Saudi Arabia’s Hima cultural site added to UNESCO world heritage list
Hima, in the Gulf state’s southwest, is home to one of the largest rock art complexes in the world.
Najran, Saudi Arabia:
The sixth site in Saudi Arabia has been added to UNESCO’s world heritage list, the UN organisation announced on Saturday.
Hima, in the Gulf state’s southwest, is home to one of the largest rock art complexes in the world.
“New site inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List: cultural area of Hima, Saudi Arabia. Mabrouk (congratulations)!” UNESCO announced.
Hima features more than 34 separate sites including rock inscriptions and wells along the route of the ancient Arabian caravans.
The Bir Hima Saudi rock art region is famous for inscriptions like this written in languages ranging from ancient Greek and Aramaic-Nabatean to Thamudic, and South-Arabian
The kingdom has a “rich heritage (of) human civilisations. Efforts have borne fruit in making it known to the world,” it quoted him as saying.
SPA said Hima was a conduit for caravans on the trade and hajj routes to and from the southern parts of Arabia.
“People who passed through the area between pre-and post-historic times have left behind a substantial collection of rock art depicting hunting, wildlife, plants, symbols, and tools used at the time, as well as thousands of inscriptions,” the news agency said.
The site covers 557 square kilometres (215 square miles).
SPA said the wells in the area are more than 3,000 years old and were considered a vital source of fresh water in the vast desert of Najran province.
“They still serve freshwater to this day,” it added.
Other UNESCO sites in Saudi Arabia include rock art in the Hail region and historic Jeddah.
In 2019, Riyadh announced that for the first time it would grant tourist visas for those wishing to visit Saudi Arabia.
Previously, the country was open only to businessmen and Muslim pilgrims visiting the holy cities of Mecca and Medina.
Stone Age tools, cave paintings discovered in India could be clues to ‘prehistoric factory’
Mangar, Haryana: Prehistoric cave paintings belonging to the Paleolithic era, and rock shelters as well as tools and tool-making equipment, presumably dating back to the lower or early Paleolithic era have been found hiding in plain sight in the Aravallis.
A specimen of recently discovered palaeolithic cave paintings in the Aravalli Range in Haryana, India.
The palaeolithic era, or the Old Stone Age, dates back to 10,000 BC when humans still lived as hunters and gatherers. Tools belonging to the Stone Age have been found in rock shelters as well as in open-air sites, spread across nearly 5,000 hectares, Banani Bhattacharya, Deputy Director, Haryana Department of Archaeology and Museums, told ThePrint.
Located in the Aravalli hills near Mangar Bani forest along the Gurugram-Faridabad stretch in Delhi-NCR, the discovery is monumental as it changes the understanding of Haryana’s history, pushing it back further by several thousand years than we currently know.
“Haryana is known as the cradle of Indian civilisation. Earlier, 28 sites dating back to the Harappan and pre-Harappan era had been discovered in the state. However, cave paintings and rock art sprawling in such a large area have been discovered for the first time. This discovery suggests that the history here could be 1 lakh years old,” Bhattacharya said.
While the Aravalli range is known for housing pre-historic remains, the latest discovery is the first time rock paintings have been found here. While the rock art and tools are estimated to be about 1 lakh years old, the paintings might not be older than 20,000-40,000 years, according to Bhattacharya.
The estimates, though, are preliminary and need further research, documentation and carbon dating to accurately determine the exact time period this site belongs to.
Based on initial observations, Bhattacharya said, it appeared humans had settled in this area for quite some time as the archaeologists noticed that the pattern of drawing had evolved. This gives them a chance to trace how early humans developed their tool-making skills.
A specimen of the palaeolithic paintings found in the Aravallis
“Some are line drawings, which are the oldest when humans hadn’t really figured out how to draw complex patterns. Then we can see drawings of different geometric shapes, foliage, animals and human figures. We’ve found some symbols that look like cup marks, which had presumably been kept for some special purpose,” Bhattacharya said. “While most are ochre, some are white as well. Which means those particular drawings belong to the historic era.”
Bhattacharya also said this could be the biggest Paleolithic site found in the subcontinent. She said this could well be the ‘factory’ of our ancestors, where tools were made.
YouTube video leads to discovery
A YouTube video, posted in May by residents of the area, tipped the Haryana archaeological department to the site, which was discovered later in July.
