Category Archives: SOUTH AMERICA

BOLIVIA, SOUTH AMERICA, WORLD

10,800 Years Ago, Early Humans Planted Forest Islands in Amazonia’s Grasslands

10,800 Years Ago, Early Humans Planted Forest Islands in Amazonia’s Grasslands

Thousands of artificial forest islands were built by Amazon’s earliest human settlers as they tamed wild plants to produce food, a new study reveals.

The discovery of the mounds is the latest evidence to show the extensive impact people had on the area. From their arrival 10,000 years ago they transformed the landscape when they began cultivating manioc and squash.

This led to the creation of 4,700 of the forest islands in what is now Llanos de Moxos in northern Bolivia, the team has found.

10,800 Years Ago, Early Humans Planted Forest Islands in Amazonia's Grasslands
An aerial shot of the Llanos de Moxos region in South America shows the strangely isolated mounds of trees that grow among expansive grasslands. Scientists’ explanation for these islands: Ancient humans planted and cultivated crops, making them some of the oldest domesticated plants in history.

This savannah area floods from December to March and is extremely dry from July to October, but the mounds remain above the water level during the rainy season allowing trees to grow on them.

The mounds promoted landscape diversity, and show that small-scale communities began to shape the Amazon 8,000 years earlier than previously thought.

The research confirms this part of the Amazon is one of the earliest centres of plant domestication in the world.

Using microscopic plant silica bodies, called phytoliths, found well preserved in tropical forests, experts have documented the earliest evidence found in the Amazon of manioc -10,350 years ago, squash — 10,250 years ago, and maize — 6,850 years ago.

The plants grown on the forest islands were chosen because they were carbohydrate-rich and easy to cook, and they probably provided a considerable part of the calories consumed by the first inhabitants of the region, supplemented by fish and some meat.

The study, in the journal Nature, was conducted by Umberto Lombardo and Heinz Veit from the University of Bern, Jose Iriarte and Lautaro Hilbert from the University of Exeter, Javier Ruiz-Pérez from Pompeu Fabra University and José Capriles from Pennsylvania State University.

Umberto Lombardo, from the University of Bern, who is one of the researches involved in the study, sampling sediment cores in the Llanos de Moxos savannah.

The study involved an unprecedented large scale regional analysis of 61 archaeological sites, identified by remote sensing, now patches of forest surrounded by savannah. Samples were retrieved from 30 forest islands and archaeological excavations carried out in four of them.

Dr Lombardo said: “Archaeologists, geographers, and biologists have argued for many years that southwestern Amazonia was a probable centre of early plant domestication because many important cultivars like manioc, squash, peanuts and some varieties of chilli pepper and beans are genetically very close to wild plants living here.

However, until this recent study, the scientist had neither searched for nor excavated, old archaeological sites in this region that might document the pre-Columbian domestication of these globally important crops.”

Professor Iriarte said: “Genetic and archaeological evidence suggests there were at least four areas of the world where humans domesticated plants around 11,000 years ago, two in the Old World and two in the New World. This research helps us to prove South West Amazonia is likely the fifth.

“The evidence we have found shows the earliest inhabitants of the area were not just tropical hunter-gatherers, but colonizers who cultivated plants. This opens the door to suggest that they already ate a mixed diet when they arrived in the region.”

Forest islands are seen from above

Javier Ruiz-Pérez said: “Through an extensive archaeological survey including excavations and after analysing dozens of radiocarbon dates and phytolith samples, we demonstrated that pre-Columbian peoples adapted to and modified the seasonally flooded savannahs of south-western Amazonia by building thousands of mounds where to settle and by cultivating and even domesticating plants since the beginning of the Holocene.”

PERU, SOUTH AMERICA, WORLD

30,000-Year-Old Sacsayhuamán Secret Writing Method Discovered

30,000-Year-Old Sacsayhuamán Secret Writing Method Discovered

A researcher has suggested a highly thought-provoking theory that the fabulous Sacsayhuamán temple in Peru might involve secret 30 000-year-old writing. A discovery of this magnitude could easily re-write not only our understanding of the Stone Age but also world history.

