-49407795

[CaaC (John)]

The Mystery of ‘Skeleton Lake’ Gets Deeper

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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