5,000-year-old Bryde’s whale skeleton unearthed in Thailand
An unusual, partly fossilized skeleton belonging to a Bryde whale, estimated to be about 5,000 years old, has been discovered by researchers in Thailand at an inland site west of Bangkok.
At the beginning of November, a skeleton weighing 12.5 meters (41ft), about the length of a truck, was discovered by a cyclist who saw some of the vertebrae coming out of the ground.
Since then, a team of scientists has been excavating the site.
Scientists say the bones need to be carbon-dated to determine the exact age of the skeleton
“This whale skeleton is thought to be the only one in Asia,” said Pannipa Saetian, a geologist in the Fossil Protection division of the Department of Mineral Resources.
“It’s very rare to find such a discovery in near-perfect condition,” said Pannipa, estimating that about 90 percent of the whale’s skeleton had been recovered.
“Yesterday, we found the right shoulder and fin,” she said, noting that about 36 backbone pieces had been unearthed. The bones needed to be carbon-dated to determine the exact age of the skeleton, she said.
An archaeologist works at the excavation site at Samut Sakhon on Friday.
Once the painstaking process of cleaning and preserving the fragile skeleton is complete, it will be exhibited.
Scientists hope the skeleton will provide more information to aid research into Bryde’s whale populations existing today as well as the geological conditions at the time.
Bryde’s whales, sometimes known as tropical whales for their preference for warmer waters, are found in coastal waters in parts of the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic Oceans, including in the Gulf of Thailand.
Highly endangered, there are some 200 remaining of the whales in the South Pacific nation’s waters, and about 100,000 worldwide.
In 2016, New Zealand researchers gained insight into a pair of Bryde’s whales feeding off an Auckland coast in one of the first uses of drone technology to study the animals.
The footage revealed an adult and calf frolicking in the water and using a “lunge” feeding technique to feast on plankton and shoals of small fish.
In 2014, a 10.8-meter-long whale thought to be a Bryde’s whale, washed up at a remote beach in Hong Kong’s New Territories.
Conservationists said it could have died at sea before drifting to an the inner bay off Hung Shek Mun, in Plover Cove Country Park.
Israeli Archaeological Dig Uncovers 9,000-year-old Mega City
The largest ever Neolithic settlement discovered in Israel and the Levant, say archaeologists — is currently being excavated ahead of highway construction five kilometres from Jerusalem.
Because of its scale and the preservation of its material culture, the 9,000-year-old site, situated near the town of Motza, is the ‘Big Bang’ for prehistory settlement research, said Jacob Vardi, co-director of the excavations at Motza on behalf of the Antiquities Authority,
Vardi said It’s a game-changer, a site that will shift what we know about the Neolithic era drastically.” He said that some international scholars are beginning to realize the existence of the site may necessitate revisions to their work, he said.
“So far, it was believed that the Judea area was empty and that sites of that size existed only on the other bank of the Jordan river, or in the Northern Levant. Instead of an uninhabited area from that period, we have found a complex site, where varied economic means of subsistence existed, and all these only several dozens of centimeters below the surface,” according to Vardi and co-director Dr. Hamoudi Khalaily in an IAA press release.
Roughly half a kilometer from point to point, the site would have housed an expected population of some 3,000 residents. In today’s terms, said Vardi, prehistoric Motza would be comparable to the stature of Jerusalem or Tel Aviv — “a real metropolis.”
According to an IAA press release, the project was initiated and financed by the Netivei Israel Company (the National Transport Infrastructure company) as part of the Route 16 Project, which includes building a new entrance road to Jerusalem from the west running from the Route 1 highway at the Motza Interchange to the capital.
According to co-director Khalaily, the people who lived in this town had trade and cultural connections to widespread populations, including Anatolia, which is the origin for obsidian artifacts discovered at the site. Other excavated materials indicate intensive hunting, animal husbandry, and agriculture.