“We were planning to carry out a survey in the Aravallis here. In May, a video surfaced on YouTube about these caves that villagers have been aware of. However, they never understood the value of these rock carvings and paintings, so we were never alerted earlier,” Bhattacharya said.
No elaborate archaeological survey of the Aravallis has been carried out in this area yet, which, Bhattacharya said, will be done soon. “We’re planning to map the entire Aravalli stretch.”
Another reason the paintings weren’t officially discovered so far was that it takes hiking on undefined trails to reach some of the sites. Over time, the paintings also eroded, thus escaping most untrained eyes. At some sites, dense vegetation covers up the palaeolithic art.
Bhattacharya and her team carried out a three-day survey in the last week of June, identifying several sites. With final documentation and more elaborate research pending, Bhattacharya is yet to have a final count of the number of sites discovered so far.
Wildlife researcher and conservationist Sunil Harsana, who claims he had first posted the video to YouTube, said he has been aware of the caves since his childhood but didn’t understand the significance of the paintings and didn’t know who to talk to about them.
“We had a keypad, basic phones with the bad camera till as late as 2016… so even if I had clicked a picture on them, nobody would’ve understood what I was talking about. And we didn’t know who to tell. Now, once they were put on the internet, they got the attention they deserved,” he said.
Protecting the history
Currently, the sites are exposed and vulnerable — along with what remains of the Stone Age. The trash from the current millennium — such as empty cans and bottles of beer and cola, cigarette butts, empty wrappers of snacks — can also be found here.
Harsana is wary that as more people find out about the discovery, more will come to visit these rock shelters, speeding up the deterioration.
“The site needs urgent protection. You never know who will visit the site and carve their name or ‘hearts’ alongside the prehistoric carvings, just for the fun of it,” he said. Instead, through heritage and eco-tourism, residents of the area could find employment opportunities and be able to earn some.
Both Bhattacharya and Harsana are also of the opinion that Mangar Bani and its surrounding forests on the Gurgaon-Faridabad Aravalli stretch should be declared a heritage-eco zone. This will guarantee the area is protected from illegal mining and encroachment.
“We don’t even know how many of these sites must have been destroyed because of mining and exploitation of the Aravallis. They need urgent protection. As the oldest mountain range in the world, they carry important clues to help us understand our origins and have a lot of stories to tell about the Indian subcontinent,” Bhattacharya said.
Ashok Khemka, Principal Secretary to Haryana government, told Hindustan Times earlier this month the department will be issuing orders to protect Mangar Bani under Section 4 of the Punjab Ancient and Historical Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act, 1964, and that experts in palaeolithic cave paintings will be carrying out an extensive survey of the area.
Turkish Archaeologists Find Byzantine Castle at Akyaka, Western Turkey
Excavation work was launched in Akyaka in the Ula district of southwestern Muğla province nearly a year ago to bring to light the historical sites of the town. Efforts to reveal the history of the town have been continuing without any interruption, and the archaeologists are now unearthing the medieval castle walls.
Akyaka is a popular destination that can be visited in any season. It is known for its authentic architecture and relaxing nature from the forests to the sea.
Whereas one is immediately overwhelmed by the town’s unique charm due to the spellbinding architecture, the tranquillity of it leaves people speechless.
Akyaka was welcomed into the Cittaslow International network in 2011. Cittaslow is an organization founded in Italy whose goals include improving the quality of life in towns by slowing down its overall pace, especially in a city’s use of spaces and the flow of life and traffic through it.
Akyaka is a perfect place for those in search of complete peace while enjoying the crystal clear waters of the Mediterranean. It offers a fascinating experience away from all hustle and bustle.
However, the town also bears historical and cultural mysteries and richness beneath its land as it houses a small settlement of the Idyma ancient city.
With the excavations that started last year, medieval castle walls and rock tombs from earlier periods have been discovered in the town, which is considered to date back approximately 2,700 years. Cleaning and restoration works are being carried out in these areas.
An aerial view from the medieval castle walls in Akyaka, Muğla, southwestern Turkey
Part of the Byzantine castle was found at the hillside Akyaka site in western Turkey.
Another view of the Byzantine castle walls found at the Akyaka site, which was once known as Idyma, an important Greek city-state that was first founded by the mysterious Carian culture.
Head of the excavation and Muğla Sıtkı Koçman University Archeology Department Lecturer Associate Professor Abdulkadir Baran told Anadolu Agency (AA) that the excavations in the region have been continuing for about 10 months without interruption.
