Ship Found 20 Feet Below World Trade Center Site Traced to Colonial-Era Philadelphia

Researchers long stumped by the mysterious history of an 18th-century ship uncovered at the World Trade Center have finally discovered its origins — thanks to tree rings, according to a new study.

The massive wooden ship — the skeleton of which was unexpectedly discovered 25 feet below street level in the muddy excavation of the World Trade Center site in 2010 — has now been traced to Colonial-era Philadelphia, with a history linked to Independence Hall, according to a new report from scientists at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

Scientists say the wood from the vessel was chopped in 1773 from a forest of white oak trees in Philadelphia, the same type of trees used to build Independence Hall, where the Constitution and Declaration of Independence were signed.

Columbia scientists were able to link the growth rings found in the old wood of the ship with a previously taken sample of wood from Independence Hall, researchers said.

Tree rings are like “barcodes” that create unique patterns, allowing for dating, said Neil Pederson, Columbia tree ring scientist and co-author of the study.

While the majority of the boat was made from white oak, a sample from the keel of the ship was the key to narrowing down its history.

“The keel was actually made from hickory, which was only found in the Eastern United States or Eastern Asia, which meant we could really narrow down our search — East Asia wasn’t really a possibility,” Pederson said. “That discovery really put me in a good mood — and put us in a good geographic zone.”

The ship’s 32-foot hull was carefully dug out of the muck in July 2010, exhaustively documented, disassembled, and sent off for preservation at the Maryland Archaeological Conservation Laboratory. Some timber samples, however, were sent to Columbia for analysis.

Historians believe the vessel was likely a merchant ship, in the Dutch style of a Hudson River sloop. It likely traveled along the Atlantic, bringing wood and food down to the West Indies and returning with sugar, salt, molasses, and rum.

The ship suffered an infestation of Teredo worms while in the Caribbean, which likely ate away at its wood and led to its demise after about 20 to 30 years on the water. It’s believed that by 1797, the boat was buried in the landfill used to extend Manhattan’s shoreline westward.

Hundreds of artifacts were found in and around the boat, including ceramics, musket balls, a buckle, a British button, a coin, animal bones, dozens of shoes, and a human hair with a single louse on it.

The ship remains at the Maryland Archaeological Conservation Laboratory, and researchers say it’s possible it may eventually be reassembled.

50 Million Year Old Fossil Identified as Relative of Ostriches

The bird fossils were found more than a decade ago, completely intact with bones, feathers, and soft tissues in a former lake bed in Wyoming. Nesbitt cannot hide a grin as he calls the fossil a once-in-a-lifetime discovery for palaeontologists.

“This is among one of the earliest well-represented bird species after the age of large dinosaurs,” said Nesbitt, an assistant professor in the Department of Geosciences.

“You can definitely appreciate how complete these fossils are,” added Nesbitt of the remains, the focus of a research paper co-authored by Nesbitt and newly published in the Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History.

Some of the remains are now on display as part of the exhibit “Dinosaurs Among Us” at the New York-based history museum. The fossils Other specimens used in the study are kept by Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History and the Wyoming Geological Survey.

The new species is named Calciavis grandei — with “calci” meaning “hard/stone,” and “avis” from the Latin for the bird, and “grandei” in honour of famed palaeontologist Lance Grande who has studied the fossil fish from the same ancient North American lake for decades.

The bird is believed to be roughly the size of a chicken, and similar to chickens, were mostly ground-dwelling, only flying in short bursts to escape predators.

Nesbitt began studying the fossil in 2009 whilst a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Texas at Austin’s Jackson School of Geosciences, under Professor Julia Clarke, whom Nesbitt considers an important mentor. Clarke co-authored the paper with Nesbitt, who joined Virginia Tech’s faculty in 2014.

The work was funded by two grants from the National Science Foundation’s Earth Sciences Directorate.

Two fossils of Calciavis dating from the Eocene epoch — roughly between 56 million and 30 million years ago — were found by fossil diggers within the Green River Formation in Wyoming, a hotbed for extinct fish. “These are spectacularly preserved fossils, one is a nearly complete skeleton covered with feather remains, the others are nearly as complete and some show soft tissue remains,” said Nesbitt.