In our article “Sacsayhuamán – Was It Built By ‘Demons’ Or Viracocha The Bearded God?” we examined the walls built by stones that our gigantic modern machinery could hardly move and put in place. Sacsayhuamán, located on the outskirts of the ancient Inca capital city of Cuzco is one of the most impressive and mysterious fortresses of the Andes.

Sacsayhuamán is still shrouded in mystery. The question of how the Sacsayhuamán stones have been transported remains unanswered. Will the corners of the stones maybe throw more light on the enigma of Sacsayhuamán? Dr. Derek Cunningham, a researcher has put forward a controversial and highly intriguing theory.

30,000-Year-Old Sacsayhuamán Secret Writing Method Discovered
The Sacsayhuamán complex

Based on his studies of the Sacsayhuamán complex, he concluded that the curious angles formed by these stones reveal ancient Inca knowledge of astronomical alignments of the moon, sun, and the earth, as well as knowledge of lunar and solar eclipses.

This should perhaps not be so surprising because many ancient temples were astronomically aligned. However, what Dr. Cunningham is suggesting is unorthodox because his hypothesis revolves around the thought that our ancient ancestors developed ‘writing’ at least 30,000 years ago from a geometrical form of text that is based on the motion of the moon and the sun.

He asserts that such ancient astronomical text, identical to that seen at Sacsayhuamán, is also found in both Lascaux and Chauvet caves in Europe, the African carved Ishango tally bone, and a circa 30,000-year-old carved stone found at the Shuidonggou Paleolithic Site in China.

Dr. Cunningham became interested in Sacsayhuamán when he first noted a series of unusual ground patterns located close to some Scottish sites.

This discovery drove him on to look at other ancient sites hoping to find some similarities and he did. He discovered that the Sacsayhuamán stone angles reveal something extraordinary.

“Each astronomical value (there are 9 standard values in total) was chosen by ancient astronomers to aid the prediction of eclipses. These astronomical terms are a mixture of values astronomers use to measure time (the 27.32-day sidereal month) and values to determine when the moon, earth, and sun align at nodes.

This includes the use of the 18.6-year nodal cycle of the moon, the 6.511 draconic months period between eclipse seasons, and also the 5.1-degree angle of inclination of the moon’s orbit.

The remaining values typically are either half-values of various lunar terms or values connected to the 11-day difference between the lunar and solar years,” Dr. Cunningham says.

Dr. Cunningham believes that scientists should focus their attention on the hidden writing discovered at Sacsayhuamán. “Now, substantial evidence has also been discovered that this archaic writing was used, perhaps almost continuously, until 500 years ago,” states Cunningham.

“Recently the analysis of the Muisca Tunjo figurines from Columbia uncovered evidence that they were constructed to the exact same astronomical design as Bronze Age figurines uncovered in Cyprus.

This discovery of such possible “recent” use of a Stone Age text thus prompted me to take a new look at circa 15th to 16th century Inca architecture, which is famous for its fabulous over-complex interlocking walls.

The question I asked was could the massive polygonal walls of Sacsayhuamán align to the exact same astronomical values used in the Columbian Muiscan figurines and the Atacama Giant of Chile? The surprising result is yes.”

Right: Second Sacsayhuamán wall example; Left: One Sacsayhuamán wall example

“What is powerful about this new theory is that it is very simple and easy to test,” adds Cunningham.

“Further work is of course required. Satellite images cannot clearly take the place of direct fieldwork, and photographs placed online may have become distorted, but so far the data obtained appear highly consistent.” Dr. Cunningham is not afraid of criticism. “I honestly do not care whether I am right or wrong about this,” he concludes.

“All I have found so far is that the data is what it is. The potential of the idea to explain some things about so many sites from the pyramids of Egypt to the Atacama Giant in Chile is obviously very controversial, and it should be. But if correct, it could rewrite some aspects of our understanding of not only the Stone Age but also world history. If, on the other hand, scholars prove this specific astronomical theory wrong, then we can move on, knowing that it has been sufficiently tested.

