125 Million-Year-Old Dinosaur Tail Found In Isle Of Wight Cliff

At the bottom of a crumbling cliff on the Isle of Wight was a fossilized tail from a dinosaur that roamed the World 125 million years ago.

In the base of a cliff-side in the area of Brighstone were found the fossilized remains of the dinosaur – believed to be an iguanodon.

But excavations and attempts to salvage the tail for detailed analysis are currently being thwarted, due to safety risks posed by the crumbling cliff. 

Beach-goer Pippa Fairweather, 45, discovered the fossil in a cliff face near Brighstone on the Isle of Wight, describing the find as ‘pretty impressive’. 

It is thought around six vertebrae have been uncovered, and Isle of Wight radio reports that the dinosaur died and was exposed to the elements for several months before being buried by a large flash flood.  

Iguanodons were herbivores that measured up to 30 feet (10 meters) tall and weighed more than four tons (4,000kg). 

Oliver Mattsson, an expert from the Dinosaur Farm near to the find on the Isle of Wight, said: ‘Complete skeletons of the iguanodon have been found but we don’t know how much of this one is there, because it is inaccessible due to the safety risk being too great.

‘Given the cliff, as it is, and the rain we have been having, it is unsafe to go near it.

‘The iguanodon is the most common type found, as the dinosaur has been found on all continents.’

Ms. Fairweather, who is from Freshwater on the island and runs an online retail shop, said it is between Brighstone’s Grange Farm and Isle of Wight Pearl.

She adds: ‘But is in a seriously over-hanging cliff which seems to be crumbling constantly, so people need to be super careful.’ 

Experts are also urging locals to not attempt to extract the fossil for the risk of damaging it or endangering themselves.  

Rare 17th Century Wine Bottles Worth a Fortune Unearthed in England

After being mistakenly dug up at a building site, a garden of Gold-encrusted 17th-century wine bottles will be auctioned at £ 20000 for the leading price.

Seven ‘ extremely rare ‘ curved bottles of black glass have been unearthed from the clay during construction last November and carry the seal of the Earl of Coventry.

In the late 1600s, the Earl lived in Worcestershire on the nearby Croome estate and it is thought they belonged to him. 

The eight-inch tall vessels, which are almost completely intact, are thought to date between 1650 and 1670, around the time of the reign of Charles II and the civil war.

A workman in a JCB who was digging at a site near Kinnersley, Worcestershire, spotted the bottles glistening in the sun during routine excavations. They will be sold off by BBR Auctions of Elsecar, South Yorkshire, next month.

‘Wine bottles which date from 1650 to 1670 are extremely rare and for these to be discovered with their seals so they can be attributed to the Earls of Coventry is very special,’ said Alan Blakeman, the auctioneer at BBR Auctions.

‘Back then, you had to be filthy rich to have your own wine bottles made, with the seals providing an extra status symbol.

‘The workman was digging a trench for footings with a JCB when he found them and it is remarkable that they have survived in such good condition.’ 

It’s thought the bottles were made for George Villiers – the second Duke of Buckingham and the second Earl of Coventry (1628-1687).  Villiers owned three glassworks houses and was interested in glassmaking. 

He was granted an exclusive patent in 1663 for plate and mirror glass at Vauxhall glassworks in the area now called Glasshouse Walk in London, according to Antiques Trade Gazette. 

The Earl of Coventry was created for the Villiers’ father of the same name, the first Earl of Coventry, who was also a favorite – and possibly lover – of King James I.

The bottles are valued at £20,000 and will be sold over the course of three auctions, with the first sale taking place on February 2.  The National Trust-owned mansion Croome Court was the seat of the Coventry family from the late 16th century.

The building in its current form was started in 1751 for the 6th Earl of Coventry.

Europe’s Oldest Intact Book Is Discovered Inside the Coffin of a Saint

After having been shut up inside a hermit monk’s tomb for more than 400 years, the oldest preserved book in Europe was found.

The exhibition will be portrayed in the British Library, featuring prize manuscripts like the Lindisfarne Gospels and Beowulf.

The show is a once in a lifetime opportunity to see how medieval Anglo-Saxons depicted their own culture through early writings.

Among the precious materials is the Stonyhurst Gospel, a small book that holds a lot of history.

Also known as the St. Cuthbert Gospel, this Latin copy of the Gospel of John was discovered inside the coffin of St. Cuthbert, a hermit monk who died in  687 CE. It’s said that his body was found incorrupt decades after his death and this led to a cult that placed sacrifices around his remains.

Sometime after 698 CE, a small red book made its way into St. Cuthbert’s tomb along with other offerings. The book, a rare surviving medieval manuscript, was removed from his coffin in 1104 CE and transferred to Durham Cathedral, where it was kept as a separate relic.

In 2012, The British Library acquired the 1,300-year-old text, which still retained its original binding and pages.

The book’s binding is covered in a deep crimson-stained goatskin, which was stuck to boards while still damp.

