Rare tardigrade fossil found in 16-million-year-old Dominican amber
The discovery of an incredibly rare fossil is helping scientists learn more about one of Earth’s ancient and most resilient inhabitants: the microscopic tardigrade.
An artistic reconstruction of Paradoryphoribius chronocaribbeus in moss.
Modern tardigrades are eight-legged micro-animals, also known as water bears or moss piglets. They’re almost completely missing from the fossil record despite their long evolutionary history and ability to survive extreme conditions, including space.
Now, scientists say they’ve discovered a new species of tardigrade suspended in 16 million-year-old amber — only the third clear tardigrade fossil ever found.
What they found
The researchers at New Jersey Institute of Technology and Harvard University who discovered the fossil published their findings in Proceedings of the Royal Society B on Wednesday.
The tardigrade is trapped in fossilized amber mined from La Cumbre, a region of the Dominican Republic known for its amber deposits. The amber also trapped a flower and insects, including three ants.
This Dominican amber contains Paradoryphoribius chronocaribbeus gen. et. sp. nov.(image amplified in a box), three ants, a beetle and a flower. Dime image digitally added for size comparison.
The fossil is the first of a tardigrade found from the Cenozoic era, the Earth’s current geological era beginning 66 million years ago.
Phil Barden, the senior author of the study, called the discovery a “once-in-a-generation” event in a statement on the research.
“What is so remarkable is that tardigrades are a ubiquitous ancient lineage that has seen it all on Earth, from the fall of the dinosaurs to the rise of terrestrial colonization of plants,” Barden said. “Yet, they are like a ghost lineage for palaeontologists with almost no fossil record.”
Why it matters
The fossil is unique for its clarity, its age and how helpful it could be to evolutionary scientists’ future studies.
The New Jersey Institute of Technology said in a release that the discovery is the best-imaged fossil tardigrade ever. Scientists are able to observe micron-level details like the invertebrate’s mouthparts and its “needle-like claws 20-30 times finer than a human hair.”
The new fossil enabled scientists to identity this never-before-seen species of tardigrade, which they call Paradoryphoribius chronocaribbeus. Its name incorporates the Greek word for time, “chrono,” and “caribbeus” in reference to the region where it was found.
The fossil will spend the next part of its life at the American Museum of Natural History.
Newly identified American sabre-toothed cat species was larger than a tiger and hunted rhinos
Scientists have identified a huge new saber-toothed cat species, Machairodus lahayishupup, that would have prowled the vast areas of North America between 5 and 9 million years ago, using detailed fossil comparison techniques.
The newly recognised species was an ancient relative of one of the best-known prehistoric animals – the saber-toothed cat Smilodon, seen here.
One of the biggest cats ever discovered, M. lahayishupup is estimated in this new study to have a body mass of some 274 kilograms (604 pounds) or so, and possibly even bigger. It’s an ancient relative of the well-known Smilodon, the so-called saber-toothed tiger.
A total of seven M. lahayishupup fossil specimens, including upper arms and teeth, were analyzed and compared with other species to identify the new felid, with the fossils collected from museum collections in Oregon, Idaho, Texas, and California.
Artist’s impression of the new saber-toothed cat.
“One of the big stories of all of this is that we ended up uncovering specimen after specimen of this giant cat in museums in western North America,” says paleobiologist John Orcutt from Gonzaga University. “They were clearly big cats.”
“What we didn’t have then, that we have now, is the test of whether the size and anatomy of those bones tell us anything – and it turns out that yes, they do.”
The age and size of the fossils gave the researchers a good starting point. Then they used digital images and specialized software to find similarities between the relics – and differences from other cat species, which was just as important.
Points of reference on the specimens showed that they were from the same giant cat and that this cat was a species that hadn’t been identified before. Additional evidence came from the teeth, although the researchers admit that the details of how early saber-toothed cats were related to each other is a little “fuzzy”.
Upper arms are crucial in these cats for killing prey, and the largest upper arm or humerus fossil discovered in the study was about 1.4 times the size of the same bone in a modern-day lion. That gives you an idea of just how hefty and powerful M. lahayishupup would have been.