“Fossil birds are rare,” added Nesbitt, adding that as bird bones are hollow, they are far more fragile than most mammal bones, and more likely to be crushed during fossilization. One of the fossilized birds in this rare case apparently was covered in mud soon after death.

The former lake in which the fossil was found is best known for producing scores of complete fish skeleton fossils, but other fossils such as other birds, plants, crocodilians, turtles, bats, and mammals from an ecosystem roughly 50 million years old.

Included in the extinct group of early Palaeognathae birds, the Lithornithidae, Nesbitt and Clarke call the bird a close relative of living ostriches, kiwis, and tinamous now living in the southern continents. After tropical forests disappeared in North America, Calciavis and other more tropical birds went extinct, said, Nesbitt and Clarke.

“Relationships among species in this lineage of birds have been extremely contentious,” said Clarke. “We hope the detailed new anatomical data we provide will aid in finding a resolution to this ongoing debate.”

“The new bird shows us that the bird group that includes the largest flightless birds of today had a much wider distribution and longer evolutionary history in North America,” Nesbitt said. “Back when Calciavis was alive, it lived in a tropical environment that was rich with tropical life and this is in stark contrast to the high-desert environment in Wyoming today.”

The Calciavis skeleton will be important to interpreting new bird fossils and other fossils from the Eocene epoch that were collected decades ago. “This spectacular specimen could be a ‘keystone’ that helps interpret much of the sparse fossil of birds that once lived in North America millions of years ago,” said Nesbitt.

New World Dog Bone Fragment Dated to 10,200 Years Ago

According to a Science Magazine report, a 10,200-year-old fragment of dog bone has been identified among thousands of ancient bone pieces discovered in a cave on the west coast of Alaska in 1998. 

The find supports the idea that dogs accompanied the first humans who set foot on these continents—and that both travelled there along the Pacific coast.

“This is a fantastic study,” says archaeologist Loren Davis of Oregon State University, Corvallis, who was not involved in the research. “If the coastal migration theory is correct, we should expect to see exactly the kind of evidence reported in this study.”

Researchers once thought humans initially entered the Americas about 12,000 years ago. That’s when thick glaciers that covered much of North America began to melt. This opened a corridor, which allowed people to trek from Siberia across now-submerged land in the Bering Sea, and then into North America on the hunt for mammoth and other big game.

But over the past decade, archaeologists have shown people might have begun to move into North America much earlier. To get around the glaciers, they would have island-hopped by boat and walked along shorelines exposed to low sea levels. They travelled from Siberia through the Alaskan archipelago about 16,000 years ago, eventually making their way down the Pacific coast.

The sliver of dog bone supports this hypothesis. Recovered from among more than 50,000 prehistoric animal and human remains excavated near Wrangel Island, researchers didn’t realize it came from a dog until they analyzed its DNA.

“We started out thinking this was just another bear bone,” says team leader Charlotte Lindqvist, a biologist at the University at Buffalo (UB). “When we went deeper, we found out it was from a dog.”

The bone is about 10,200 years old, making its owner the oldest dog known in the Americas, the scientists report today in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. (The previous record holders were two 10,000-year-old dogs unearthed in the U.S. Midwest.) And the dog’s DNA holds clues to an even earlier time.

The pup’s genome revealed it was closely related to the first known dogs, which researchers think were domesticated in Siberia about 23,000 years ago.

Based on the number of genetic differences between the Alaskan dog and its Siberian ancestors, the team estimates the two populations split 16,700 years ago, plus or minus a few thousand years.

That’s a clue that dogs—and their humans—left Siberia and entered the Americas thousands of years before North America’s glaciers melted.

“Here we have the genetic evidence, if not the physical evidence, [showing] dogs were already in the Americas with humans 16,000 years ago,” says Durham University archaeologist Angela Perri, who was not part of the team.

The dates also line up with DNA-based estimates for when modern Native Americans split off from ancestors in Siberia, providing another line of evidence to pin down when the first migrations happened.

“Understanding how the dogs moved also shows you how the humans moved,” says Flavio Augusto da Silva Coelho, a graduate student at UB who did the DNA and other analyses.