Explaining that Akyaka is one of the important settlements of the Caria region in western Anatolia, Baran said, “We are currently excavating places where there are traces of the Hellenistic period, possibly related to the port. One of the most important areas we excavated and revived in the city is the medieval castle.”
A Lycian rock tomb in Akyaka, not far from the Byzantine castle dig site.
The Lycian rock-cut tombs at Dalyan Kaunos, which is located 32 miles (60 kilometres) southeast of Akyaka. Both ancient cities were built by the same cultures, and both were active during the Byzantine period.
They determined during the excavations that the castle was also used in the Ottoman and Seljuk periods. Baran pointed out that in addition to the excavations, archaeological research and scientific studies continue in the city.
“As our work progresses, our knowledge of the Carian culture, one of the ancient cultures of this region, will be fully completed. We are trying to connect the Akyaka and Ula districts to each other as a cultural route. We are working to gradually make these areas visible,” he said.
Baran stated that they also carried out work on mosaics found in previous years and added that their work will continue in the churches in the later period.
Remains of twin fetuses and wealthy mom found in Bronze Age urn
During the Bronze Age, a pregnant woman carrying twins in what is now Hungary met a tragic end, dying either just before or during childbirth, according to a new study about her burial.
The remains of the elite woman (left) and twin fetuses (right) were cremated, but some of their bones (above) weren’t completely burned.
The woman and her twins were cremated and buried in an urn with lavish grave goods: a bronze neck ring, a gold hair ring and bone pins or needles, indicating that the woman was an elite individual, the researchers said. Moreover, a chemical analysis of the woman’s teeth and bones revealed that she wasn’t local but had travelled from afar, likely to marry into a new community, the researchers said.
“Although the external appearance of the urn is not so different from all the others, the prestige objects indicate that the woman stood at the apex of the community or as part of an emerging elite,” study lead researcher Claudio Cavazzuti, an assistant professor in the Department of History and Cultures at the University of Bologna in Italy, told Live Science in an email.
Archaeologists found the woman and twins’ remains in a cemetery dating to the Hungarian Bronze Age (2150 B.C. to 1500 B.C.), which they uncovered during a rescue excavation ahead of the construction of a major supermarket by the Danube River, just a few miles south of Budapest. With 525 burials excavated so far, “the cemetery is one of the largest known in present-day Hungary for this period,” Cavazzuti said. There are likely several thousand more Bronze Age graves in the area that have yet to be excavated, he added.
These burials are from the Vatya culture, which thrived during the Hungarian Early and Middle Bronze Ages, from about 2200 B.C. to 1450 B.C., he said.
The Vatya people had a complex culture, with settlements supporting agricultural farming and livestock, and economy invested in local and long-distance trade (which explains how the Vatya acquired bronze, gold and amber from different parts of Central, Eastern and Northern Europe), and fortifications that controlled parts of the Danube River, Cavazzuti said.
To learn more about those buried in the cemetery, Cavazzuti and his colleagues did an in-depth analysis on 29 burials (26 urn cremations and three were buried). Except for the elite woman (who was buried with the twins), all of the sampled graves contained the remains of just one person, and most of those graves held simple grave goods made of ceramic or bronze.
About 20% of the Vatya burials at the site contained metal grave goods, “but prestige items, such as those of [the elite woman], are rare,” he said.
The three buried individuals were adults of indeterminate sex. Of the cremated individuals, 20 were adults (11 females, seven males, two undetermined), two were children between the ages of 5 and 10, and four were between the ages of 2 and 5. But the youngest of the deceased were the twins, who were likely between 28 and 32 gestational weeks old. The elite woman was between 25 and 35 years old when she died, according to a skeletal analysis, the researchers found.
A further look at the elite woman’s bones indicated that she was cremated on a large pyre that likely burned for several hours. But when the fire extinguished, “the ashes were collected more carefully than usual (bone weight is 50% higher than average [compared with other cremated burials]) and deposited in an interesting early Vatya urn,” the researchers wrote in the study. Given that she was buried with the twin fetuses, the woman probably died from complications related to childbirth, the researchers said.
The elite woman’s grave goods included a bronze neck ring (1), gold hair ring (2) and bone pins/needles (3)
Where was she from?
The research team did a chemical analysis, which entailed looking at the different versions, or isotopes, or strontium in the deceased’s teeth and bones. Different regions have different ratios of strontium isotopes, which people absorb in the water and food they consume.
These strontium isotopes then end up in people’s bones and teeth, allowing researchers to measure and compare them with strontium isotopes found in the environment.