“We believe these were animals that were routinely taking down bison-sized animals,” says paleontologist Jonathan Calede from Ohio State University. “This was by far the largest cat alive at that time.”
Rhinoceroses would have been abundant at the same and may have been animals that M. lahayishupup preyed on, alongside camels and sloths significantly bigger than the ones we’re used to today.
While the discoveries made of this new species so far don’t include the iconic saber teeth themselves, it’s significant that M. lahayishupup has been identified mostly from humerus bones, showing what’s possible with the latest analysis software added to many hours of careful study.
Peering back so many millions of years into the past isn’t easy, and the researchers say that a more detailed saber-tooth cat family tree is going to be needed to work out exactly where this species fits in. The findings also open up some interesting evolutionary questions about these giant cats.
“It’s been known that there were giant cats in Europe, Asia, and Africa, and now we have our own giant saber-toothed cat in North America during this period as well,” says Calede.
“There’s a very interesting pattern of either repeated independent evolution on every continent of this giant body size in what remains a pretty hyper-specialized way of hunting, or we have this ancestral giant saber-toothed cat that dispersed to all of those continents. It’s an interesting paleontological question.”
Archaeologists Find Oldest Home in Human History, Dating to 2 Million Years Ago
Archaeologists have identified Wonderwerk Cave in South Africa’s the Kalahari Desert as the world’s oldest home, thanks to new evidence confirming the theory that early humans were already occupying the site 2 million years ago.
Excavations at Wonderwerk Cave have determined it was occupied by humans some two million years ago, making it the world’s oldest-known home. Photo courtesy of Michael Chazan.
The dates for the cave—named for the Afrikaans word for “miracle”—were determined by testing the cave sediments, according to a new paper in Quaternary Science Reviews by researchers from the University of Toronto and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
“We can now say with confidence that our human ancestors were making simple Oldowan stone tools inside the Wonderwerk Cave 1.8 million years ago,” lead author Ron Shaar said in a statement.
Wonderwerk is “a key site for the Earlier Stone Age,” according to the paper, but archaeologists have never found human remains there. Instead, the dating was obtained by investigating the different rock laters, also known as the stratified sedimentary sequence, reports Haaretz.
The cave contains traces of basal sediment, produced by retreating glaciers grinding against the bedrock, which would have to have been tracked in by early humans.
Ron Shaar taking samples for paleomagnestisim at Wonderwerk Cave.
Using magnetostratigraphy, a branch of stratigraphy that detects variations in the magnetic properties of rocks, the researchers dated 178 samples from the cave.
Measuring the magnetic signal of these ancient clay particles revealed the direction of the earth’s magnetic field—which changes poles every half million years or so—when the dust first entered the cave.
“Since the exact timing of these magnetic ‘reversals’ is globally recognized, it gave us clues to the antiquity of the entire sequence of layers in the cave,” Shaar explained.
The findings dated some of the sediment to 2 million years old. That matched the results that study team member Michael Chazan reached using cosmogenic dating in 2008. That earlier research, which many scholars rejected, measured cosmogenic nuclides caused by exposure to cosmic rays, which are produced and decay at a known rate. The new study also used this technique as a secondary dating method.
Wonderwerk Cave.
“Quartz particles in the sand have a built-in geological clock that starts ticking when they enter a cave,” Ari Matmon, another coauthor of the paper, added. “In our lab, we are able to measure the concentrations of specific isotopes in those particles and deduce how much time had passed since those grains of sand entered the cave.”
The cave also contains ancient stone tools such as hand axes, and the first evidence of early humans using fire, some one million years ago, as first reported in a 2012 study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The evidence of the fire was found deep enough in the cave that it could only have been the result of human activity, not brought there by wildfire.
Though humans occupied the cave continuously over the last 2 million years, it was not discovered by modern humans until farmers came upon it in the 1940s. Excavations have been ongoing ever since.
Ron Shaar testing for paleomagnestisim at Wonderwerk Cave.
A 3-D scan of the excavated area that was sampled for dating.