Perri agrees. The study shows dogs are a useful way to track ancient human migrations, especially when human remains are missing or can’t be sampled because of descendant community concerns, she says. Even without human samples, “dogs can tell us some really interesting things” about our history, she says.

For example, chemical isotopes in the dog bone suggest the pooch ate marine animals. Because dogs aren’t much good at fishing, their masters likely gave them scraps of fish, seal, or whale that they themselves hunted. “It’s a strong indication people are feeding dogs,” Perri says. “Everything in this study points to coastally adopted people and their dogs moving into the Americas.”

Forgotten Graves Found at Florida African American Cemetery

WJCT Public Media reports that recent excavations have confirmed the presence of 29 grave shafts detected last year during a ground-penetrating radar survey at the site of North Greenwood Cemetery, an African American cemetery that operated from 1940 to 1954.

Archeologists looking at a “forgotten” Clearwater cemetery say that they have found almost 30 grave shafts.

Archaeologists from the Florida Public Archaeology Network, based out of the University of South Florida, and Tampa engineering firm, Cardno Inc., provided a final update on the North Greenwood Cemetery excavation Friday.

The process was done to verify the location of unmarked graves in the African-American cemetery that was identified previously.

“We’ve located a total of 29 graves, and that confirms the data of the results of the ground-penetrating radar survey that was conducted last year, in February and August,” said USF archeologist Jeff Moates.

The archaeologists opened three large areas for excavation, and, in addition to the graves, found a number of artifacts, including two dimes from 1942 and a penny from 1940.

According to the Tampa Bay Times, the North Greenwood Cemetery was in operation between 1940 and 1954, explaining the coins from that time period.

The land was sold to make room for Pinellas High School and a city pool. The remains of 350 people were moved to Parklawn Memorial Cemetery in Dunedin, but nearby residents of the Clearwater Heights neighborhood felt that the bodies in unmarked graves were left behind.

The excavation revealed that may indeed be the case.

“We’ve uncovered material that you would expect to be associated with graves,” said Moates. “There’s evidence of coffin hardware, decayed remains of coffins, concrete vaults, associated gravestone or headstone materials that are in a kind of a disturbed state.”

“We found an intact aluminum grave marker in the name of the deceased individual, Mr. William Ridley, who was buried in 1951,” Moates added.

Once the community knew that the excavation process was happening, people like O’Neill Larkin, 81, wanted to share their memories of North Greenwood.

“He remembers playing on this cemetery as a boy, there was a popular swimming hole located nearby and Stevenson Creek,” said Moates. “But he remembers coming through here and hunting rabbits and quail and pigeon with his friends. He also had a friend who was a Boy Scout, who unfortunately died on a Boy Scout trip, and was buried in the cemetery.

“And so it’s just stories like that, that the community were able to come by and connect, share with us connecting the memories of this place to the actual physical remains of what they remember to be here.”

North Greenwood is just the latest in a number of forgotten Black cemeteries around the region and state that are being investigated following the discovery of the Zion Cemetery in Tampa in 2019.

Archaeologists will conduct a further study of the recovered objects and share their findings with the City of Clearwater and the local chapter of the NAACP.

City Found 360 Feet Below Missouri City, Giant Human Skeleton Found

When coal miners at Moberly, Missouri were drilling a shaft 360 foot deep, broke into a cavern revealing “a wonderful buried city,” multiple sources reported in 1885.

Masonry and artefacts in extraordinary rude design have been found. Like stone tables, bronze and flint knives, stone and granite hammers, metal statues, metallic saws and a stone fountain that flowed with “perfectly pure water”, which was found to be impregnated with lime.

“Lying beside the fountain where portions of a human being and from the measurement of the bones, it concluded that when alive the figure was three times the size of an ordinary man and possessed of wonderful muscular power and quickness. “, according to the St Paul Daily Globe.

The Semi-Weekly South Kentuckian published the measurements of the giant’s leg, “The bones of the leg were measured, the femur measuring 4 and 1/2 feet, the tibia four feet and three inches. The head bones had separated in two pieces, the sagittal and cornal suturis having been destroyed”

The city was arched in by a hard and thick stratum of lava. The civilization used a regularly laid out road system enclosed by walls to travel around. A hall was discovered wherein were stone benches, tools of all descriptions for mechanical service.

