The largest gold nugget ever found is named the Alaska Centennial Nugget
The largest gold nugget ever found in Alaska is named the Alaska Centennial Nugget. It weighs a whopping 9.1475325 kilograms and was found near the town of Ruby, Alaska in 1998.
Barry Clay was placer mining an area along Swift Creek that was known for producing large nuggets. He was pushing dirt with his bulldozer when something unusual caught his eye.
He jumped out of the dozer and picked up the object. He immediately knew by the weight that he had unearthed a huge gold nugget. He immediately buried the nugget under a nearby tree until he could figure out what to do with it.
When he finally took it into town for further examination, it was determined that he had found the largest nugget ever found in Alaska, and the second-largest nugget ever found in the Western Hemisphere behind the Boot of Cortez nugget found in Mexico.
It was named the Centennial nugget because it was found on the 100th anniversary of the Klondike Gold Rush, which brought thousands of men north to Alaska in search of gold.
Its discovery in 1998 shows that there are without a doubt lots of huge gold nuggets left to be discovered. They haven’t all been discovered, not by a long shot!
With the record high gold prices in recent years and the renewed interest in gold mining, there is a very good chance that more big gold nuggets will be found in the very near future.
Correspondingly, if you would like to learn more about gold prices and the potential wealth boosting benefits of investing in precious metals like gold then you can get gold at gsiexchange.com and other similar websites online. Just remember to do plenty of research before making any major investments.
Many other large nuggets have been found in the Ruby Mining District as well, including numerous nuggets that weighed over a pound.
Alaska has by far the most commercial mining operations compared to other states, mainly due to its miner friendly regulations comparison to other states.
Alaska has a reputation for large nuggets as well. Overall gold produced here is not as high as other states like California and Nevada, but if you want to find a huge gold nugget in the United States, Alaska is the best place to look.
Petrified Forest National Park: Ancient and Spectacular
We’re going to the southwestern state of Arizona on our National Parks trip this week. We’ll find a strange and vivid landscape there. The hilly soil is covered by black, red, and sometimes purple rocks and sand. In odd forms, massive bits of ancient trees curl.
The Jasper Forest section of the park
The area is the only national park that includes a part of the historic U.S. Route 66.
Welcome to the Petrified Forest National Park!
The word “forest” may mislead visitors. The park is in a desert. And the word “petrified” — which can mean “afraid”– may scare visitors away!
But fear not. “Petrified Forest” gets its name from the trees that have, over millions of years, turned to stone. That natural process is called fossilization.
Much of the Petrified Forest formed from tall trees called conifers. They grew over 200 million years ago near waterways. During floods, water forced the trees to be pulled up from the ground. Over time, the wood from the trees became petrified. The Petrified Forest National Park is one of the wonders of Arizona. It sits within the Painted Desert.
A Spanish explorer in the 1500s gave the place its name. It is easy to see why. The desert looks like an artist’s canvas. Brilliantly coloured mudstones and clays cover the land as far as the eye can see. They contain bentonite, a clay that is the product of changed volcanic ash.
The oldest geological formations in the park are about 227 million years old. Differently coloured formations show different time periods. The Blue Mesa formations, for example, have thick bands of grey, purple, blue and green mudstones. They are about 220 million years old.
Ancient history
Evidence of humans in the Petrified Forest dates back 13,000 years.
People first came here after the last Ice Age. Early Paleoindian groups used petrified wood to create different kinds of stone tools. They used them to hunt large animals. The climate warmed over several thousand years. Humans began building villages here and growing food, such as corn, squash and beans.
In the 900s, people in the area began building above-ground houses, called pueblos. They also made pottery for cooking and other uses. Scientists today find evidence of early pottery and pueblo homes all over Petrified Forest National Park. A long and severe drought in the early 1400s forced most of the people living here to move. But new groups soon arrived.
European explorers came in the 1500s. By the 1800s, American pioneers began settling in the area. And, by the 1920s, American motorists were travelling on U.S. Route 66. The road winds through the heart of the Painted Desert.