Wonderwerk Cave.
A hand axe from Wonderwerk Cave, seen in front of the cave entrance.
Who’s a Good Archaeologist? Dog Digs Up Trove of Bronze Age Relics
Is this the world’s least likely archaeologist? A dog named Monty, who was out for a walk in the Czech village of Kostelecké Horky this past March, began excitedly digging in a field when he, miraculously, discovered a buried cache of rare Bronze Age artefacts.
Bronze Age artefacts were discovered by a local dog named Monty. Image courtesy of Hradec Králové Region.
The dog helped uncover 13 sickles, two spear points, three axes, and a number of bracelets, all-around 3,000 years old.
Monty’s owner, identified only as “Mr Frankota,” received a 7,860 CZK ($360) reward for turning over the artefacts, Smithsonian magazine reports.
“The fact that there are so many objects in one place is almost certainly tied to an act of honorarium, most likely a sacrifice of some sorts,” archaeologist Martina Beková, of the Museum and Gallery of Orlické Mountains in Rychnov told Radio Praha.
“What particularly surprised us was that the objects were whole, because the culture that lived here at the time normally just buried fragments, often melted as well.
These objects are beautiful, but the fact that they are complete and in good condition is of much more value to us.”
Archaeologists believe the artefacts are from the Urnfield period of the late European Bronze Age, named for the communities that were increasingly cremating their dead and burying them in urns.
A flyer for the town of Kostelec nad Orlicí’s exhibition “Journey to the Beginning of Time,” featuring Bronze Age artefacts discovered by a local dog named Monty. Image courtesy of Hradec Králové Region.
The artefacts are currently on view in the town of Kostelec nad Orlicí through September 21 as part of the exhibition “Journey to the Beginning of Time.”
The ancient objects will then undergo conservation before being put on permanent display at the Kostelec palace.
Monty’s sharp nose has left the experts wondering what else might be uncovered in the area.
“Archaeologists have searched the surrounding fields with metal detectors,” Sylvie Velčovská, a spokesperson for the Hradec Králové Region, told Radio Praha.
Though nothing else has turned up yet, “there were some considerable changes to the surrounding terrain over the centuries, so it is possible that the deeper layers are still hiding some secrets.“
World’s oldest ‘pet cemetery’ discovered in ancient Egypt
A dig near the famous ancient Egyptian port city of Berenice has turned up a mysterious animal cemetery dating to the 1st century AD.
It emerged in the dunes to the northwest of the important ancient Red Sea port of Berenice, which saw traffic from far and wide, with ships coming from East Africa, Europe, and India.
Ninety per cent of the nearly 600 burial sites explored unearthed cats, though there were also dogs and macaque monkeys, a few of them definitely imported from outside Africa.
The find was published by a team led by Marta Osypinska, an archaeozoologist at the Polish Academy of Sciences, in the journal World Archaeology.
Several characteristics make this discovery uniquely mysterious. For one thing, none of the animals was mummified, as they are at other archaeological sites, such as temples. Here, too, there was a greater variety of species and funeral practices. Also, unlike at other burial sites, there were no humans among the beasts.
While the animals obviously had a special place in their society, the paper says, to think of them the way we think of pets today might not be quite right. These “companion animals,” as the researchers call them, probably played more of a utilitarian role than the pampered pets of today.
Still, the animals were definitely treated well in death.
They’re accompanied by craft objects like pottery that is thought to have protected them, and the creatures also have adornments like beaded necklaces made of stone, glass, and faience and shell. They were uniformly found in a sleep-like position.
Other experts second the conviction that the site is truly something new.
“It’s something completely different than what we see elsewhere,” Bea De Cupere, an archaeologist at the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences in Brussels, who was not involved with the project, tells Atlas Obscura.
“I’ve seen thousands and thousands of bones in my career, and maybe 10 cats,” she says.
According to her research, the ships that came and went in these ports usually had cats aboard for pest control, suggesting that these may have been partly working animals.