Dr. Hamoudi Khalaily, Antiquities Authority Excavation director at the Motza site, holding a bowl from the Neolithic Period.
“The society was at its peak” and appeared to increasingly specialize in raising sheep, said Khalaily.
In addition to prehistoric tools such as thousands of arrowheads, axes, sickle blades, and knives, storage sheds containing large stores of legumes, especially lentils, were uncovered. “The fact that the seeds were preserved is astonishing in the light of the site’s age,” said the archaeologists.
Archaeologists recovered thousands of flint tools crafted by early farmers, such as sickles to harvest crops and arrowheads for hunting and warfare.
Alongside utilitarian tools, a number of small statues were unearthed, including a clay figurine of an ox and a stone face, which Khalaily joked was either a human representation “or aliens, even.”
9,000-year-old figurine of an ox, discovered during archaeological excavations at Motza near Jerusalem.
In the ancient, unrecorded past as well as today, the site is situated on the banks of Nahal Sorek and other water sources. The fertile valley is on an ancient path connecting the Shefela (foothills) region to Jerusalem, said the IAA. “These optimal conditions are a central reason for long-term settlement on this site, from the Epipaleolithic Period, around 20,000 years ago, to the present day,” according to the press release.
“Thousands of years before the construction of the pyramids, what we see in the neolithic period is that more and more populations turn to live in a permanent settlement,” said Vardi. “They migrate less and they deal more and more in agriculture.”
Among the architecture uncovered in the excavation are large buildings that show signs of habitation, as well as what the archaeologists identify as public halls and spaces used for worship. In a brief video published by the IAA, archaeologist Lauren Davis walks a narrow path between remains of buildings — a prehistoric alleyway. “Very much like we see in buildings today, separated by alleys between,” said Davis.
Excavation works on the Motza Neolithic site
According to the archaeologists, this alleyway is “evidence of the settlement’s advanced level of planning.” Likewise, the archaeologists discovered that plaster was sometimes used for creating floors and sealing various facilities during the construction of the residents’ domiciles and buildings.
In addition to signs of life, the archaeologists uncovered several graves. According to Davis, in the midst of a layer dating to 10,000 years ago, archaeologists found a tomb from 4,000 years ago. “In this tomb are two individuals — warriors — who were buried together with a dagger and a spearhead,” she said.
“There’s also an amazing find,” said Davis, “which is a whole donkey, domesticated, that was buried in front of the tomb probably when they sealed it.” Added Vardi, the donkey was apparently meant to serve the warriors in the world to come.
According to Amit Re’em, the IAA’s Jerusalem District archaeologist, despite the roadworks, a significant percentage of the prehistoric site around the excavation is being preserved and all of it is being documented.
Each architectural structure is being documented through 3-D modeling. “When we finish the excavation here,” said Vardi, “we will be able to continue to research the site in the laboratory,” adding that this is an unprecedented use of technology.
“In addition, the IAA plans to tell the story of the site at the site by means of a display and illustration. At Tel Motza, adjacent to this excavation, archaeological remains are being preserved for the public at large, and conservation and accessibility activities are being carried out in Tel Bet Shemesh and Tel Yarmut,” announced the IAA release.
The miniature Sculpture of a bird was Carved 13,500 years ago
A miniature bird statue carved out of burnt bone has been unearthed by archaeologists in Lingjing, China. At over 13,000 years it is believed to be the oldest East Asian work of art ever found.
Humans have been creating sculptures since the Upper Paleolithic period (50,000 to 12,000 years ago), the earliest being a lion-headed human carved from mammoth tusk found in German caves, dating back 35,000-40,000 years.
This bird figurine shows that sculpture was emerging independently in East Asia during the same period.
Discovered by a team of archaeologists led by Prof Francesco d’Errico at the University of Bordeaux, France, the 2cm-long bird is incredibly well-preserved, with a short neck, rounded bill and long tail, and a pedestal so that it can stand up.
The sculpture is thought to represent a ‘passerine’ – a diverse group of birds that includes the sparrows, finches and thrushes.
