The 1,000-year-old surgical kit found in Sican tomb, Peru
The remains of an individual who served as a surgeon during the Middle Sican period (900-1050 AD) were found by experts from the Sican National Museum in the southern necropolis at the Mausoleum Temple of Huaca Las Ventanas, located in the Pomac Forest Historical Sanctuary in the province of Ferreñafe, Lambayeque region.
The funerary bundle No. 77 featured an individual who served as a surgeon. This is the first discovery of this type in the country’s northern region.
Sican National Museum Director Carlos Elera reported that this discovery was made as part of archaeological investigations initiated between 2010 and 2011 in the southern necropolis at Huaca Las Ventanas.
Instrumental recovered from the tomb
“This was a research project carried out by the Museum between 2010 and 2011; the context and part of it, which was covered with soil and sand, were partially removed, and we decided to bring it in a box because the river (La Leche River) was going to destroy part of this Huaca,” Elera told Andina news agency.
“So, taking advantage of the fact that there was a donation from the National Geographic Fund last year, we decided to excavate what had been documented at the funerary bundle of the external middle part,” he added.
The investigation was restarted in October 2021 and ended in January this year at the Sican Museum.
“This individual is of Middle Sican cultural affiliation.
The funerary bundle included a golden mask pigmented with cinnabar, as well as a breastplate and a kind of poncho with copper plates and a gold hair remover,” he explained.
According to the museum’s director, there was a bottle —with two spouts and a bridge handle featuring a figure representing the Huaco Rey (King Huaco)— under the poncho.
“The bundle also included gilt copper bowls and a tumi (a ceremonial knife) (…). The most interesting thing was the set of awls, needles, and knives, several of which with a cutting edge on one side and a blunt edge on the other side; the sizes vary and some have wooden handles,” he added.
Log Boats Recovered from River in Northern Ireland
History lies beneath the riverbeds of northwest Ireland. Every so often, when conditions allow, archaeologists are rewarded with another offering from the distant past.
Two more vessels, known as log boats or dugout boats, were found at a site near the Lifford Bridge
Two more boats understood to be from the medieval era, have emerged from the River Foyle. The boats, known as longboats or dugout boats, were found at a “dugout boat hotspot” near the Lifford Bridge. The bridge connects the towns of Strabane in Northern Ireland and Lifford, in County Donegal in the Republic of Ireland.
Marine archaeologist Dr Niall Gregory said the two boats now bring the total number found at this particular section of the river to 15. Overall, 21 such boats have been found at the confluence (meeting point) of the Rivers Mourne and Finn into the River Foyle.
Logboat’s are made from hollowed-out trees and can vary in size depending on the tree trunk used, Dr Gregory told BBC News NI.
About 500 of these dugout boats have been found on the island of Ireland
About 500 log boats have been found across the island of Ireland, he said. One of the largest recorded was found in lower Lough Erne and measured nearly 60ft (18m) long and 3.2ft (1m) wide.
“These two boats found at the Lifford Bridge site were cargo ferry boats,” he said.
“These boats were designed as workhorses, to move and manoeuvre with some degree of agility within a moderate to strong current.
“These two boats are from a dugout boat hotspot where they have appeared over the years, usually after seasonal high-water flows.”
‘Taking a dander’
Logboat’s are “notoriously difficult” to date based upon hull size and shape alone, and carbon dating is the only definitive means of obtaining a conclusive date.
Dr Gregory estimates – based on the hull shape, use of medieval nails, distorted wood grain and remains of sapwood on the exterior – that they are of a medieval era.
Previous boats found at the site have been dated from between 600 AD to 1520 AD, he said. Dr Gregory believes these boats, from their characteristics, are more likely to be later rather than earlier in that range.
Logboat’s are made from a hollowed-out tree and can vary drastically in size
Eamon Logue, from the Strabane-Lifford Anglers Association, was one of the first people to stumble across the uncovered remains.
Speaking to BBC Radio Foyle’s Mark Paterson Show, Mr Logue said one of the boats seemed in such miraculous condition that it looked like someone had parked it there.
Previous vessels found at the Lifford bridge site have dated from about 600 AD to 1520 AD
“Me and a friend were just taking dander down the River Foyle.
“We were about 100 yards down the bank and we have just seen it, at the side of the river, like someone had parked it there.