Ancient mass grave, WWII bunker among new finds in Istanbul’s Haydarpaşa dig
The ongoing archaeological excavation on the premises of Istanbul’s iconic Haydarpaşa Train Station entered a new phase with the recent removal of concrete platforms, with ancient mass graves, a mausoleum and a bunker used during World War II joining a long list of artefacts retrieved from the area.
Archaeologists and staff work at the Haydarpaşa excavation area in Kadıköy, Istanbul, on Oct. 12, 2021.
Precious historical artefacts dating back to the fifth century B.C. have been uncovered in the excavations that have been ongoing for the past three years in the 30-hectare (74-acre) facility housing platforms, maintenance wards, depots, parking lines and manoeuvre areas.
These artefacts shed light on the history of the 15-million megapolis and the Asian district of Kadıköy, where the ancient city of Chalcedon once stood.
Istanbul Archaeology Museum Director Rahmi Asal told reporters Sunday that the backyard of the station has indeed turned into an archaeological site. “The current area where we are working is inside the western harbour of Chalcedon. Indeed, very important ruins and artefacts were recovered. One of them is a private residence with opus sectile flooring dating back to the A.D. fifth century, along with a bathhouse,” Asal was quoted as saying by Anadolu Agency (AA).
“We also came across a section of Sainte Bassa Church, an important ruin from the Byzantine era that is narrated both in antique sources as well as modern publications. Inside the church’s apse, a mass grave was found containing approximately 28 bodies,” Asal said. Other findings include a platform dating back to the Hellenistic period, a pedestal probably belonging to a mausoleum and an adjacent sarcophagus, ruins from a holy spring (hagiasma in Greek, ayazma in Turkish) inside a palace ruin, and stone brick building dating back to the A.D. fifth to sixth centuries believed to be used as a melting workshop due to the furnaces and pots found there.
Expert work on human remains and skeletons at the Haydarpaşa excavation area in Kadıköy, Istanbul, on Oct. 12, 2021.
An Ottoman-era water fountain, erected in 1790 in connection with other fountains in nearby Halitağa Street and underwent repairs in 1836, was also uncovered at the site.
A bunker is seen at the Haydarpaşa excavation area in Kadıköy, Istanbul, on Oct. 12, 2021.
Another interesting finding covered by platforms was a 400-meter (1,312-foot) long bunker, which is 2 meters in width and 2.40 meters in height. Built-in 1942, the bunker also contains electrical panels and toilets.
Asal stated that nearly 12,000 gold, silver and bronze coins in good condition were retrieved from the excavation site, with the most important being a coin dating back to the fifth century B.C.
Explaining that the excavation went down some 2 meters in parts, Asal said that an interrupted chronological settlement from the Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman periods can be traced on all layers of the earth. “If we were to talk about the history of Kadıköy in particular, our information on its archaeology and art history was unfortunately scarce apart from information in antique sources. We can say that these excavations are rewriting, reshaping the history of Kadıköy with concrete archaeological documents.”
Asal explained that the excavation is ongoing as part of the Haydarpaşa restoration project of the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure, and it is not possible to give an exact time frame on when the excavation will end since it depends on both the project requirements and new archaeological findings shaping it.
An artefact bearing inscriptions in ancient Greek letters is seen at the Haydarpaşa excavation area in Kadıköy, Istanbul, on Oct. 12, 2021.
Pottery and other earth cases are seen among ancient artefacts at the Haydarpaşa excavation area in Kadıköy, Istanbul, on Oct. 12, 2021
“We know that currently, a new project is in the making that also utilizes recovered artefacts and adds them into the station project. Once we see that project, like the museum, we will convey our excavation results and assessment report to the local conservation board, which will shape the remaining process accordingly.”
The priority of archaeologists, art historians and citizens should be the Haydarpaşa Station itself, Asal said, underlining that the symbolic landmark should preserve its primary function as a terminus station and archaeological findings should be integrated into that function.
Yalçın Eyigün, head of the General Directorate of Infrastructure of the Transport and Infrastructure Ministry, told Demirören News Agency (DHA) that the designing process for closed areas and an open-air museum is ongoing, which the ministry seeks to complete in the next two years.