Photo (top) and 3D reconstruction using microtomography (bottom) of the miniature bird sculpture.
The researchers analysed the bird using microscopy and X-ray scanning, determining that it was carved from a mammal limb bone that had been blackened by heating.
They also painstakingly reconstructed the sculpting process: the bird was created using four different techniques – gouging, abrading, scraping, and incising.
“Our analysis reveals that the Lingjing artist has chosen the appropriate techniques and applied them skillfully to faithfully reproduce the distinct anatomical features of a passerine,” they write.
“The style of this diminutive representation is original and remarkably different from all other known Paleolithic avian figurines.”
The researchers estimate the figurine to be 13,500 years old – more than 8,500 years older than other animal sculptures found in East Asia.
800-Year-Old Inscription Discovered in Southern India
Archeologists have stumbled on a Chola period stone inscription at a lake bund in Mookanur village near Sankarapuram in Kallakurichi district in Tamil Nadu, India.
According to experts, King Vanenja Perumalana Vanakovarayan created the inscription about a canal and connecting lakes during Rajendra Cholan III regime in the Sagarai year 1182 (1260 AD).
“During his rule, a canal was built at the south side of Arni lake, and the canal was linked to a lake in Moorkanur.
Chola period inscription on canals found near Sankarapuram
Another canal, dug up at the south side of the lake in Moorkanur, was linked with a lake in Kaduvanur,” Villupuram Government Arts College History department professor T Ramesh says while explaining the inscription.
Moorkanur is now known as Mookanur, says S Rajagopal, another expert. The archeology team which found the inscription consisted of professor Ramesh, his student Kumaraguru, Jothiprakash of Mundiyampakkam, and Mubarak of Villupuram.
Chola dynasty
The Chola dynasty was a Tamil thalassocratic empire of southern India, one of the longest-ruling dynasties in the world’s history. The earliest datable references to the Chola are in inscriptions from the 3rd century BCE left by Ashoka, of the Maurya Empire.
As one of the Three Crowned Kings of Tamilakam, along with the Chera and Pandya, the dynasty continued to govern over varying territory until the 13th century CE. Despite these ancient origins, the period when it is appropriate to speak of a “Chola Empire” only begins with the medieval Cholas in the mid-9th century CE.
Statue of Rajaraja Chola at Brihadisvara Temple at Thanjavur.
The heartland of the Cholas was the fertile valley of the Kaveri River, but they ruled a significantly larger area at the height of their power from the later half of the 9th century till the beginning of the 13th century.
The whole country south of the Tungabhadra was united and held as one state for a period of three centuries and more between 907 and 1215 AD. Under Rajaraja Chola I and his successors Rajendra Chola I, Rajadhiraja Chola, Virarajendra Chola, and Kulothunga Chola I, the dynasty became a military, economic and cultural power in South Asia and South-East Asia.
The power of the new empire was proclaimed to the eastern world by the expedition to the Ganges which Rajendra Chola I undertook and by naval raids on cities of the city-state of Srivijaya, as well as by the repeated embassies to China. The Chola fleet represented the zenith of ancient Indian sea power.
During the period 1010–1153, the Chola territories stretched from the islands of the Maldives in the south to as far north as the banks of the Godavari River in Andhra Pradesh.
Map showing the greatest extent of the Chola empire c. 1030, shaded in blue represent conquered territories, shaded in pink shows areas influenced by Chola.
Rajaraja Chola conquered peninsular South India, annexed parts of which is now Sri Lanka, and occupied the islands of the Maldives. Rajendra Chola sent a victorious expedition to North India that touched the river Ganges and defeated the Pala ruler of Pataliputra, Mahipala.
He also successfully invaded the cities of Srivijaya of Malaysia and Indonesia. The Chola dynasty went into decline at the beginning of the 13th century with the rise of the Pandyan Dynasty, which ultimately caused their downfall.