BRAZIL, SOUTH AMERICA, WORLD

A bizarre chicken-sized dinosaur named lord of the spear is discovered in Brazil

A bizarre chicken-sized dinosaur named lord of the spear is discovered in Brazil

With a mane of yellow and brown fur down its back and long ‘needles’ growing from its shoulders, a peacock-like elaborate dinosaur has been identified. The neck spines of the creature are rare in the fossil record and made of keratin, which is the same protein that makes up parts of our hair, nails and skin. Dubbed Ubirajara jubatus, indigenous Indian for ‘Maned Lord of the Spear’

Experts led from the University of Portsmouth believe the flamboyant spines may have been used to impress prospective mates, and that the dinosaur may have indulged in ‘elaborate dancing’ to show them off.

The needle-like displays were positioned so they would not impede the dinosaur’s arms and legs — and would not have stopped it from hunting, preening or sending signals.

Ubirajara jubatus lived around 110 million years ago, during the Cretaceous period, the researchers explained. The new species was originally unearthed in 1995 in the Chapada do Araripe in north-eastern Brazil, and was found among the collections of the State Museum of Natural History in Karlsruhe, Germany.  The find could explain where birds like peacocks inherited their ability to show off, the team said. Birds are the modern descendants of dinosaurs. 

‘What is especially unusual about the beast is the presence of two very long, probably stiff ribbons on either side of its shoulders,’ said paper author and palaeontologist David Martill of the University of Portsmouth. These, he explained, ‘were probably used for display, for mate attraction, inter-male rivalry or to frighten off foes.’

‘We cannot prove the specimen is a male, but given the disparity between male and female birds, it appears likely the specimen was a male — and young, too, which is surprising given most complex display abilities are reserved for mature adult males.’

‘Given its flamboyance, we can imagine that the dinosaur may have indulged in elaborate dancing to show off its display structures.’

‘These are such extravagant features for such a small animal — and not at all what we would predict if we only had the skeleton preserved,’ said paper author and palaeontologist Robert Smyth, also of the University of Portsmouth.

‘Why adorn yourself in a way that makes you more obvious to both your prey and to potential predators?’ he mused. The truth is that for many animals, evolutionary success is about more than just surviving — you also have to look good if you want to pass your genes on to the next generation.’

‘Modern birds are famed for their elaborate plumage and displays that are used to attract mates — the peacock’s tail and male birds-of-paradise are textbook examples of this.’

‘Ubirajara shows us that this tendency to show off is not a uniquely avian characteristic, but something that birds inherited from their dinosaur ancestors.’

Experts led from Portsmouth found the new species — originally unearthed in 1995 — among the collections of the State Museum of Natural History in Karlsruhe. Pictured, the two slabs of the Ubirajara jubatus specimen, in photograph (top row) and illustration (bottom)
Dubbed Ubirajara jubatus — indigenous Indian for ‘Maned Lord of the Spear’ — the creature’s neck spines are unique in the fossil record and made of keratin. This is the very same protein that make up parts of our hair, nails and skin. Pictured, an illustration of Ubirajara jubatus skeleton, with the fur and spines highlighted in orange

The fossil specimen of Ubirajara jubatus sports a section of extremely-well preserved mane. Long and thick, this would have run down the animal’s back. The researchers believe that the mane would have been manipulated by muscles — allowing it to be lifted, much like a dog raises its hackles when it feels threatened.  Ubirajara would have been able to lower the mane flush to its skin when not putting on a display, allowing it to move fast without getting tangled in vegetation. 

Its arms were also covered in fur, the team noted.

‘Any creature with movable hair or feathers as a body coverage has a great advantage in streamlining the body contour for faster hunts or escapes but also to capture or release heat,’ explained Professor Martill.

‘We know lots of dinosaurs had bony crests, spines and frills that were probably used for display but we don’t see these very often in living birds,’ said Mr Smyth.

‘In birds, crests are made of feathers. This little dinosaur provides some insight into why this might be the case.’ Bone requires a lot of energy for a body to grow and maintain. It’s also heavy and can cause serious injury if broken,’ he continued.