Currently, work has been completed on 49% of the 140,000 square meters area slated for excavations, Eyigün said, adding that 250 staff are working under the supervision of 15 archaeologists and the Istanbul Archaeology Museum.
Explaining that the total area of the Haydarpaşa compound is 4.75 hectares, Eyigün said the ministry aims to use only 75,000 square meters for railroad-related activities, with the rest allocated for an archaeological site, archaeological park and an industrial heritage museum.
The area, formerly known as Haydarpaşa Meadows before railway construction began in 1872, has many well-preserved or intact artefacts, due to the fact that construction began later than in the rest of Istanbul’s central neighbourhoods. The station building itself, which was constructed between 1906 and 1909, sits atop 1,100 wooden piles on reclaimed land.
Once serving as the western terminus of the Ottoman Empire’s ambitious Hejaz and Baghdad railways, the station has been closed to passengers since June 2013 when suburban rail services stretching to the Gebze district of Kocaeli province were halted for the Marmaray project. Featuring a submerged train tunnel crossing the Bosporus and revamping the old suburban rail lines to increase train and passenger capacity, the Marmaray bypasses Haydarpaşa and its European counterpart, the Sirkeci Station. Intercity trains to Anatolia were also scrapped a year earlier over the ongoing construction for a high-speed train.
The station experienced several setbacks throughout its history. On the first day of its opening in 1908, a fire broke out and it was reopened on Nov. 4, 1909, after a restoration process. The station housed an armoury and ammunition depot during World War I but was damaged on Sept. 6, 1917, when the armoury exploded. The station completely collapsed after that. On the 10th anniversary of the founding of the Turkish republic, the station was rebuilt to its original state and a comprehensive restoration was also carried out in 1976.
In 1979, certain sections of the station were damaged during the Independent tanker accident, in which a Romanian crude oil carrier exploded after colliding with a Greek freighter on the Bosporus off Haydarpaşa Port.
Following a 2010 fire that broke out during repairs, a temporary protective roof was placed to protect the building from rainfall and snow. Several projects were made public over the years to reassess the building’s use as a hotel with a larger convention centre project in the surrounding rail facilities. Following calls from the public, the Turkish State Railways (TCDD) prepared a thorough restoration project for the building so it can serve its original function in 2016, which was approved by relevant authorities. The recent archaeological excavation began during repairs to tracks and platforms leading to the main station building.
Garden statues turn out to be ancient Egyptian relics, selling for $265,000
An auction company said that a pair of carved stone statues used as garden ornaments sold for more than £195,000 ($265,510) when it was discovered that they were ancient Egyptian artefacts going back thousands of years.
The artefacts were acquired from a garden in Sudbury, Suffolk, in eastern England.
Mander Auctioneers, which handled the sale, said they were contacted by a family looking to get rid of items from their old house before moving home.
The statues had been stood in the garden until last month. Credit: Mander Auctions
The “heavily weathered” statues, which had been used to decorate a garden patio until last month, had been bought for “a few hundred pounds” at another auction 15 years ago and were believed to be 18th-century replicas of ancient Egyptian relics, according to the auction house.
One statue even had its head re-attached with cement by a local builder under the instruction of the previous owners, auctioneer James Mander told CNN Tuesday.
“We didn’t really question them and put them in [at auction] at £300 to £500 ($410 to $680),” Mander told CNN. “And then the auction just went crazy,” he said.
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Saturday’s bidding began at £200, but within 15 minutes four telephone bidders and numerous internet buyers pushed the final price up to £195,000 plus 24% buyer’s premium, with an international art gallery making the final sale.
“Opinion was that they were genuine ancient Egyptian examples, which had somehow passed through recent history as 18th-century copies,” auctioneers said in a statement.
Auctioneers said the sellers had no idea of the true value of the statues.
Mander said that, in the 18th century, the Grand Tour saw English people travel through Europe, buying items.
“And we’ve just presumed they were 18th century Grand Tour items,” Mander told CNN.