The Cholas left a lasting legacy. Their patronage of Tamil literature and their zeal in the building of temples has resulted in some great works of Tamil literature and architecture.
The Chola kings were avid builders and envisioned the temples in their kingdoms not only as places of worship but also as centers of economic activity.
Gopuram Corner View of Thanjavur Brihadisvara Temple.
They were also well known for their art, specifically temple sculptures and ‘Chola bronzes’, exquisite bronze sculptures of Hindu deities built in a lost-wax process they pioneered; that continues (to a certain extent) to this day.
They established a centralized form of government and a disciplined bureaucracy. The Chola school of art spread to Southeast Asia and influenced the architecture and art of Southeast Asia.
The medieval Cholas are best known for the construction of the magnificent Brihadisvara temple at Thanjavur, commissioned by the most famous Chola king, Rajaraja Chola in 1010 CE.
This bright metallic meteorite crashed in India, and it looks pretty cool
A meteorite-like object weighing about 2.8 kilograms fell from the sky in Sanchore town of Rajasthan’s Jalore district. The mysterious object, which is believed to be worth crores of rupees, created a one-foot-deep crater in the ground.
The locals informed the police and local administration about the incident. The local police said that several villagers heard an explosive sound when the object fell from the sky and they rushed to the field to see the meteorite-like object. It is learned that the explosion was heard as far as two kilometers.
It was only after a while that we were able to find an object lying in a 30-centimeter crater. It fell only 100 meters from my house. We immediately notified the authorities,” said Ajmal Devasi, one of the many people who were left stumped by the object.
The meteorite, which stands out for its shiny metallic appearance, weighs around 2.78 kilograms.
According to local reports, it continued to emit heat even three hours after its fall, leading many residents of the area to think it could explode at any time.
Meteorite like object falls in Sanchor area in Jalore district at 7 AM on Friday, (June 19, 2020 ) The object weighs 2.78 Kg approx As per geologists, it is a metallic meteorite – very rare and most valuable.
After it had cooled down, the authorities collected the meteorite and put it in a jar for transport. The police have stated that it has been made available to experts for study and that more details about its origin and composition will soon be known.
Images of the meteorite were shared on Twitter, generating great amazement and a number of responses.
This event occurred a few days after a spectacular green fireball crossed the skies of Australia, taking skywatchers by surprise.
The object appeared shortly before 1:00 a.m. (local time) last Monday, according to witness reports from the Pilbara region of Western Australia, Northern Territory, and South Australia.
According to rough estimates, around 500 meteorites survive the entry through Earth’s atmosphere, reaching the surface of the planet each year. Despite this, no more than ten are recovered each year.
This is because many of these meteorites crash into the ocean or land in remote areas on Earth, crashing in places that are not easy to access.
Furthermore, some meteorites crash into the surface during the daytime, which means that they go undetected.
Astronomers can’t generally predict meteorite impacts because most meteoroids traveling in outer space are simply too small to detect.
According to NASA, it is estimated that around 48.5 tons (44,000 kilograms) of meteoritic material falls on Earth each day.
When a meteoroid survives its trip through the atmosphere and hits the ground, it’s called a meteorite.
For the past 46,000 years, a small bird that perished in the last ice age was frozen, protected from deterioration and scavenger until the body in Siberian permafrost was found by two Russians searching for fossil mammoth tusks.
Love Dalén, a professor of evolutionary genetics at the Centre for Palaeogenetics in Stockholm, who was with the ivory hunters, Boris Berezhnov and Spartak Khabrov, when they spotted the bird, said that the bird was in such fine condition that it seemed “like it had] died just a few days ago,”
Dalén told Live Science in an email. “The bird is in pristine condition,” The discovery is remarkable, as “small animals like this would normally disintegrate very quickly after death due to scavengers and microbial activity.”
The frozen flier is a one-of-a-kind find, too: It’s the only near-intact bird carcass documented from the last ice age, Dalén added.