“There were big floods just a few weeks before, we think it has either been dislodged or the bank has caved away and exposed it.
“We have walked this river for years and found different bits but this was different.”
Nail and timber samples from the boats have now been sent to Dr Rena Maguire of Queen’s University Belfast.
Dr Maguire, who is a metallurgical specialist, will undertake an analysis of the nails and also radio-carbon date the timbers to get a more exact date. Only time will tell if, or rather when, more of these boats will reappear along the banks of the Foyle.
The Search for “Lost” Royal Graves in Britain and Ireland
The graves of dozens of what may have been early British kings, queens, princes and princesses from the era of the mythical King Arthur have been revealed by a new study. It suggests that British royal graves dating from between the fifth and the seventh centuries A.D. have been overlooked until now, possibly because they weren’t elaborate and contained no valuable grave goods.
The new study identifies British Royal graves from the era of the mythical King Arthur. Several places in Britain are claimed to be the location of his burial, but according to some legends, Arthur was taken by a magical boat to the mystical Isle of Avalon after being mortally wounded in battle.
The research reconsiders archaeological evidence from a little-understood period of British history, between the end of Roman rule and the late Anglo-Saxon kingdoms — a time traditionally described by the legends of King Arthur.
The new study by Ken Dark, an emeritus professor of archaeology and history at the University of Reading in the United Kingdom, identifies what may be up to 65 graves of post-Roman British kings and their families at about 20 burial sites across the west of England and Wales, including the modern English counties of Somerset and Cornwall.
The British continued to rule in what is now the west of England, Wales, and parts of Scotland in the centuries after the end of Roman rule in Britain in the early fifth century, while the invading Anglo-Saxons settled in the east.
But while Anglo-Saxon rulers of the time were given elaborate burials with valuable and ornate grave gifts, the Christian British may have viewed this as a pagan practice, Dark said.
The study suggests the “lost” graves of the post-Roman British royalty are the enclosure graves found at several early Christian burial sites throughout the west of England and Wales.
Instead, the British seemed to have buried their royalty without grave goods in simple graves without stone inscriptions alongside the graves of common Christians – although many of the royal graves were enclosed by a rectangular ditch and probably surrounded by a fence that has since rotted away, he said.
Dark, who is now at the University of Navarra in Spain, is the author of the study published this month in the Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland.
“The royal graves are very standardized,” he told Live Science. “They have some variation, just like the ordinary graves do — some are bigger, some are smaller, some have only one grave in the centre while others have two or three.”
Post-Roman Britain
Roman rule in Britain lasted from A.D. 43, following a Roman invasion under the emperor Claudius, until about A.D. 410, when the last Roman troops were recalled to Gaul (modern France) amid internal rebellions in the Roman Empire and invasions by Germanic tribes. (The Roman general Julius Caesar invaded southern Britain in 55 B.C. and 54 B.C., but he didn’t establish a permanent Roman rule.)
Between the fifth and seventh centuries, the Christian British ruled what are now western England and Wales as a patchwork of small kingdoms that tried to continue Christian Roman traditions. In the same period, pagan Germanic tribes — the Angles, Saxons and Jutes, who originated in the north of Europe — invaded and settled in the eastern parts of the country.
Graves thought to be of British kings, covered with mounds of earth, were also found at Tintagel on the coast of Cornwall – a site long associated with British royalty, and especially some legends of King Arthur.
The legends of King Arthur, who was supposedly British and Christian, are set in this period, although most historians think Arthur didn’t actually exist. (Dark, however, suggests that a real person or a fictional hero of that name was famous as early as the sixth century because Dark’s previous studies have suggested there was a sudden spike in the use of the name “Arthur” among British and Irish royal families at the time.)
Dark began his investigation to address a long-standing archaeological mystery: while many British kings were known to have lived during this time period, almost none of their graves had ever been found.
Until this study, the burial of only one British king from this era was known after being discovered in the northwest of Wales; an inscription on a gravestone name the person buried there as Catamanus (Cadfan in Welsh) and declares that he was a king (rex in Latin.)
But Cadfan may have retired from the kingship to become a monk before his death, and the phrasing of the inscription implies his grave was being commemorated because of his status as a monk, Dark said.
Meanwhile, the graves of at least nine Anglo-Saxon rulers from the period have been found, including one at the famous ship-burial at Sutton Hoo near the east coast of England.