‘Keratin — the material that makes up hair, feathers and scales — is a much better display alternative for a small animal like this one. Keratin is less costly for a body to produce, it’s also lightweight, flexible and can be regularly replaced if damaged.’

‘Ubirajara is the most primitive known dinosaur to possess integumentary [external] display structures. It represents a revolution in dinosaur communication, the effects of which we can still see today in living birds.’

The specimen was originally excavated by palaeontologist Eberhard Frey of the State Museum of Natural History Karlsruhe. It came out of the ground in two pieces. X-ray scans revealed previously hidden skeletal elements and soft tissue, from which the researchers were able to build a clearer picture of Ubirajara in life. Ubirajara jubatus is the first non-avian dinosaur to be discovered in a fossil-rich rock formation known to geologists as the Crato Formation.

At the time this was being deposited, the South Atlantic was opening up in a long narrow shallow sea, which accounts for the exquisite preservation of Ubirajara. The find is also important for the Americas, explained paper author and palaeontologist Hector Rivera Sylva, who curates the Desert Museum, in Mexico.

Ubirajara jubatus lived around 110 million years ago, during the Cretaceous period, the researchers explained. Pictured, a close up of the small dinosaur’s fossilised remains

‘The Ubirajara jubatus is not only important because of the integumentary structures present for the first time in a non-avian dinosaur — completely changing the way of seeing the behaviour of certain dinosaurs,’ he added.

Rather, the find provides ‘the first evidence for this group in Latin America, as well as one of the few reported for the subcontinent of Gondwana,’ he explained.

This, he added, expands our ‘knowledge about non-avian feathered dinosaurs [in] America, whose evidence is very scarce.’ The full findings of the study were published in the journal Cretaceous Research.

ECUADOR, SOUTH AMERICA, WORLD

Infants from 2100 years ago found with helmets made of children’s skulls

Infants from 2100 years ago found with helmets made of children’s skulls

According to the new study, two babies from ancient South American burial mounds have been discovered wearing helmets made from the skulls of other infants.

Skulls and other objects excavated at burial sites on the coast of Ecuador.

As researchers tell in their report published earlier this month in the science journal, Latin American Antiquity, this is the first recorded evidence of ancient people using children’s skulls as burial headgear anywhere in the world.

Excavations on Ecuador’s coast from 2014 to 2016 discovered the bodies of 11 people in ancient burial mounds, including two adults, one young person, and four infants. Around the burials, small artefacts and shells were discovered.

But it was two of the infants wearing skull “helmets” found in two burial mounds dated to approximately 100 BC that really grabbed attention.

The research — led by University of North Carolina at Charlotte assistant professor Sara Juengst — found that one baby was 18 months old at the time of death, and was wearing parts of the skull of another child aged between four and 12 years old.

The skull was placed in a “helmet-like fashion around the head of the first, such that the primary individual’s face looked through,” the researchers said. A small shell and a child’s finger bone was found between the skull “helmet” and the infant’s head.

Items found during excavations of ancient burial sites on the coast of Ecuador.

The other infant was aged between six and nine months old and was wearing skull fragments of a child aged between two and 12 years old.

Researchers said the skull “helmets” likely still had flesh on them when they were put on the infants’ heads, as children’s skulls often don’t hold together.

The story behind the skull ‘helmets’

In the study, researchers acknowledged that there were a number of questions remaining. They did not know whose skulls had been turned into “helmets” — or why two babies were wearing “helmets” while others were not.

But the researchers noted that detached heads were “symbolically important” in South America, and dead children were often given special treatment in death.

“The human head was a potent symbol for many South American cultures,” the study found.

The researchers speculated that the skull “helmets” could have been an attempt to protect the babies’ souls — a theory that they said was given weight by the figurines found around the burial site.

The area had been hit by volcanic ashfall before the burial, the study said.

“A tantalizing hypothesis is that this bodily stress is related to the volcanic ash fall that preceded these burials, and that the treatment of the two infants was part of a larger, complex ritual response to environmental consequences of the eruption,” the researchers said. “More evidence is needed to confirm this.”

The researchers also noted that there was no evidence of the tomb being reopened or manipulated after the initial burial.