When the fossil hunters first uncovered the bird in September 2018, Dalén and his colleagues had no idea of the mystery bird’s age or species. So, Dalén “collected a couple of feathers and a small piece of tissue for radiocarbon dating and DNA sequencing,” he said.
The 46,000-year-old bird’s delicate feet are still in good shape.
He brought the ice age samples to his lab, where postdoctoral researcher Nicolas Dussex, the lead author of a new study on the bird, analyzed the remains.
Radiocarbon dating revealed that the bird lived during the same time as other ice age beasts, including mammoths, horses, woolly rhinos, bison, and lynx.
To discover the bird’s species, the researchers sequenced its mitochondrial DNA, genetic data that is passed down through the maternal line.
Although the bird’s mitochondrial DNA was fragmentary — there were “many millions of short DNA sequences,” Dalén said, a common occurrence in ancient specimens — the team was able to piece together these short sequences with the help of a computer program.
Then, the scientists took the finished mitochondrial DNA puzzle and searched for a match in an online database that has the genetic sequences of nearly every bird alive today. The results revealed that the ice age bird was a female horned lark (Eremophila alpestris).
This discovery sheds light on the transformation of the so-called mammoth steppe. When this bird was alive, the land was a mix of steppe (unforested grassland) and tundra (treeless, frozen ground), according to pollen records from 50,000 to 30,000 years ago.
When the last ice age ended about 11,700 years ago, the mammoth steppe transitioned into the three main Eurasian environments that exist today: the northern tundra, the taiga (a coniferous forest) in the middle, and the steppe in the south said Dalén, the senior researcher on the new study.
Nowadays, there are two subspecies of horned lark: “one living on the tundra in the far north of Eurasia and the other in the steppe in the south, in Mongolia and its neighboring countries,” Dalén said.
The horned lark (Eremophila alpestris), also known as the shore lark in Europe, is a small songbird that breeds across the northern hemisphere. It has 42 formally recognized subspecies that are divided into six different clades, each of which could warrant reclassification into distinct species clusters.
It appears that the newly discovered bird is an “ancestor of two different subspecies of the horned lark,” he said. As the environment changed, however, the horned lark diverged into the two evolutionary lineages that exist today, Dalén said.
“So all in all, this study provides an example of how climate change at the end of the last ice age could have led to the formation of new subspecies,” he said.
Amber fossils reveal the true colours of 99-million-year-old insects
Nature is full of colours, from the radiant shine of a peacock’s feathers or the bright warning colouration of toxic frogs to the pearl-white camouflage of polar bears.
Usually, fine structural detail necessary for the conservation of colour is rarely preserved in the fossil record, making most reconstructions of the fossil-based on artists’ imagination.
A research team from the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NIGPAS) has now unlocked the secrets of true colouration in the 99-million-year-old insects.
Diverse structural-colored insects in mid-Cretaceous amber from northern Myanmar
Colours offer many clues about the behaviour and ecology of animals. They function to keep organisms safe from predators, at the right temperature, or attractive to potential mates. Understanding the colouration of long-extinct animals can help us shed light on ecosystems in the deep geological past.
The study, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B on July 1, offers a new perspective on the often overlooked, but by no means dull, lives of insects that co-existed alongside dinosaurs in Cretaceous rainforests.
Researchers gathered a treasure trove of 35 amber pieces with exquisitely preserved insects from an amber mine in northern Myanmar.
“The amber is mid-Cretaceous, approximately 99 million years old, dating back to the golden age of dinosaurs. It is essentially resin produced by ancient coniferous trees that grew in a tropical rainforest environment.
Animals and plants trapped in the thick resin got preserved, some with life-like fidelity,” said Dr. CAI Chenyang, associate professor at NIGPAS who lead the study.
The rare set of amber fossils includes cuckoo wasps with metallic bluish-green, yellowish-green, purplish-blue or green colours on the head, thorax, abdomen, and legs. In terms of colour, they are almost the same as cuckoo wasps that live today, said Dr. CAI.