Long before humans entered the area, though, dinosaurs dominated. Petrified Forest National Park is a world-class area for fossil research. The fossil record at the park preserves some of the earliest dinosaurs. The dinosaur fossils are from the Late Triassic period, called the “dawn of the dinosaurs.” They help scientists reconstruct ancient environments.
Creating a National Park
The land here was set aside as a national monument in 1906. Congress moved to protect it because of its unique ecosystem, a record of human history and dramatic southwestern scenery. It became a national park in 1962.
More than 800,000 people visit the Petrified Forest National Park each year. The best way to explore the park is by foot. The National Park Service maintains many kilometres of walking trails.
The Crystal Forest trail is a one-kilometre path. It is named for the crystals that can be seen on the pieces of petrified wood. The trail is one of the best chances to see this fossilized wood up close.
The Petrified Forest includes many shapes and sizes of wood, from large logs to stumps to the smallest remains of plants. Most of the petrified wood found in the park is made up of quartz. Quartz is a hard, colourless mineral. The wood sometimes shines in the sunlight as if covered by glitter.
The Painted Desert Rim trail offers visitors a good chance to see the park’s wildlife. Lizards and rabbits are common. So are snakes and foxes.
Early morning or evening are the best times to see animals. These are also the times when the sun makes the Painted Desert the most colourful and spectacular.
Massive dinosaur fossil unearthed by Alberta pipeline crew
A new large tyrannosaur from Alberta, a predatory dinosaur whose name means “reaper of death,” was found by palaeontologists from the University of Calgary and the Royal Tyrrell Museum.
The 79-million-year-old fossil, named Thanatotheristes, is the oldest tyrannosaur reported from northern North America and the first new tyrannosaur species found in Canada in 50 years, according to the research team’s report.
“It’s the oldest example of a large tyrannosaur in Canada found in an older window of time than in previous tyrannosaurs,” says Dr Darla Zelenitsky, a co-author of the study, PhD, Principal Dinosaur Researcher of the University of Calgary and Assistant professor in the Department of Geoscience.
Study lead author Jared Voris, shown above, a PhD student of Zelenitsky’s whose analysis identified the new species, says the fossil specimen is very important to understanding the Late Cretaceous period when tyrannosaurs roamed the Earth. It gives us a new understanding of tyrannosaur evolution and how these animals interacted with their ecosystem.
“With this new species, we now know that tyrannosaurs were present in Alberta prior to 77 million years ago, the age of the next-oldest tyrannosaur,” says study co-author Dr. François Therrien, PhD, curator of dinosaur palaeoecology at the Royal Tyrrell Museum. “We can tell from the skull how Thanatotheristes is related to the other, better-known tyrannosaurs from Alberta.”
The research team also included Dr.Caleb Brown, PhD, curator of dinosaur systematics and evolution at the Royal Tyrrell and a co-author of the study.
Thanatotheristes degrootorum is named after John and Sandra De Groot, who found the fossils.
The team’s study, “A New Tyrannosaurine (Theropoda: Tyrannosauridae) from the Campanian Foremost Formation of Alberta, Canada, Provides Insight into the Evolution and Biogeography of Tyrannosaurids,” is published in the peer-reviewed journal Cretaceous Research.
New species have distinct physical features
Thanatotheristes degrootorum, a new genus and species, was identified from a fragmentary fossil consisting of parts of the skull and the upper and lower jawbones. The bones, which had apparently tumbled from a cliff and shattered on the shore of the Bow River, were found by John and Sandra De Groot (after whom the new species was named) in 2010 near the town of Hays, about 200 kilometres southeast of Calgary.
The specimen lay in a drawer at the Royal Tyrrell Museum until last spring, when Voris examined it. “We found features of the skull that had not been seen before in other tyrannosaurs,” he says. “The fossil has several physical features, including ridges along the upper jaw, which clearly distinguishes it as being from a new species.”
The diagnostic evidence showed that Thanatotheristes is a close relative of two other well-known tyrannosaur species, Daspletosaurus torosus and Daspletosaurus horneri. All three species form a newly named group of dinosaurs called Daspletosaurini.