Previous studies have uncovered details of burial rites of ancient civilizations of South America.

Earlier this year, archaeologists in Peru found the remains of around 250 children sacrificed by the pre-Colombian Chimu civilization.

BRAZIL, SOUTH AMERICA, WORLD

Lidar Reveals Network of Ancient Villages in Brazil’s Rainforest

Lidar Reveals Network of Ancient Villages in Brazil’s Rainforest

Jose Iriarte and Mark Robinson of the University of Exeter and their multinational team of scientists explored Brazil’s southern Acre State with Lidar remote sensing equipment, according to a statement issued by the University of Exeter, and revealed a sequence of more than 35 villages dating from A.D. 1300 to 1700 in the thick vegetation of the Amazon.

This is further evidence the rainforest has long-been occupied by indigenous communities, whose cultures rose, fell, transformed, and rose again, long before Europeans made an impact in the Americas.

The research shows after the abandonment of the large geometrically patterned ceremonial earthworks, around AD 950, a new culture arose with communities living in mounded villages with highly defined concepts of social and architectural space.  

Lidar scanning the forest
Lidar scanning the forest.

The circular mound villages are connected across the wider landscape through paired sunken roads with high banks that radiate from the village circle like the marks of a clock or the rays of the sun.

The villages have both minor roads and principal roads, which were deeper and wider with higher banks. Most villages have paired cardinally orientated principal roads, two leaving in a northward direction and two leaving in a southward direction.

The survey reveals that the straight roads often connect one village to another, creating a network of communities over many kilometres.

Deforestation in the region had previously revealed the presence of large geoglyph earthworks on the landscape with archaeological research also documenting the presence of circular mound villages.

However, until now the extent of earthwork constructions, their architectural layouts, and their regional organisation remained hidden beneath the remaining dense tropical forest.

Experts from the UK and South America used a RIEGL VUX-1 UAV Lidar sensor integrated into an MD 500 helicopter to document architectural features below the forest canopy, revealing a more complex and spatially organised landscape than previously thought.

Lidar Reveals Network of Ancient Villages in Brazil’s Rainforest

Over 35 villages and dozens of roads were documented in the research with many more predicted to still be hidden below the unexplored jungle.

The villages were composed of 3 to 32 mounds arranged in a circle, the diameter of which ranged from 40 m to 153 m with the area enclosed by the central plaza ranging from ~0.12 to 1.8 ha.

The research was carried out by Jose Iriarte, and Mark Robinson from the University of Exeter; Jonas Gregorio de Souza from Universitat Pompeu Fabra; Antonia Damasceno and Franciele da Silva from the Instituto do Patrimônio Histórico e Artístico Nacional; Francisco Nakahara from the Federal University of Pará; Alceu Ranzi from the Federal University of Acre and Luiz Aragao from the Brazil National Institute for Space Research.

The findings are published in a paper in the Journal of Computer Applications in Archaeology and footage of Jose Iriarte and Ella Al-Shamahi locating the village on foot, can be seen on the programme Jungle Mystery: Lost Kingdoms of the Amazon on Channel 4 at 6.30 pm on 5th December.

Professor Iriarte said: “Lidar has allowed us to detect these villages, and their features such as roads, which wasn’t possible before because most are not visible within the best satellite data available. The technology helps to show diverse and complex construction history of this part of the Amazon.

“Lidar provides a new opportunity to locate and document earthen sites in forested parts of Amazonia characterized by dense vegetation. It can also document the smallest surficial earthen features in the recently opened pasture areas.”

COLOMBIA, SOUTH AMERICA, WORLD

Tens of Thousands of ice age Paintings across a cliff face shed light on people and animals from 12,500 years ago

Tens of Thousands of ice age Paintings across a cliff face shed light on people and animals from 12,500 years ago

In the Colombian jungle, archaeologists have found tens of thousands of ancient drawings dating back about 12,500 years. This prehistoric depictions of animals and humans have been discovered adorning cliff faces that stretch for almost eight miles. On top of that, some depict long-extinct ice age animals.