Royal graves
To get to the bottom of the mystery, Dark reviewed the archaeological work previously done at thousands of burial sites from this period in the west of Britain and Ireland. His study suggests that the British royal graves were placed within early Christian cemeteries; and while they were marked out as those of high-status people, they seem very humble compared to ornate pagan graves and none have stones with inscriptions stating who was buried there.
The outer enclosures vary in size and some contain up to four graves, but they are typically about 15 to 30 feet (4 to 9 meters) across and up to 30 feet (9 m) long.
“We’ve got a load of burials that are all the same, and a tiny minority of those burials are marked out as being of higher status than the others,” Dark said. “When there are no other possible candidates, that seems to me to be a pretty good argument for these being the ‘lost’ royal burials.”
At one site at Tintagel, a fortified peninsula on the coast of Cornwall that’s long been associated with post-Roman British royalty and legends of King Arthur, what are thought to be five British royal graves in an early Christian cemetery take another form. Each was covered by a mound of earth, possibly because Irish royal graves are also covered with mounds called “ferta,” he said. (The post-Roman British had strong links to Celtic Ireland; the ancient Irish and British were both of Celtic origin and had similar languages.)
But the pattern of placing the royal graves at the centre of an enclosure – usually rectangular, but sometimes circular – appears to be a burial style developed by Christians in late Roman Britain, he said.
“The enclosed grave tradition comes straight out of late Roman burial practices,” he said. “And that’s a good reason why we have them in Britain, but not in Ireland — because Britain was part of the Roman empire, and Ireland wasn’t,” he said.
Although previous studies had noted the enclosed graves were thought to hold people of high social status, rather than royals; and archaeologists were expecting royal burials to be covered by mounds of earth or marked with inscriptions on stone, he said. “But I’m suggesting that this burial practice was specifically royal.”
Cats and babies: Thousand-year-old mummies in Turkey’s Aksaray
Cat, baby and adult mummies in Aksaray, the gateway to Cappadocia with its historical cultural riches and known as the first settlement of Central Anatolia, have been enchanting visitors at a museum where they are on display.
Mummies of babies are displayed at the Aksaray Museum, in Aksaray, Turkey, on March 27, 2022.
At the Aksaray Museum, which houses Turkey’s first and only mummy section, there stands on display a total of 13 mummies, consisting of cats, babies and adult humans from the 10th, 11th and 12th centuries unearthed in excavations in and around Aksaray.
Aksaray Museum Director Yusuf Altın provided information on the mummies, which are preserved in showcases with special heating and cooling systems.
“With 13 mummies in our Aksaray Museum, we are the only museum in Turkey with a mummy section,” Altın said. “There is one mummy in each of the Amasya and Niğde Museums, but our museum has the only section exhibited in this way … in our country.”
“The mummies in our museum were found as a result of the excavations in the churches in Ihlara Valley. Some of our mummies were found in the churches built about a thousand years ago in Çanlı Church,” he stated.
A mummy of a cat is displayed at the Aksaray Museum, in Aksaray, Turkey, on March 27, 2022.
Altın pointed out that the embalming technique in Turkey was different compared to Egypt.
“Of these mummies, the baby mummy is very technical work in itself. Because the mummification technique in our country is different from the mummification technique in Egypt.
In this technique, after the person dies, the internal organs of the corpse are removed, the wax is melted and the corpse is covered with a layer of glaze. Then it is covered with fabric and shroud.
It is buried in the ground in this way and the corpse remains preserved for centuries after it dries. We bring our mummies from these excavations to our museum and exhibit them. In particular, we also exhibit the embroideries of necklaces, booties and shrouds on them.”
Yusuf stated that a cat loved by its owner was also preserved with the mummification technique and that a cat mummy was found during the excavation efforts.
“We have another mummy, the cat mummy, which especially attracts the attention of our children.
Our cat mummy was covered with wax and preserved, probably because it was loved by its owner. So, we have been displaying it in our museum,” he said.
“All of our mummies are from the 10th, 11th and 12th centuries. So, they are almost a thousand years old.”
1,000-Year-Old Gold Mask Found in Tomb Was Painted With Human Blood
A 1,000-year-old mask discovered on the head of an ancient skeleton was painted using human blood, according to a new study.