This group had longer, deeper snouts and more teeth in the upper jaws than tyrannosaurs found in the southern U.S., which had shorter, bulldog-like faces, Voris says.
Research indicates diversity among tyrannosaurs
Thanatotheristes, which Voris estimates were approximately eight metres long, likely preyed on large plant-eating dinosaurs, such as the horned Xenoceratops and the dome-headed Colepiochephale that were part of the ecosystem.
The differences in size, skull shape and other physical features among tyrannosaur groups from various geographical regions may be adaptations to different environments, available prey type and hunting strategies, Zelenitsky says.
“Some species are better suited to certain environments,” Voris says. “This reduces competition and gives species a better chance of survival.”
Such “provinciality” can also be seen in modern ecosystems with lions and tigers, he adds. Lions are found in Africa and favour open, savanna-type environments, while tigers are found in Asia and prefer forested environments.
Darla Zelenitsky, Jared Voris and François Therrien stand with the Thanatotheristes fossils.
Royal Tyrrell Museum
The team’s research also suggests tyrannosaurs didn’t share one general body type. Instead, groups of different tyrannosaur species evolved distinct skull forms, body sizes and other physical features, spreading into different environments where each group thrived.
“The next step is to test that hypothesis further and compare how tyrannosaur species from various geological regions differed,” Voris says.
The team’s research was supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, an Eyes High Doctoral Recruitment Scholarship for Voris, and the Royal Tyrrell Museum Cooperating Society.
DNA tests are used for many things. They can prove if someone was involved in a crime and a paternity testing clinic can find out if a child really is their son or daughter by comparing their DNA. A growing trend with DNA testing is to trace back genetic ancestry and one man may have found he has the oldest DNA in America.
A new client has taken the status of the oldest traceable DNA in the Americas, according to one genetic company. A Great Falls Tribune article shows the DNA of Alvin ‘Willy’ Crawford traced back 55 generations with a shocking 99 percent accuracy, making his lineage the longest ever traced by CRI Genetics, the ancestry testing company.
The genetic tests, according to the study, traced Crawford’s DNA back a whopping 17,000 years.
The length and accuracy of Crawford’s lineage are so rare that the company told Crawford’s family that it was ‘like finding Big Foot.’
The DNA test traced Crawford’s family history to ancestors that migrated across the Bering Land Bridge. Many of Americas first humans crossed a narrow land bridge that stretched across the Bering Sea and into Alaska (illustrated above)
According to the report, Crawford died of a heart attack shortly before the results of CRI’s genetic testing had concluded, but was told that his ancestors had migrated across the Bering Land Bridge during an Ice Age.
According to Crawford’s DNA, however, he belonged to the mtDNA Haplogroup B2 — a genetic subgroup — which is very common in southwestern America.
Likely, Crawford’s ancestors traveled from Asia to South America and traveled north according to CRI.
Crawford’s DNA was 83 percent native American according to the report, with 73 percent of that coming from one tribe alone, the Blackfeet Nation.
As the ability to sequence and understand genomes has steadily advanced, so too has our understanding of the way species, including humans, have evolved.
In 2010, a bit of luck led to the first fully sequenced genome of early humans.
Scientists were able to map the entire genome of an early ancient human after analyzing a 4,000-year-old hairball found frozen in Greenland soil — the piece of genetic history pales in comparison to other ancient human DNA which has been dated as far back as 430,000 years.
Similarly, after studying the discovered DNA of a six-week-old Native American infant who died 11,500 years ago, researchers revealed last year that humans likely migrated across the Bering Strait land bridge into Alaska in one fell swoop as opposed to coming in waves like previously thought.
For individuals in Native American communities like that to which Crawford and his family belong, the impacts of genetic testing have had more personal ripple effects.
According to genetics company CRI, Alvin Crawford has the oldest traceable DNA in the companies history. Alvin died before the results came in, but his family says he would have been ‘blown away.’ His brother, Darrell “Dusty” Crawford, is pictured
Genetic testing is now used, to some controversy, to test people’s enrollment in tribes — if tests come back under certain percentages of a tribe’s DNA then they may not be allowed in.