Archaeologists were shocked to discover numerous human handprints on the site, according to the Daily Mail. Funded by the European Research Council, the British-Colombian team had no idea what awaited them in the Chiribiquete National Park — but is now finally ready to share the remarkable discovery with the world.

Pictures of animals such as mastodons and paleo lamas, the extinct ancestors of elephants and camels, were perhaps the most exciting.  The cliff face art also includes giant sloths and ice age horses, all of which were clearly seen and painted by some of the first humans to ever reach the Amazon.

Tens of Thousands of ice age Paintings across a cliff face shed light on people and animals from 12,500 years ago
Many of the paintings are so high up that drones are needed to view them.

According to The Guardian, the find has been aptly lauded as “the Sistine Chapel of the ancients.” Based on the sheer scale and plethora of paintings, experts say it’ll take generations to properly analyze. While it was uncovered last year, the find was kept secret for a documentary set to air on Britain’s Channel 4 in December.

“When you’re there, your emotions flow…We’re talking about several tens of thousands of paintings,” said lead archaeologist José Iriarte, professor of archaeology at Exeter University. “It’s going to take generations to record them…Every turn you do, it’s a new wall of paintings.”

The site is so remote that it took experts a two-hour drive from Chiribiquete National Park to Serranía de la Lindosa — followed by a four-hour hike to reach it. After this long journey, the team was awed to discover such extensive paintings.

Regional natives of the Amazon didn’t keep written records until fairly recently. With a humid climate and high levels of acid in the soil, nearly every trace of their tangible presence — including human remains — have been lost. Most about the region’s history before 1,500 has been inferred from ceramics and arrowheads.

Most native tribes of the Amazon are believed to have descended from the first prehistoric group of migrants to cross the Bering Land Bridge around 17,000 years ago. The discovery is thus sure to shed unprecedented light on various aspects of their culture.

The remarkable handprints are estimated to be as old as 12,500 years.

“We started seeing animals that are now extinct,” said Iriarte. “The pictures are so natural and so well made that we have few doubts that you’re looking at a horse, for example. The ice-age horse had a wild, heavy face. It’s so detailed, we can even see the horsehair. It’s fascinating.”

While it’s yet unclear exactly which tribe was responsible for the uncovered art, there are some preliminary wagers at hand. Both the Yanomami and Kayapo tribes have been around for thousands of years and appear to be likely candidates.

Of course, not everything worth doing is easy — and the region’s more hostile factors rapidly made that clear for Iriarte and his team. Ella Al-Shamahi, presenter of the upcoming Channel 4 documentary series Jungle Mystery: Lost Kingdoms of the Amazon, spoke about these hidden threats.

“Caimans are everywhere, and we did keep our wits about us with snakes,” she said, recalling a giant bushmaster, “the deadliest snake in the Americans with an 80 per cent mortality rate” which the team encountered in the dead of night. “You’re in the middle of nowhere.”

Al-Shamahi recalled having to navigate both deadly animals and guerrillas to reach the site.

Unfortunately, there was another lethal threat abounding in the jungle not to be taken lightly — the FARC. Colombia suffered decades of civil war between these guerrillas and the government, with a shaky truce and heavy militant presence in the jungles not particularly calming.

Fortunately, they allowed the experts entry.

“When we entered Farc territory, it was exactly as a few of us have been screaming about for a long time,” said Al-Shamahi. “Exploration is not over. Scientific discovery is not over but the big discoveries now are going to be found in places that are disputed or hostile.”

It was only last week that evidence of ancient hallucinogenic rituals was uncovered in California. It seems these Colombian tribes engaged in the same, as paintings of psychoactive plants were also found on the walls.

“For Amazonian people, non-humans like animals and plants have souls, and they communicate and engage with people in cooperative or hostile ways through rituals and shamanic practices that we see depicted in the rock art,” said Iriarte.

The research will continue as pandemic-centric regulations loosen.

“It’s interesting to see that many of these large animals appear surrounded by small men with their arms raised, almost worshipping these animals,” added Iriarte.

For Al-Shamahi, one of the more intriguing aspects was the height of some of these illustrations. They were so elevated that they could only be viewed with camera-drones and some depicted wooden towers with figures bungee jumping off of them. Still, the historical context blew her away more than anything.