“The decoration of the boards was enriched by tooling and coloring lines on the surface, with the tip of a fine folder or a stylus,” describes The British Library, which has also digitized the book.

“The left board is decorated with a rectangular frame with interlaced patterns in the upper and lower fields and a larger central field containing a chalice from which stems project, terminating in a leaf or bud and four fruits. This raised motif was apparently made using a matrix, with a clay-like substance beneath the leather.”

By the 6th century AD, wax tablets and scrolls were replaced by codexes in Europe. A codex refers to a handwritten manuscript where sheets of papyrus or vellum were bound between hardcovers.

The typology was created by the Romans in the 1st century but didn’t become widespread for a few hundred years.

As one can imagine, the fragile nature of these bound books makes their survival unlikely, making the St. Cuthbert Gospel all the more precious.

The St. Cuthbert Gospel, along with many other treasures, is on view at the British Library as part of Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms.

Anglo-Saxon Abbey where Lusty King Edgar was Crowned, Found!

The ruins of two stone buildings found during restoration work at Bath Abbey by Wessex Archeology specialist, it was discovered during renovation work at Bath Abbey, to the 8th – 10th century.

It is probably part of the Anglo-Saxon monastery where King Edgar was crowned as the first King of England in 973 AD.

In the excavation project Bath Abbey’s Footprint, the two foundations were uncovered underneath the street level, as part of Bath Abbey’s Footprint project.

The Wessex Archeology team revealed the apsidal (semi-circular) structures below an area where the cloisters of the 12th-century cathedral would have once stood and overlying earlier Romano-British deposits.

An internal plaster renders on the southern-most apse contained fragments of charcoal from which two samples were sent for radiocarbon dating at Queen’s University, Belfast.

The dates came back as AD 780-970 and AD 670-770, much to the delight of Wessex Archaeology Senior Project Officer Cai Mason, who said: “When you find something unusual, you have to think ‘what is the most mundane explanation for what we’ve found?’, and most of the time that will be the explanation, but sometimes that doesn’t work, which makes you wonder ‘have we found something genuinely unusual?’

“In a post-Roman context, the most likely place to find this type of structure is at the east end of an ecclesiastical building, such as a church or chapel, and given the fact that the excavated structures are surrounded by late Saxon burials, this is the most likely explanation for their use.

“This, together with the late Saxon stonework and burials found at the Abbey, provides increasingly strong evidence that we have indeed found part of Bath’s lost Anglo-Saxon monastery.”

Wessex Archaeology Project Manager Bruce Eaton added: “Given that the potential date of these structures spans some 200 years there are several possible contexts for their construction.

“One possibility would be the reign of King Offa of Mercia, who acquired the monastery in AD 781 and is credited by William of Malmesbury for building the famous Church of St Peter, probably utilizing the ready supply of worked stone from the near-by collapsing Roman baths complex.

“Extensive building work within this period is further attested to by Offa’s successor Ecgfrith having the infrastructure in place to hold court at the monastery in AD 796.

“This phase of energetic building activity does fit neatly with our earliest possible date for the plasterwork, but it is certainly not our only candidate.”

The Reverend Canon Guy Bridgewater at Bath Abbey, said: “This is a really exciting find. While we’ve always known there once was an Anglo-Saxon monastery on this site, no trace of the building remains above ground today, so it’s amazing that we now have an actual record of it and can get a real sense of it as it was.

“The excavations being carried out as part of our Footprint project are essential to make major improvements to the current Abbey church, and how we use it.

“A massive benefit has been working with Wessex Archaeology who are making important discoveries about Abbey’s 1,000-year heritage all the time.”

The Anglo-Saxon structures are among a series of exciting discoveries made by Wessex Archaeology during their excavations at Bath Abbey. In August 2018, the team uncovered a vibrantly coloured 14th century tiled floor in what would have been the nave of the medieval cathedral.

They have excavated a Mesolithic land surface below the Victorian plant room, Roman buildings which would have once stood in the heart of the town of Aquae Sulis, an Anglo-Saxon cemetery containing rare charcoal burials and the medieval cloister walk.

More recent finds have included the coffin-plate of controversial Georgian demographer Rev. Thomas Malthus and recovered painted fragments of the lost Jacobean plaster ceiling of the current Abbey church.

Archaeologists discover a crude ancient weapon that could kill a man with a single blow

When many months ago, in England, an old wooden club was yanked from its watery grave in the River Thames in England, archaeologists didn’t quite know what to make of it.

The blunt tool, which is supposed to happen between 3530 and 3340 BC, does not look so good, it doesn’t really look all that impressive, but those studying it still wanted to get an idea of how it might have been used.

After making a full-sized replica for testing, it’s been determined that the unassuming tool could actually dispatch a human in short order and perhaps even with a single strike.

In a new research paper published in the journal Antiquity, scientists investigating the weapon and its origins took the extraordinary step of carving a replica for testing.

The original, which has begun to fall apart over its several thousands of years of life, is being preserved, but its stand-in demonstrated just how devastating it might have been.