Arguments over Native American ancestry have even made the national stage, namely through a public spat between the presidential candidate, Senator Elizabeth Warren, and President Donald Trump over Warren’s alleged Native American background.
To prove her claim, she resorted to genetic testing.
A Representative from CRI Genetics did not respond to a request for comment before the time of publication.
OU archaeologists uncover buried building in the ancient Mexican city
University of Oklahoma researchers have made a finding that they believe could change the world’s view of an ancient capital.
The location of a buried building under the surface of the Main Plaza at Monte Alban, one of the first towns to establish in all of pre-Hispanic Mexico, was recently found by archaeologists from the University of Oklahoma.
The team used ground-penetrating radar, electrical resistance, and gradiometry to locate the structure.
“This discovery changes our understanding of the history of the Main Plaza and how it was organized and used,” said Marc Levine, assistant curator of archaeology at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History and assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology, College of Arts and Sciences. “Everything is deeply symbolic here.”
The building appears to resemble stone temples that were excavated by Mexican archaeologists in the 1930s.
Photo of Levine of Ground Penetrating Radar
Evidence from those temples indicates they were used for religious practices like burning incense, making offerings and ritual bloodletting.
Monte Albán was established in 500 BCE and eventually grew to become a powerful regional capital with impressive buildings featuring carved stone monuments with a highly developed artistic style and written language.
The Main Plaza was built, expanded and remodelled over 1,000 years before the site’s collapse around 850 CE.
Archaeologists have investigated many of the buildings erected around the Main Plaza, but have never focused research on the plaza itself to better examine its role in society.
OU researchers hope to develop a clearer picture of what the Main Plaza looked like during its early history and better appreciate the amount of work that went into its construction.
“If you think of the National Mall in Washington, D.C., every monument and every building that goes on that mall has a significance and was thought over, carefully planned and oriented in a certain way,” Levine said. “The same goes for Monte Albán.”
Levine stresses the importance of the site, saying the Main Plaza is even featured on the country’s 20 peso note.
The OU team also used a drone to create a digital map of the Main Plaza and its associated structures. With the help of a supercomputer, the team is creating 3-D images of all the buildings to measure their volume.
This will provide a better understanding of the effort required to move all the dirt and construct the buildings. Levine estimates the team will spend about two years analyzing all of their data to complete their study of the plaza.
“We may find some other things that are important that we haven’t had a chance to process yet,” he added.
9,000-Year-Old Stonehenge-Like Structure Found Under Lake Michigan
Archaeologists found something much more fascinating than they got credit for when searching under the waters of Lake Michigan for shipwrecks: they uncovered a rock with a prehistoric carving of a mastodon, as well as a collection of stones arranged in a Stonehenge-like manner.
Gazing into the water
In modern archaeology, the use of remote sensing techniques is common: scientists regularly survey lakes and soil for hidden objects.
Archaeologists uncovered sunken boats and cars and even a Civil War-era pier at a depth of around 40 feet into Lake Michigan’s Grand Traverse Bay, using sonar techniques to search for shipwrecks, but among all these, they found this prehistoric surprise, which a trained eye can guess by looking at the sonar scans photos in this article.
“When you see it in the water, you’re tempted to say this is absolutely real,” said Mark Holley, a professor of underwater archaeology at Northwestern Michigan University College who made the discovery, during a news conference with photos of the boulder on display in 2007. “But that’s what we need the experts to come in and verify.
Professor Mark Holley hopes that a computer model of the carving in the mastodon rock will help petroglyph experts
The boulder with the markings is 3.5 to 4 feet high and about 5 feet long. Photos show a surface with numerous fissures.
Some may be natural while others appear of human origin, but those forming what could be the petroglyph stood out, Holley said.
Viewed together, they suggest the outlines of a mastodon-like back, hump, head, trunk, tusk, triangular-shaped ear and parts of legs, he said.