“One of the most fascinating things was seeing ice age megafauna because that’s a marker of time. I don’t think people realize that Amazon has shifted in the way it looks. It hasn’t always been this rainforest. When you look at a horse or mastodon in these paintings, of course, they weren’t going to live in a forest.”

“They’re too big. Not only are they giving clues about when they were painted by some of the earliest people — that in itself is just mind-boggling — but they are also giving clues about what this very spot might have looked like: more savannah-like.”

As it stands, the COVID-19 pandemic has put a damper on continued research here. Fortunately for us, we’ll get to see these initial discoveries up close when the documentary series airs its episode on the matter on Dec. 12.

BOLIVIA, SOUTH AMERICA, WORLD

Wall In Bolivia Contains More Than 5,000 Dinosaur Footprints

Wall In Bolivia Contains More Than 5,000 Dinosaur Footprints

Cal Orko, an immense limestone slab 1.5 km (0.9 miles) long and over 100 meters high (328 ft), is situated 5 km (3 miles from downtown Sucre, Bolivia. Visitors will look through time on this steep face (72 degrees inclination) to when dinosaurs roamed the Earth more than 68 million years ago.

You will find 462 different dinosaur tracks from at least 8 different species at Cal Orko, totaling an astounding 5,055 individual dinosaur footprints. So how do thousands of dinosaur footprints come to be, on a seemingly vertical rock face hundreds of feet high? You’ll have to scroll down to find out. 

Cal Orko: A Paleontologist’s Dream… Inside a Quarry

 Believe it or not, Cal Orko is situated entirely within a limestone quarry owned by FANCESA, Bolivia’s National Cement Factory.

Located in the ‘El Molino’ formation, the sight of heavy mining machinery (one could argue they are today’s ‘land giants’) set against a backdrop of 68 million-year-old dinosaur footprints (Earth’s prehistoric ‘land giants’) creates an intriguing parallel.

Further up the hill is Parque Cretácico. Opened in 2006, the dinosaur museum features 24 life-sized dinosaur replicas, various exhibitions, and a viewing platform 150 meters (~500 ft) from the rock face. It’s from this vantage point that you truly grasp the sheer scale and magnitude of Cal Orko.

So Dinosaurs Can Climb Walls Now?

 Not quite. We’re looking at something 68 million years in the making. The footprints at this site were formed during the Maastrichtian age of the Cretaceous Period in the Mesozoic Era. As Ian Belcher of The Guardian explains:

“It was unique climate fluctuations that made the region a palaeontological honey pot. The creatures’ feet sank into the soft shoreline in warm damp weather, leaving marks that were solidified by later periods of drought. Wet weather then returned, sealing the prints below mud and sediment.

The wet-dry pattern was repeated seven times, preserving multiple layers of prints.

The cherry on the cake was added when tectonic activity pushed the flat ground up to a brilliant viewing angle – as if nature was aware of its tourism potential.”

Cal Orko is one of the few locations in the world where you will find a concentration of footprints from a wide variety of dinosaurs that lived at the end of the Cretaceous period. The sheer size, geological significance, biodiversity, and social behavior that can be studied here makes Cal Orko a special place.
 
Take the trail of Johnny Walker for example. Johnny Walker was the name given to a baby Tyrannosaurus rex whose 367 meters (~1200 ft) path can be traced and observed here.

CHILE, SOUTH AMERICA, WORLD

“Alien” skeleton found in Chile actually human fetus with a rare bone disorder

“Alien” skeleton found in Chile actually human fetus with a rare bone disorder

Alien? Alien? Primate Subhuman? Reluctant child? Fetus mummified? The Internet shakes at the nature of “Ata,” a bizarre 6-inch skeleton used in a recent UFO documentary. A Stanford University scientist who boldly entered the fray has now put to rest doubts about what species Ata belongs to. But the mystery is not over.

The story began 10 years ago when the diminutive remains were reportedly found in a pouch in a ghost town in the Atacama Desert of Chile. Ata ended up in a private collection in Barcelona; producers of the film Sirius latched onto the bizarre mummy as evidence of alien life.