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“As it turns out they’re thousands of years old and genuine. So it’s quite amazing really,” he said, adding that news of the final sale was “beyond comprehension” for the surprised previous owners.
Mander said that work was being done to trace the provenance of the statues, and he can’t place an exact date on the artefacts yet. “I wonder where they’ve been for the last 5,000 years. It’s quite incredible, really,” he said.
Humans May Have Smoked Tobacco 12,300 Years Ago, Scientists Find New Evidence in Utah
Excavations at the Wishbone site in northwestern Utah have uncovered the earliest evidence of tobacco usage by prehistoric humans.
Humankind’s addiction to tobacco runs deep: Archaeologists in Utah have discovered what appears to be the earliest known use of wild tobacco, stretching back 12,500 years—some 9,000 years earlier than the previously dated evidence.
A team from the Far Western Anthropological Research Group in Henderson, Nevada, and the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center in Cortez, Colorado, found Nicotiana attenuata, or coyote tobacco, seeds around a manmade hearth or firepit at the Wishbone site in Utah’s Great Salt Lake Desert, not far from Salt Lake City.
The researchers published their findings in the journal Nature Human Behavior.
Wishbone got its name from the large number of waterfowl bones found at the site, where ducks were likely the mainstay of the prehistoric human diet. But tobacco wouldn’t have grown in what was then a marshy area, with its closest natural habitat some eight miles away.
“It was a completely-out-of-nowhere find. It’s very uncommon to find tobacco seeds, even at later sites: they are really small and they are not food, so they don’t occur very often,” Far Western’s Daron Duke, the paper’s lead author, told Haaretz. “Theoretically, it is possible a duck could nibble on a tobacco plant, but that duck would have to avoid hundreds of square kilometres of its typical diet, go up a rocky mountain range, which they don’t do, and eat a fairly uncommon plant.”
Views of a 12,300-year-old burned tobacco seed found at the Wishbone archaeological site in Utah.
Also in the ashes were seeds from other plants that ancient humans are known to have consumed, suggesting that people intentionally brought tobacco seeds to the site—the population at Wishbone appears to have travelled widely each year.
The seeds wouldn’t have burned well, so they were probably not being used to feed the fire. Most likely, the ancients liked to chew tobacco, releasing the addictive nicotine for a dopamine high.
“To see them, fireside, using tobacco—we can pretty readily imagine what they were getting out of it,” Duke told Scientific American. “It’s very human to imbibe.”
Duke has been conducting research at Wishbone, in the Utah Test and Training Range, for 20 years, and found the remnants of the ancient hearth—just a “little black smudge on the open mudflats of the Great Salt Lake Desert,” he told CNN—back in 2015.
The site has also yielded Haskett-style spear tips made from obsidian, a kind of volcanic glass, that would have been used to hunt large game.
Wishbone has a “unique potential to tell us about how people lived,” Duke told Inverse. “It truly is a fascinating place to work, as one of the most barren settings you can find in the United States.”
To figure out what materials had been left behind in the ashes, scientists used a technique called manual flotation, submerging the sediment samples in water and separating organic and non-organic material.
Radiocarbon dating showed the fire burned approximately 12,300 years ago, with four wild tobacco seeds identified amid the charred remains.
Before the team’s discovery, the earliest documented use of tobacco was in smoking pipes used in the Alabama region some 3,300 years ago, which was dated in 2018.
The new evidence suggests that tobacco use was already firmly entrenched in Native American cultures by that point in time.
Modern tobacco seeds.
“People in the past were the ultimate botanists and identified the intoxicant values of tobacco quickly upon arriving in the Americas,” Duke told Live Science.
The long-held Clovis theory suggests people began travelling over the land bridge that connected Siberia and Alaska some 13,500 to 13,000 years ago. But some recent archaeological discoveries—including the continent’s oldest human footprints—suggest that pre-Clovis people had a presence in North America during the Ice Age, perhaps up to 20,000 or 30,000 years ago.
“On a global scale, tobacco is the king of intoxicant plants, and now we can directly trace its cultural roots to the Ice Age,” Duke told Reuters.