“We couldn’t believe what we were looking at,” said Greg MacMaster, president of the underwater preserve council.
Specialists shown pictures of the boulder holding the mastodon markings have asked for more evidence before confirming the markings are an ancient petroglyph, said Holley.
“They want to actually see it,” he said. Unfortunately, he added, “Experts in petroglyphs generally don’t dive, so we’re running into a little bit of a stumbling block there.”
If found to be true, the wannabe petroglyph could be as much as 10,000 years old – coincident with the post-Ice Age presence of both humans and mastodons in the upper midwest.
The stones of discovered underwater structure are organised circle and believe to be at least 10,000 years old.
The formation, if authenticated, wouldn’t be completely out of place. Stone circles and other petroglyph sites are located in the area.
The discovery was made back a few years ago, and surprisingly enough the find hasn’t been popularized at all, with little to no information available online, but I’ll be sure to update this post as soon as I can get ahold of more info.
Although the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt is by far the most talked-about pyramid in the world, it is not by a long shot the tallest. The title goes to the Great Pyramid of Cholula, an ancient temple of the Aztecs in Puebla, Mexico, with a base four times the size of Giza, and about twice the volume.
Why is the world’s biggest pyramid so often overlooked? It could be because that gigantic structure is actually hidden beneath layers of dirt, making it look more like a natural mountain than a place of worship.
In fact, it looks so much like a mountain, that famed Spanish explorer Hernán Cortés completely missed it, and unwittingly built a church right on top of it, as you can see in the image above.
To understand how awesome the Great Pyramid of Cholula is, we must jump back to well before Cortés and his army planted a symbol of Christianity on its peak.
Known as Tlachihualtepetl (meaning “man-made mountain”), the origins of the pyramid are a little sketchy, though the general consensus is that it was built in around 300 BC by many different communities to honour the ancient god Quetzalcoatl.
As Zaria Gorvett reports for the BBC, the pyramid was likely constructed with adobe – a type of brick made of out of baked mud – and features six layers built on top of each over many generations. Each time a layer was completed, construction was picked back up by a new group of workers.
This incremental growth is what allowed the Great Pyramid of Cholula to get so big. With a base of 450 by 450 metres (1,480 by 1,480 feet), it’s four times the size of the Great Pyramid of Giza.
The pyramid was built to appease the “feathered serpent” god
In fact, at roughly 66 metres (217 feet) tall, the pyramid’s total volume is about 4.45 million cubic metres (157 million cubic feet), while the Great Pyramid of Giza’s volume is just 2.5 million cubic metres (88.2 million cubic feet).
The Great Pyramid of Giza is taller, though, at 146 metres (481 feet) high. The ancient Aztecs most likely used the Great Pyramid of Cholula as a place of worship for around 1,000 years before moving to a new, smaller location nearby.
Before it was replaced by newer structures, it was painstakingly decorated in red, black, and yellow insects. But without maintenance, the mud bricks were left to do what mud does in humid climates – provide nutrients to all kinds of tropical greenery.
“It was abandoned sometime in the 7th or 8th Century CE,” archaeologist David Carballo from Boston University told Gorvett at the BBC. “The Choluteca had a newer pyramid-temple located nearby, which the Spaniards destroyed.”
When Cortés and his men arrived in Cholula in October 1519, some 1,800 years after the pyramid was constructed, they massacred around 3,000 people in a single hour – 10 per cent of entire city’s population – and levelled many of their religious structures.
But they never touched the pyramid, because they never found it.
In 1594, after settling in the city and claiming it for their own, they built a church – La Iglesia de Nuestra Señora de Los Remedios (Our Lady of Remedies Church), on top of the hidden pyramid mountain.
It’s unclear if the Aztecs knew the mud bricks would encourage things to grow all over it and eventually bury the entire structure, but the fact that it looks more like a hill than a pyramid is probably the only reason it still survives today.
And just as well, because according to the BBC, not only is it the world’s largest pyramid, it retains the title of the largest monument ever constructed anywhere on Earth, by any civilisation, to this day.