The “Thames Beater,” as the weapon has been nicknamed, is modest in appearance. It consists of a thick wooden “blade” tapers down to a narrow handle with a hefty pommel on the very end. But its simple construction believes how much trauma it could cause.

Using the replica, the researchers asked a 30-year-old male volunteer to wield it in order to test its effectiveness in combat. The man was asked to bash a test dummy built of a realistic military ballistic material, complete with a faux human skull.

The “fight” proved to the archaeologists that the club would have been capable of shattering a human skull with a single hit and that the weapon could have been used in multiple different ways.

A ranged attack, with a full swing from the end of the handle, would have been useful when the target was greater than arms’ length away, while a two-handed bash using the beefy pommel may have been used when an enemy was much closer.

After testing its effectiveness, the scientists further compared the injuries the test dummy sustained with actual human skulls found in graveyards from the same time period.

They reported finding at least one with a skull fracture that looked nearly identical.

They further concluded that it’s likely the individual died as a result of a run-in with the Thames Beater or another similar blunt weapon.

Fossil hunter finds 185M-year-old ‘golden snitch’ with ancient sea creature inside

Fossils shaped like Quidditchball are only a few of the many discoveries made by amateur archeologist Aaron Smith.

On the cliffs of Whitby, Yorkshire, the medical student found various fossil items from the Jurassic period. Perhaps the most spectacular is a 185 million-year-old fossil encased by what looks like a ‘golden canon’ ball.

It is technically a rock that is coated in iron pyrite, also known as ‘fools gold’, and if you shine this material, just like Smith did, then it turns shiny and gold.

The phenomenal piece of history is thought to be 185 million-years-old and was found on Sandsend Beach. Mr. Smith, 23, is a seasoned fossil collector and continues to go and explore the seaside in hope of finding similar treasures.

He said: “In order to find fossils, pretty much anywhere in the world, you just need to put in a lot of dedication!

“The majority of the time there is nothing really to be found but every now and again, if you’re lucky enough, and something has appeared due to a storm, for example, then you might find a rock with a fossil inside it.

“When you find a fossil, then the long intricate process begins of carefully removing the stone to expose the fossil, this can take hundreds of hours in many cases.

“It’s very exciting discovering the fossils. It makes it all worthwhile after spending months of searching.”

When the medical student opened up one of his freshly shined pieces of iron pyrite he found spiral-shaped cleviceras fossils. Cleviceras is an extinct type of cephalopod creature. The best-known cephalopods today are probably squids and octopuses.

The golden-snitch-like spheres with a limestone core are actually common along the Yorkshire coastline and can be found amongst the stones and shales.

Mr. Smith has previously posted a video of the golden-snitch fossil online and captioned it: “Here’s a video of us opening one of our huge Cannon Ball fossils.

“The limestone nodule is coated in Iron Pyrite, meaning we can polish it to become Golden, seen in our previous videos.

“It still impresses me that these 185 Million-Year-Old fossils are along our beautiful Yorkshire Coastline waiting to be found.”

Archaeologists re-excavate hidden Roman bath after 130 years

The bath was first discovered and excavated 130 years ago, but was then quickly back-filled and poorly recorded.

Measuring 4 metres x 5 metres, it is one of eight baths known at the Roman Baths site and is beneath York Street next to the main suite of baths.

Stephen Clews, Manager of the Roman Baths, said: “The excavation of this bath is part of the most significant archaeological investigations to have taken place at the Roman Baths for more than 30 years.

It is helping us to build a picture of what was happening on the south side of the site, where it has been very difficult to gain access in the past.”

The excavation of the bath is part of a wider programme of investigation taking place as part of the National Lottery-funded Archway Project, which is creating a new Clore Learning Centre for the Roman Baths and a World Heritage Centre for the city.

The position of the bath means that it cannot be seen by visitors on a normal visit to the Roman Baths.

The excavation is being carried out for the Roman Baths by Cotswold Archaeology.

The Archway Project is run by Bath & North East Somerset Council, which owns and operates the Roman Baths, with the support of The National Lottery Heritage Fund, The Clore Duffield Foundation, The Roman Baths Foundation, the Garfield Weston Foundation and hundreds of other supporters and donors.

Aquae Sulis was a small town in the Roman province of Britannia that is now modern-day Bath.

The Romans had probably arrived in the area shortly after their arrival in Britain in AD 43 and there is evidence that their military road, the Fosse Way, crossed the river Avon at Bath.

Not far from the crossing point of their road, they would have been attracted by the large natural hot spring which had been a shrine of the Celtic Brythons, dedicated to their goddess Sulis.

This spring is a natural mineral spring found in the valley of the Avon River in Southwest England, it is the only spring in Britain officially designated as hot. The name is Latin for “the waters of Sulis.”

The Romans identified the goddess with their goddess Minerva and encouraged her worship that helped the native populations adapt to Roman culture.

The spring was built up into a major Roman Baths complex associated with an adjoining temple. About 130 messages to Sulis scratched onto lead curse tablets (defixiones) have so far been recovered from the Sacred Spring by archaeologists.