(Image credit: Adapted from Journal of Proteome Research 2021, DOI: 10.1021/acs.jproteome.1c00472)
Archaeologists with the Sicán Archaeological Project unearthed the gold mask in the early 1990s while excavating an ancient tomb in Peru. The tomb, which dates to around A.D. 1000, belonged to a middle-aged elite man from the ancient Sicán culture, which inhabited the northern coast of Peru from the ninth to the 14th centuries.
The skeleton, which was also painted in bright red, was discovered sitting headless and upside down at the centre of a square burial that was 39 feet (12 meters) deep.
The head, which was intentionally detached from the skeleton, was placed right side up and was covered with the red-painted mask. Inside the tomb, archaeologists discovered 1.2 tons (1.1 metric tons) of grave goods and the skeletons of four others: two young women arranged into positions of a midwife and a woman giving birth, and two crouching children arranged at a higher level.
At the time of the excavation, scientists identified the red pigment on the mask as cinnabar, a bright-red mineral made of mercury and sulfur.
A Sicán funerary mask at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is similar to the one recently analyzed by archaeologists.
But despite being buried deep underground for a thousand years, somehow the red paint — a thick, 0.04- to-0.08-inch (1 to 2 millimetres) layer — had managed to remain attached to the mask. “The identity of the binding material, that had been so effective in the red paint, remained a mystery,” the authors wrote.
In the new study, the researchers analyzed a small sample of red paint to see if they could figure out the secret ingredient responsible for the effective binding.
First, with an infrared spectroscopy technique that uses infrared light to identify components of a material, they figured out that proteins were present in the red paint.
They then used mass spectrometry, a method that can sort different ions in a material based on their charge and mass, to identify the specific proteins.
The red paint contained six proteins found in human blood, the researchers found. The paint also contained proteins originating from egg whites.
The proteins are highly degraded, so it’s unclear what bird species the eggs came from, but the researchers hypothesize that it may have been the Muscovy duck (Cairina moschata), according to a statement.
“Cinnabar-based paints were typically used in the context of social elites and ritually important items,” the authors wrote in the study. While cinnabar was restricted for elite use, non-elites used another type of ochre-based paint for painting objects, the authors wrote.
Archaeologists had previously hypothesized that the skeletons’ arrangement represented a desired “rebirth” of the deceased Sicán leader, according to the statement. For this “desired” rebirth to take place, the ancients may have coated the entire skeleton in this bloody paint, possibly symbolizing red oxygenated blood or a “life force,” the authors wrote.
A recent analysis found that the Sicán sacrificed humans by cutting the neck and upper chest to maximize bleeding, the authors wrote. So “from an archaeological perspective, the use of human blood in the paint would not be surprising.”
The farmer, who lives in the Çitli village of Mecitözü district, found the bracelet while he was working on the farm and brought the ancient treasure to the Çorum Museum.
Experts found out that the artefact is from the ancient Hittite civilization and carried out restoration work. They then recorded it in the museum’s inventory and put it in the collection.
The beautiful bracelet is made out of bronze, nickel, silver and gold and is adorned with depictions of Hittite symbols, including imagery of the Itar/Auka and his servants Ninatta and Kulitta.
The 3,500-year-old Hittite bracelet discovered by a Turkish farmer in Çorum, is on display at the Çorum Museum, March 27, 2022.
Resul Ibiş, an archaeologist at the museum, told Ihlas News Agency (IHA) that the bracelet has been put on display for visitors.
“After initial evaluations, we realized that this piece is unprecedented and we’ve never seen anything like this before,” he said, adding that it is from the 13th century B.C.
Ibiş also noted that the bracelet was deformed when it was brought to the museum and some of its pieces were missing, but they restored it.
The archaeologist also noted that there are very few pieces of Hittite-era jewellery and this piece sheds light on the jewellery styles of the civilization.
Çorum is home to the ancient Hittite city of Hattusa, one of the most significant tourist destinations in Turkey.
The Lion Gate is in the southwest part of the UNESCO Hattusa ruins, which are now a giant open-air archaeological park and one of Turkey’s most important tourist destinations.
It serves as an open-air museum with 6-kilometer-long (nearly 4-mile-long) city walls, monumental city gates, a 71-meter-long (78-yard-long) underground passage, the Hittites palace in Büyükkale, 31 unearthed temples and ancient wheat silos.
It was added to UNESCO’s World Heritage List in 1986 due to its well-protected architectural structures and excavation site.