The pyramid wasn’t discovered until the early 1900s when locals started to build a psychiatric ward nearby. By the 1930s, archaeologists started to uncover it, creating a series of tunnels stretching 8 kilometres (5 miles) in length to give them access.
Now, over 2,300 years after its initial construction, the site has become a tourist destination.
Hopefully, as our ability to study important sites using non-invasive tools continues to improve, archaeologists will gain a better understanding of how the structure was built, by whom, and how it came to look so much like a mountain.
Couple finds more than 66 bottles of Prohibition-era whiskey hidden in the walls of their New York home
After finding 66 bottles of whiskey from the Prohibition period concealed in the walls and floorboards of their home in upstate New York, a couple is left shocked.
Late last year in the town of Ames, Nick Drummond and Patrick Bakker bought the property and were told that it once belonged to a ‘childless German baron who turned to bootlegging in the 1920s.’
As nothing more than folklore, the couple passed off the storey before last month they started renovating the 105-year-old home and found hidden liquor in the gaps between the walls and floors.
A New York couple has been left stunned after finding 66 bottles of Prohibition-era whiskey hidden in the walls and floorboards of their upstate home. All of the bottles are Old Smuggler Gaelic whiskey – a Scottish label which is still in production today
Drummond told CNN that he was removing outside skirting from a mudroom when he found the bottles of whiskey wrapped up in a brown paper.
‘I’m like what is that? I’m was very confused… I’m like holy crap. This is like a whiskey stash. And this is like, all of a sudden, the whole story of the bootlegger [makes sense].’
Drummond told CNN that he was removing outside skirting from a mudroom when he found the bottles of whiskey wrapped up in brown paper
The three-story home in Ames is pictured. Drummond and Bakker had no idea of the property’s incredible history when they made the purchase last year
Drummond shared a video of the remarkable moment to his Instagram page – which has recently attracted thousands of new followers, which means he doesn’t need to use Instagram growth services like gramista to help expand his following as this amazing and quite possibly once in a lifetime discovery has done the job for him instead.
‘OUR WALLS ARE BUILT OF BOOZE!’ he wrote.
‘I can’t believe the rumours are true! He was actually a bootlegger! I mean I thought it was a cute story, but the builder of our house was ACTUALLY a bootlegger!’
The couple uncovered 42 bottles of whiskey in the wall space. All of the bottles are Old Smuggler Gaelic whiskey – a Scottish label which is still in production today.
However, Drummond and Bakker went on to discover even more concealed booze beneath floorboards inside the mudroom. So far, the pair have found a total of 66 bottles, and say it’s likely they’ll come across others as they continue their renovations.
Drummond and Bakker went on to discover even more concealed booze beneath floorboards inside the mudroom
The bottles are estimated to be worth around $1,000 a pop – but the couple did not reveal whether they had opened one to give the whiskey a try.
Unlike wine, whiskey does not improve with age once it has been bottled. While it’s unlikely to be harmful if the pair do decide to drink it, there’s no guarantee that it’ll taste any good.
Bottles of the whiskey – dating back at least 90 years – were discovered wrapped in brown paper
After making the discovery, Drummond subsequently began researching the history of the home, and learned there was some truth to the rumours it was owned by a’a ‘childless German baron who turned to bootlegging’.
The original owner was a German man known as Count Adolph Humpfner – who died mysteriously in 1932 and left behind a large fortune.
‘His estate was worth over $140,000 in 1932,’ Drummond told his Instagram followers.
‘He had many aliases and was known as the mystery man of the Mohawk Valley, and ‘the count’; although there was never proof of his royalty beyond his own claims.
‘It was a mystery to locals at the time how he amassed his fortune. He owned a local bank, the school gymnasium, and 23 properties in NYC and NJ.’
Now, it seems apparent that he amassed his fortune through bootlegging during the Prohibition-era, which ran from 1920- 1933.
Ames is located about halfway between New York City and the Canadian border, making it the perfect place for bootleggers who may have been bringing in illegal alcohol from the north.