Last fall, immunologist Garry Nolan, director of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute’s Proteomics Center for Systems Immunology at Stanford in California, heard about Ata from a friend and contacted the filmmakers, offering to give them a scientific readout on the specimen. They asked him to give it a shot.

Among the apparent abnormalities, Ata sports 10 ribs instead of the usual 12 and a severely misshapen skull. “I asked our neonatal care unit how you would go about analyzing it. Had they seen this kind of syndrome before?” Nolan says. He was directed to pediatric radiologist Ralph Lachman, co-director of the International Skeletal Dysplasia Registry at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California.

“He literally wrote the book on pediatric bone disorders,” Nolan says. Lachman was blown away, Nolan recalls: “He said, ‘Wow, this is like nothing I’ve ever seen before.’ “

To study the specimen, Nolan sought clues in Ata’s genome. He initially presumed the specimen was tens or hundreds of thousands of years old—the Atacama Desert may be the driest spot on the planet, so Ata could have been preserved for aeons.

He consulted experts who had extracted DNA from bones of the Denisovans, an Asian relative of European Stone Age Neandertals. It turned out that their protocols weren’t necessary. “The DNA was modern, abundant, and high quality,” he says, indicating that the specimen is probably a few decades old.

To the chagrin of UFO hunters, Ata is decidedly of this world. After mapping more than 500 million reads to a reference human genome, equating to 17.7-fold coverage of the genome, Nolan concluded that Ata “is human, there’s no doubt about it.” Moreover, the specimen’s B2 haplotype—a category of mitochondrial DNA—reveals that its mother was from the west coast of South America: Chile, that is.

Meanwhile, after examining x-rays, Lachman concluded that Aka’s skeletal development, based on the density of the epiphyseal plates of the knees (growth plates at the end of long bones found only in children), surprisingly appears to be equivalent to that of a 6- to 8-year-old child. If that holds up, there are two possibilities, Nolan says. One, a long shot, is that Ata had a severe form of dwarfism, was actually born as a tiny human, and lived until that calendar age.

X-rays show that Ata is no hoax, but its DNA will disappoint UFO buffs.

To test that hypothesis, he will try to extract haemoglobin from the specimen’s bone marrow and compare the relative amounts of fetal versus adult haemoglobin proteins.

The second possibility is that Ata, the size of a 22-week-old fetus, suffered from a severe form of the rare rapid ageing disease, progeria, and died in the womb or after premature birth.

Nolan hasn’t yet turned up hits for genes known to be associated with progeria or dwarfism. He’s stepping up the search for mutations through additional sequencing and casting a wider net.

Another possibility is a teratogen: a birth defect-inducing toxicant along the lines of thalidomide. Nolan plans to analyze tissue using mass spectrometry to look for toxicants or metabolites. But reports of a handful of other Tom Thumb-sized skeletons from Russia and elsewhere have Nolan leaning toward a genetic explanation.

At least one expert has a more prosaic take—but agrees that the specimen is human. “This looks to me like a badly desiccated and mummified human fetus or premature stillbirth,” says William Jungers, a paleoanthropologist and anatomist at Stony Brook University Medical Center in New York.

He notes that “barely ossified and immature elements” of the hands and feet, and the wide-open metopic suture, where the two frontal bones of the skull come together down the middle of the forehead.

“Genetic anomalies are not evident, probably because there aren’t any,” he says. Nolan responds that the rib number and epiphyseal plate densities remain a riddle; while he is open to the fetus hypothesis, he thinks that the jury is still out.

Nolan’s analysis went viral; besieged as he has been by the media circus, he doesn’t regret having gotten involved in debunking a claim of alien life. “I’m thrilled with the outcome,” he says.

Once the analyses are complete, he says, he’ll submit his findings for peer review. The other claim Nolan debunks is that Ata is an elaborate hoax. The x-rays clearly show these are real bones, complete with arterial shadows, he says. “You just couldn’t fake it,” he says, adding, with a laugh, “unless you were an alien.”