The searching party spent twelve hours in the depths and only gave up explorations because of the oil in their lamps being low. No end to the wonderful discovery was reached.

The statues were not accurately made as those made by the mechanics in the year 1885, however, they demonstrated much skill and evidence of an advanced civilization.

The facts above are vouched for by Mr David Coates, the recorder of the city of Moberly, and Mr George Kealing, City Marshall, who were of the exploring party.

I could find no record of the 2nd exploration. Perhaps in the historic papers on film, in the town of Moberly, information may still exist.

In order to find 8 newspaper stories, I needed to search “stratum of lava” 1884-1886.

In an odd coincidence the terms “cave + Missouri”, “Missouri + cave + coal mine”, “Missouri cave fountain”, “Missouri gaint” and countless other rational terms would not locate these articles on the library of congress website.

It seems you need to be clever in your search terms in order to locate historical articles that are relevant.

Archaeologists Unearthed a 15,800 Year Old Stone Tool In Oregon

Recently, an artifact that was unearthed in Oregon and was identified as an “ ancient Swiss army knife,” may have been the oldest artifact so far found in western North America.

The simple stone tool, hewn from a piece of bright orange agate, was unearthed near a shallow cave that has already turned up evidence of early human occupation — including stone points, tools, and charcoal-stained hearths — dating back as much as 12,000 years. But this artifact was found even deeper in the region’s sandy clay, beneath a layer of volcanic ash that experts have found to be 15,800 years old. If its age is confirmed, the tool would be nearly 3,000 years older than the widespread artifacts of the Clovis culture, once thought to be the continent’s earliest inhabitants. 

“This is really exciting,” said Stephen Baker, spokesman for the Oregon office of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, in an interview. “But of course there’s more research to do.” The hand-sized tool was first unearthed in 2012 by the University of Oregon’s archaeology field school, at a site in south-central Oregon known as Rimrock Draw Rockshelter, on BLM land. The fact that it was found beneath — and was therefore presumably older than — the layer of ancient ash was “fascinating” in itself, Baker said. After a chemical analysis of the artifact revealed that it also contained traces of proteins from bison, confirming that it had been used as a tool.

“Getting this bison residue further corroborated the idea that it was a tool, likely used for butchering,” Baker said. Dr. Patrick O’Grady of the University of Oregon, who has been leading the excavations, said that the discovery came about after his field school uncovered debris from an ancient rockfall near the cave.

“Our excavation units had reached a jumbled layer of rockfall that appeared to be the result of a collapse of portions of the rock shelter face,” O’Grady said in an interview.

“We wanted to break that material up and clear a path so we could continue excavating to the bedrock underneath.” Beneath the debris, the team found large fragments of tooth enamel from an extinct species of camel. And beneath those, they hit a sudden, even layer of volcanic ash and rock, called tephra. Experts from Washington State University analyzed the ash, and were able not only to radiocarbon date it to about 15,800 years ago, but were also able to isolate its source: Washington’s Mount St. Helen’s.

“We found the stone tool 20 centimeters under the Mount St. Helen’s tephra, in dense sandy clay sediment,” O’Grady said. Baker, of the BLM, said researchers quickly identified the object as a tool.

“When they found it, they kind of joked that it was like an ancient swiss army knife,” he said.

“One edge, they believe, was used for scraping animal hide, and another side that’s been worn down over the years they believe was used for carving wood or bone. So, there are a couple of theories, but they think this is kind of a multi-purpose tool.”

The archaeologists were also struck by the tool’s unusual material, he added. It’s this bright orange agate, Baker said. “In that area, there’s a lot of obsidian, but they’d never seen this material in that area before. So it really raises a lot of questions.

“They’re fascinated with, how did this tool get here? Where did it come from? What did they use it for?”

O’Grady agreed that the use of agate is unusual for the region, and potentially significant.

“It is much less common in eastern Oregon sites than obsidian,” he said of the agate.