The vast majority of the individuals the team looked at had local strontium signatures, especially the men and children.
The elite woman, in contrast, was born elsewhere and moved to the region between the ages of 8 and 13, Cavazzuti said. Furthermore, an analysis of her grave goods revealed that the bronze neck ring and a gold ring were “prestige objects” similar to valuable items found in other burials and hoards in Central Europe, he said.
“It is not improbable that the neck-ring and pins/needles were meant to symbolize a link with her native land, whereas the gold hair-ring (a wedding gift?) embodied the new local identity she acquired by joining the [new] community at the highest rank,” the researchers wrote in the study.
Another buried woman, who did not have any grave goods, had a strontium signature from elsewhere, possibly from Lake Balaton in western Hungary or central Slovenia, the researchers noted.
Previous research has already shown that women in Europe — especially high-status ones — married outside their local communities since at least the late Neolithic or the Copper Age (about 3200 B.C. 2300 B.C.), Cavazzuti said. During the Bronze Age, societies across Europe were largely patrilocal, meaning that the men stayed in their hometowns while some women travelled from different communities to marry them.
Perhaps these marriages were crucial to the emerging elite “in order to institute or reinforce political powers and military alliances, but also to secure routes [and] economic partnerships,” Cavazzuti said.
Dutch archaeologists said on Wednesday they have unearthed a Roman canal and road near ancient military camps that were this week listed on UNESCO’s list of World Heritage sites.
The canal—more than 10 metres (33 feet) wide—and road were uncovered last week near the eastern city of Nijmegen, a major Roman-era settlement with permanent military bases that were awarded the UNESCO status.
They are believed to have been built and used by the Roman military, according to RAAP, the country’s largest consultancy for archaeology and cultural history.
A Roman-era canal was discovered in Oosterhout, in the eastern Netherlands, along with a road, both from around 2,000 years ago.
Nijmegen is on the Rhine, the border of the Roman Empire at the time, it said in a statement, adding that the discovery was “unique” for that region of the country.
Many Roman soldiers were stationed along the river and the canal probably linked Nijmegen and the Rhine and was used to transport troops, supplies and building materials.
The Roman highway, with its original gravel pavement preserved, provides new insight into the road network of around 2,000 years ago, Eric Noord, who is leading the project, told AFP.
Canterbury Cathedral stained glass is among world’s oldest
According to recent research, stained glass windows in England’s famous Canterbury Cathedral might be centuries older than previously thought, with some panels dating back to the mid-12th century.
If accurate, the colourful panes would have witnessed the murder of Archbishop Thomas Becket in the cathedral by followers of King Henry II in 1170. The particular panels, which are installed over one of the cathedral’s entrances, depict the ancestors of Christ and had previously been thought to have been made by artisans in the 13th century.
If the revised date is accurate, it would make them among the earliest extant works of stained glass in the world. It would also restore a piece of the structure’s history long thought lost.
‘We have hardly anything left of the artistic legacy of that early building [apart from] a few bits of stone carving,’ Léonie Seliger, the cathedral’s head of stained glass conservation, told BBC News.
‘But until now, we didn’t think we had any stained glass,’ Seliger added. ‘And it turns out that we do.’
The Ancestors of Christ stained glass panels at Canterbury Cathedral (above) date to 1130-1160, according to a new analysis, at least a decade before Thomas Becket was murdered in the church
Henry II initially appointed Becket as his chancellor, then nominated him as Archbishop of Canterbury in 1162, with the hope his confirmation would bring the Church of England more under the monarchy’ control.
But Becket discovered a newfound religious belief and worked to extend the reach of the archbishopric, recovering church lands lost to the monarchy and reestablishing the church’s jurisdiction over clergymen accused of committing secular crimes. He also excommunicated a number of Henry’s ministers and advisors and threatened the king with ecclesiastical punishments.
After Henry reportedly asked, ‘Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?,’ four knights rode to Canterbury and beheaded Becket in the cathedral’s northwest transept on December 29, 1170. In addition to Becket’s killing, the Ancestors of Christ panels ‘would have witnessed Henry II come on his knees begging for forgiveness, they would have witnessed the conflagration of the fire that devoured the cathedral in 1174,’ Seliger said.
Canterbury Cathedral in Kent, England, is one of the oldest Christian structures in Great Britain.
‘And then they would have witnessed all of British history.’