It also has also held UNESCO’s title of “Memory of the World” since 2001 with its cuneiform scripts representing the oldest known form of Indo-European languages.
Hattusa served as the capital of the Hittite Empire, which was one of the civilizations that played an important role in the development of urban life, in the late Bronze Age. The capital was the first national excavation site in Turkey.
Study Explores Mobility in Early Medieval Scotland
Isotope analysis of ‘bodies in the bog’ found at Cramond reveals several crossed a politically divided Scotland, meeting their end hundreds of miles from their place of birth. For decades, the skeletal remains of nine adults and five infants found in the latrine of what was once a Roman bathhouse close to Edinburgh have fascinated archaeologists and the public alike.
Burial 1 – facial reconstruction of man who may have come from Loch Lomond
Dr Orsolya Czére with extracted bone collagen
Dr Orsolya Czére examines demineralised bone collagen during the extraction process
Discovered in Cramond in 1975 they were originally thought to be victims of the plague or a shipwreck from the 14th century. Then radiocarbon dating showed them to be some 800 years older, dating to the 6th century, or early medieval period. New bioarchaeological work led by the University of Aberdeen has brought to light more details of their lives and has revealed that several of the group travelled across Scotland to make Cramond their home.
Their investigations change our understanding not only of this important site but of the mobility and connections of people across Scotland in the early medieval period, when the country was broadly divided between the Scotti in Dál Riata to the west, the Picts in most of northern Scotland and the Britons in the south. The researchers examined the bones and teeth of the group unearthed from what was once the latrine of a bathhouse in a Roman fort, leading to them being coined ‘the bodies in the bog’.
Using isotope analyses they were able to look at the diet and origins of each of the adults in the group. Professor Kate Britton, the senior author of the study, said they were surprised to discover that despite being buried in close proximity to each other – leading to assumptions that they were one family – some were brought up hundreds of miles apart.
“Food and water consumed during life leave a specific signature in the body which can be traced back to their input source, evidencing diet and mobility patterns,” she added.
“Tooth enamel, particularly from teeth which form between around three and six years of age, act like little time capsules containing chemical information about where a person grew up.
“When we examined the remains, we found six of them to bear chemical signatures consistent with what we would expect from individuals growing up in the area local to Cramond but two – those of a man and a woman – were very different.
“This suggests that they spent their childhoods somewhere else, with the analysis of the female placing her origins on the West coast.”
“The male instead had an isotopic signature more typical of the Southern Uplands, Southern Highlands or Loch Lomond area so it is likely he came to Cramond from an inland area.”
Tooth enamel, particularly from teeth that form between around three and six years of age, act like little time capsules containing chemical information about where a person grew up.
~Professor Kate Britton
The findings, published in the Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences journal, provide one of the first insights into early medieval population mobility in Scotland.
Dr Orsolya Czére, post-doctoral researcher and lead author of the study, added: “This is a historically elusive time period, where little may be gleaned about the lives of individuals from primary literary sources. What we do know is that it was a politically and socially tumultuous time.
“In Scotland particularly, evidence is scarce and little is known about individual movement patterns and life histories. Bioarchaeological studies like this are key to providing information about personal movement in early medieval Scotland and beyond.
“It is often assumed that travel in this period would have been limited without roads like we have today and given the political divides of the time. The analysis of the burials from Cramond, along with other early medieval burial sites in Scotland, are revealing that it was not unusual to be buried far from where you had originally grown up.
“Previous studies have suggested that those buried here were of high social status, even nobility. What we can say from our new analyses was that these were well-connected individuals, with lives that brought them across the country”
“This is an important step in unravelling how these different populations of early medieval Scotland and Britain interacted.”
Despite evidence of geographical mobility, social tensions may still have been high. Several of the skeletons at Cramond indicate that some of the individuals may have met with violent ends.
Osteoarchaeologist and co-author Dr Ange Boyle from the University of Edinburgh said: “Detailed osteological analysis of the human remains has determined that a woman and young child deposited in the Roman latrine suffered violent deaths. Blows to the skulls inflicted by a blunt object, possibly the butt end of a spear would have been rapidly fatal. This evidence provides important confirmation that the period in question was characterised by a high level of violence.”
John Lawson, the City of Edinburgh Council archaeologist, co-author and lead archaeologist on the investigations at Cramond, says the new findings further underline the importance of the Cramond site.