“My take is that older points tend to be made of [materials like agate] more often than obsidian.” For archaeologists, this new discovery readily invites comparison with a similar find made nearby — at Oregon’s Paisley Caves, just 200 kilometers away, wherein 2008 animal bones and human feces were found that dated to about 14,300 years ago. While those finds, too, remain controversial, both men acknowledge that the Paisley Cave samples gave scientists more to work with than what they have so far at Rimrock Draw.

The comparison with the Paisley Caves is just kind of inevitable, Baker said. Paisley Caves is just a perfect situation because there they found many, many samples. But in this situation [at Rimrock Draw], they have just a couple of pieces of evidence in one particular area that they need to expand and add more evidence too.

“So we’re in the very early stages of this.”

O’Grady agreed, adding that it’s too early to begin finding a place for Rimrock’s ancient orange tool in the timeline of American pre-history. We all know the significance of the Paisley Caves site, with the exquisite fieldwork, the sequence of radiocarbon dating, and well-dated human fecal material that has firmly placed the site among very few in the Americas that are established as pre-Clovis occupations, he said.

In an attempt to find a comparable body of evidence, he added, the coming field season at Rimrock Draw will be devoted largely to identifying the size of the 15,800-year-old layer of volcanic ash, and testing to see if more artifacts await beneath it. Rimrock has to produce strong dateable evidence through either cultural features or stratigraphic time markers to begin any conversation about its place in the realm on pre-Clovis sites,” O’Grady said.

“We have a hint of such a possibility through the association of the orange flake tool 20 centimeters under the Mount St. Helens tephra. But, it is only that — a hint — until we can show that the tephra is widely distributed across the site and that artifacts are found consistently underneath it.

“It is at that point that the work really begins,” he continued, “to verify the relationship in collaboration with other Paleoamerican researchers and conduct vast amounts of geological and archaeological analyses to firmly establish the relationship. It is that next step that must be approached very carefully, to watch warily for the older signs, and we are moving toward it with caution, but also with hopeful optimism.

Did the Celts build “America’s Stonehenge” 4,000 years ago?

Studying the origins of the aptly named Mystery Hill megaliths, also known as America’s Stonehenge, whets one’s curiosity but does not satisfy—unless one is satisfied by the excitement of confounding mystery alone.

The site, in North Salem, N.H., includes stone monoliths and chambers spread across 30 acres.  The stones are said to have complex astronomical alignments. A 4.5-ton stone slab that seems to be the focal point of the site may have served as an altar for sacrifice. It is grooved with a channel for draining, possibly the blood of a victim.

A variety of characteristics have fueled a theory that America’s Stonehenge was built by Europeans as long ago as 2,000 B.C.—thousands of years before the first evidence of Viking settlement in North America. Archaeologists are divided. Some say the evidence is lacking to support this theory and that the site may have been constructed in relatively recent times.

Many similar sites are found on the stretch from Maine to Connecticut, though none as expansive as Mystery Hill. Here’s a look at the site’s characteristics and the views of various experts.

Why it May Have Been the Celts

1. Glyphs seem to suggest an archaic Irish language, though any deciphering of the glyphs has been controversial.

2. It seems from the astronomical alignment that the megaliths mark cross-quarter holidays. These holidays are only celebrated by the Celts, according to astronomer Alan Hill. Some have compared the megaliths to Stonehenge. 

3. “Carbon-14 results coincide with the date of a major immigration by Celts,” according to a book by David Goudsward and Robert Stone titled “America’s Stonehenge: The Mystery Hill Story, from Ice Age to Stone Age.” Stone bought the site in the 1950s and opened it to public viewing and to further research. Goudsward and Stone continue: “The Celtiberians [Celtic-speaking people of the Iberian Peninsula] interacted with Carthaginians, a nationality almost certain to have the skill to cross the Atlantic. However, there is not of the ornamentation on the stones that would be indicative of Celts.”

Why it May Have Been the Natives

1. Archaeologists have found Native American artefacts on-site that are more than 1,000 years old.

2. The use of stone-on-stone tools shows workmanship similar to that employed by Native Americans.

Glyphs of the Celts?

Ogham is an Irish script used in the fifth to sixth centuries that consists of crosshatches. Glyphs that may be ogham are said to have been found on the stones.