The researchers also discovered blue and purple beetle specimens and a metallic dark-green soldier fly. “We have seen thousands of amber fossils but the preservation of colour in these specimens is extraordinary,” said Prof. HUANG Diying from NIGPAS, a co-author of the study.
“The type of colour preserved in the amber fossils is called structural colour. It is caused by the microscopic structure of the animal’s surface. The surface nanostructure scatters light of specific wavelengths and produces very intense colours.
This mechanism is responsible for many of the colours we know from our everyday lives,” explained Prof. PAN Yanhong from NIGPAS, a specialist on palaeoecology reconstruction.
To understand how and why colour is preserved in some amber fossils but not in others, and whether the colours seen in fossils are the same as the ones insects paraded more than 99 million years ago, the researchers used a diamond knife blades to cut through the exoskeleton of two of the colourful amber wasps and a sample of the normal dull cuticle.
Using electron microscopy, they were able to show that colourful amber fossils have a well-preserved exoskeleton nanostructure that scatters light.
The unaltered nanostructure of coloured insects suggested that the colours preserved in amber may be the same as the ones displayed by them in the Cretaceous. But in fossils that do not preserve colour, the cuticular structures are badly damaged, explaining their brown-black appearance.
What kind of information can we learn about the lives of ancient insects from their colour? Extant cuckoo wasps are, as their name suggests, parasites that lay their eggs into the nests of unrelated bees and wasps.
Structural colouration has been shown to serve as camouflage in insects, and so it is probable that the colour of Cretaceous cuckoo wasps represented an adaptation to avoid detection.
“At the moment we also cannot rule out the possibility that the colours played other roles besides camouflage, such as thermoregulation,” adds Dr CAI.
Yonaguni Monument: Man-made structure or natural geological formation
THE YONAGUNI-JIMA KAITEI CHIKEI, LITERALLY translated as “Yonaguni Island Submarine Topography,” is an underwater mystery off the coast of the Ryukyu Islands, Japan.
The massive underwater rock formation is speculated to have existed for more than 10,000 years, but whether the formation is completely man-made, entirely natural, or has been altered by human hands is still up for debate.
The monument was first discovered in 1986 by a diver searching for a good spot to observe hammerhead sharks. After its discovery, Masaaki Kimura, a marine geologist at the University of the Ryukyu, explored the monument for nearly two decades.
Kimura remains convinced that the site was carved thousands of years ago when the landmass was above water.
According to Kimura the Yonaguni’s numerous right angles, strategically placed holes and aesthetic triangles are signs of human alteration. He also claims that carvings exist on the monuments, resembling Kaida script.
He believes that a pyramid, castles, roads, monuments and a stadium can be identified within the structure – which for him is evidence that the monument is what remains of the Lost Continent of Mu, the Japanese equivalent to Atlantis.
As with most theories of lost civilizations, Kimura has met with controversy about his beliefs. Robert Schoch, a professor at Boston University, has dived at the site and explains that the formation is “basic geology and classic stratigraphy for sandstones, which tend to break along planes and give you these very straight edges, particularly in an area with lots of faults and tectonic activity.”
Sandstone structures typically erode into rigid formations, and it is unlikely that the structure was entirely man-made, if man-made at all, because the visible structure is connected to a hidden rock mass.
Geology and strong currents may explain the peculiar shape of the rock, but they cannot account for the pottery, stone tools and fireplaces found there, possibly dating back to 2500 BCE.
However, the items merely show that the area was once inhabited and do not indicate that the monument is anything other than a natural geological formation.
Yonaguni is composed of sandstone and mudstone that dates back 20 million years. If the monument was carved by human hands, it was during the last ice age (about 10,000 years ago) when Yonaguni was part of a land bridge that connected the site to Taiwan.
Both the Japanese Government’s Agency for Cultural Affairs and the Government of Okinawa Prefecture deny Yonaguni as a historical-cultural site.