“This paper has been the result of a fantastic collaboration between ourselves and our co-authors from Aberdeen and Edinburgh Universities. The final results from the isotopic research have confirmed the initial 2015 results giving us archaeological evidence and a window into the movement of elite society in the 6th century.
“In particular it is helping us to support our belief that Cramond during this time was one of Scotland’s key political centres during this important period of turmoil and origins for the state of Scotland. Whilst it has helped us answer some questions about the individuals buried in the former Roman Fort’s Bathhouse, it has also raised more. We hope to continue to work together to bring more findings to publication as these have a significant impact on what is known about the history of Scotland and Northern Britain during the Dark Ages.”
The study was funded by Edinburgh City Council and the University of Aberdeen and research by Professor Britton and Dr Czere is supported by the Leverhulme Trust and AHRC respectively.
The first fossil of a daytime active owl found at the edge of the Tibetan Plateau
An amazingly well-preserved fossil skeleton of an extinct owl that lived more than six million years ago has been unearthed in China. The fossil was discovered nearly 7,000 feet (2,100 meters) up, in the Linxia Basin of China’s Gansu province, at the edge of the Tibetan Plateau.
Fossil skeleton of the daytime active owl Miosurnia diurna from China (below) with an expanded view of the skull (top left). The eye bones or scleral ossicles are false-coloured blue and set in comparison with an intact ring in the skull of a pygmy owl Glaucidium (top right).
Detailed analysis of the skeleton’s fossilised eye bones by researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences reveals that, unlike most modern owls, this species was active in the daytime, not the night.
The fossil comprises nearly the entire skeleton from the tip of the skull through the wings and legs to the tail bone, along with body parts that are rarely seen as fossils.
These include the bones of the tongue apparatus called the hyoid, the trachea, the kneecap, tendons for wing and leg muscles, and even the remnants of the last meal of a small mammal.
‘It is the amazing preservation of the bones of the eye in this fossil skull that allows us to see that this owl preferred the day and not the night,’ said Dr. LI, first author of the study.
Reconstruction of the extinct owl Miosurnia diurna perched in a tree with its last meal of a small rodent, overlooking extinct three-toed horses and rhinos with the rising Tibetan Plateau on the horizon.
The researchers named the species Miosurnia diurna in reference to its close living relative, the diurnal Northern Hawk Owl (Surnia ulula).
The features of the skull and skeleton, including a large bump on part of the cheekbone just behind the eye, show that Miosurnia is a part of the global owl group Surniini.
Their research shows that the Surniini, which includes Miosurnia, the Northern Hawk Owl, and pygmy owls, rejected the night millions of years ago.
This extinct species is the first record of an ancient owl being ‘diurnal’, or active during the day. Scleral ossicles are small bones that form a ring around the pupil and iris in the outer region of the eye. Nocturnal animals require overall larger eyes and bigger pupils to see in low-light conditions, but diurnal animals have smaller eyes and pupils.
In the Miosurnia diurna fossil, the soft parts of the eye had decayed long ago, leaving the small trapezoidal scleral ossicles randomly collapsed into the owl’s eye socket.
The palaeontologists, therefore, had to measure these individual small bones and do some basic geometry to rebuild the size and shape of the ring around the eye.
‘It was a bit like playing with Lego blocks, just digitally,’ said Dr. Stidham, describing how the 16 little similar bones overlap each other to form a ring around the iris and pupil.
He said that putting them back together correctly allowed the scientists to determine the overall diameter of the ring and the opening for light in the middle.
The IVPP scientists then compared the fossil owl’s scleral ossicles with the eyes of 55 species of reptiles and more than 360 species of birds including many owls.
Looking at the size and shape of the fossil’s eye and its relatively smaller opening for light, the scientists determined that it most resembles the eyes of living owls in the Surniini group. Furthermore, they studied behavioural data from over 360 species across a diversity of birds to determine which were likely nocturnal or diurnal.
Their results show that the ancestor of all living owls was almost certainly nocturnal, but the ancestor of the Surniini group was instead diurnal.
‘This fossil skeleton turns what we thought we knew about the evolution of owls on its head,’ said Dr. LI.
Dr. Stidham adds that Miosurnia diurnia is the first record of an evolutionary process spanning millions of years and stretching across the globe whereby owls evolved to ‘reject the night for some fun in the sun.’