Karen Wright, who wrote an article for Discovery Magazine in 1998 after visiting Mystery Hill, described what she felt to be dubious deciphering: “Various authors [have made interpretations,] consulting languages from ogham to Russian. The most baroque interpretation, a translation based on Iberic/Punic, was ascribed to three evenly spaced parallel grooves in a rust-coloured cast: ‘In Baal, on behalf of the Canaanites this is dedicated,’ read the translation.

“This, I decided, was the archaeological equivalent of the scene from Lassie in which the dog barks once and Jimmy is given to understand that the leg of a six-year-old girl named Sally has been trapped under a fallen tree 30 yards north of the falls on Coldwater Creek near the old mine shaft and oh, by the way, she’s diabetic too, so bring some insulin.”

Carbon Dating

In 1969, archaeologist James Whittall unearthed stone tools at the site, along with charcoal flakes that could be carbon dated. The dating showed the tools’ user was working around 1,000 B.C., according to Goudsward and Stone.

Whittall recovered charcoal from several other locations on-site and carbon dating ranged from 2,000 B.C. to 400 B.C. 

Dating Using Astronomical Alignments

Astrological alignments concur. Astronomer Dr. Louis Winkler, the principal site scientist, found the positions of some stones align with where the stars and other celestial objects would have been about 2,000 years ago. He has also done radiocarbon and laser theodolite dating to support a Bronze Age origin (2,000 B.C.–1,500 B.C.).

Anthropologist Bob Goodby of the New Hampshire Archaeological Society (NHAS) said the alignments are “coincidental.”

“With so much stone around, it wouldn’t be that difficult to find some alignments that correspond to celestial things,” Goodby told Boston University publication the Bridge. This isn’t the only “coincidence” cited by critics of the ancient-European-origin theory, nor the only one cited as a little too “coincidental” by supporters of the theory.

For example, critic Richard Boisvert, New Hampshire’s deputy state archaeologist, admitted the structures resemble ancient European megalithic structures, but that it’s a coincidence. He told Discovery that it’s a case of the same form-fitting the same function.

Professor of astronomy at New Hampshire Technical Institute Alan Hill does not see the astronomical alignments as coincidence. He told New York Times that the megaliths mark cross-quarter days, the halfway points between the solstices and equinoxes. Celts are the only ones to celebrate cross-quarter holidays, he said. Hill dismissed the theory that the structures are cellars built in the past few centuries, partly because the doors are not wide enough to admit wheelbarrows. A local lawyer and mystery novelist, David Brody, told the Times there are too many similarly puzzling stones and structures in the region to write it all off as coincidence.

Stone-on-Stone Tools Suggest Primitive Builders

The builders apparently used stone tools, not metal tools. Boisvert’s boss, New Hampshire state archaeologist Gary Hume, told Discovery the stone-on-stone workmanship is similar to that of Native Americans. He was hesitant to say the megaliths could be 4,000 years old, but he seemed to leave the possibility open. He said he wasn’t going to question “the two reputable surveyors who had vouched for the alignments,” wrote Wright.

The Natives and the Celts are not the only groups archaeologists have pinned as the potential builders. Some say it may have been the Phoenicians, the people of an ancient kingdom on the Mediterranean. The standing stones align with the location of the polestar Thuban during Phoenician times, according to Wright.

Jonathan Pattee, a shoemaker and his family lived on the site throughout much of the 19th century, and many say he and his family built the structures. Dennis Stone, Robert Stone’s son who is also currently owner and operator of the site, told Discovery that some of the structures were probably built by Pattee, but certainly not all. Others have also said the intricacies of construction and alignment were not likely carried out by the Pattee family, and the family would have used metal tools, not stone tools.

Goodby and other critics of the ancient-origin theory say archaeologists would have found signs of people living on or near the site, such as burial grounds. He said the sacrificial stone was probably actually a place for inhabitants in more recent history to make soap. Whatever the theories, as  Goudsward and Stone write: “There has been so much damage in the last four millennia that no matter who you believe built the site, there is just enough physical evidence to warrant further investigation along that line. This has produced a spectrum of theories as wide and expansive as the skies that may or may not be charted by the ancient monoliths.”