The oldest known stained glass windows are those at Augsburg Cathedral in Bavaria, Germany, completed in the late 11th century.
As far back as the 1980s, art historian Madeline Caviness had questioned the dates assigned to some of the Ancestors of Christ panels at Canterbury, pointing to noticeable stylistic differences. But disturbing the fragile works of art and worship was too risky.
A stained-glass window depicts the murder of Thomas Becket by Henry II’s knights, part of a series on the sainted archbishop in the cathedral’s chapel
Four decades later, researchers from University College London (UCL) designed a ‘windolyser,’ a portable device that shines a beam on glass, causing it to emit radiation that can be used to determine when it was created—similar to how spectrometry can determine the chemical composition of distant stars. Materials scientist Laura Ware Adlington, who led the research, says some of the Ancestor panels could date to between 1130 and 1160, at least a decade before Becket was killed.
Founded in 597, the Canterbury Cathedral was completely rebuilt between 1070 and 1077. It was initially thought the ‘Ancestors Series’ panels were installed after a fire devastated the building in 1174—over a period ranging from the late 1170s through until 1220. But data from the windolyser suggested they were there well before the fire and had been stored during reconstruction and added to the rebuilt cathedral.
Founded in 597, Canterbury Cathedral was completely rebuilt between 1070 and 1077 and again after a devastating fire in 1174
‘The scientific findings, the observations and the chronology of the cathedral itself all fit together very nicely now,’ Caviness, now 83, told BBC News.
‘I wish I was younger and could throw myself more into helping Laura with her future work. But I’ve certainly got a few more projects to feed her.’
Other panels in the famed house of worship have also been reconsidered: in 2019, researchers suggested stained-glass windows dated to the Victorian era really were constructed in the Middle Ages,
Rachel Koopmans, a medieval history professor at York University, said a panel depicting a group of pilgrims heading to Canterbury actually dates to the 1180s—a decade or so after Becket’s murder and some 200 years before Chaucer wrote about such a pilgrimage in Canterbury Tales. The window was part of a series in a chapel built in Becket’s honour—of the dozen created to tell his story, only eight remains.
‘The unique panel picturing travelling pilgrims allows us to see how the earliest pilgrims to Canterbury interacted and what they would have looked like, right down to the pilgrims’ wonderfully decorated boots,’ Koopmans told York University magazine in 2019. Using documents in the cathedral archives and an 1861 photograph of the window, she made her case about the pilgrimage window and she and Seliger secured permission to remove it for study.
Using digital photography technologies and spectrometry, they verified the glass in that window dated to the 1100s as well, nearly 800 years earlier than assumed. In medieval times, stained glass windows held significant importance, educating an illiterate populace about religious narratives.
‘They were the comic books of their day,’ Koopmans told the magazine. ‘They were designed as colourful bands to be read and admired by visiting pilgrims.’
According to an Ahram Online report, an Old Kingdom statue depicting the priest Nikau-Ptah has been returned to Egypt from an art gallery in the Netherlands.
The Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, in collaboration with the Egyptian Embassy in Amsterdam and the concerned authorities in the Netherlands, succeeded in repatriating an ancient Egyptian statue of an Old Kingdom priest Nikaw-Ptah that was stolen and illegally smuggled out of the country of Egypt.
The statue has arrived safely in Egypt and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has handed it over to the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.
Shaaban Abdel-Gawad, the general supervisor of the Repatriation Antiquities Department, explains that the statue was put on sale at the annual European exhibition of fine arts, Tefaf, in Maastricht, Netherlands.
He added that the statue was illegally excavated and was not from the collection of any museum or archaeological site of the Supreme Council of Antiquities.
He pointed out that the statue is legless and features the priest standing and wearing a short skirt. His name is engraved on his right hand.
‘Jurassic Pompeii’ yields thousands of ‘squiggly wiggly’ fossils
Palaeontologist Tim Ewin is standing in a quarry, recalling the calamity that’s written in the rocks under his mud-caked boots.
Fossilised seafloor animals from the Jurassic, all piled on top of each other
“They tried to protect themselves, adopting the stress position of pulling their arms in,” he continues. “But it was all in vain; you can see where their arms got snagged open, right up to the crown. They were pushed into the sediment and buried alive.”
There’s a little smile creeping across Tim’s face, and he’s got reason to be happy. The misfortune that struck this place 167 million years ago has delivered to him an extraordinary collection of fossil animals in what is unquestionably one of the most important Jurassic dig sites ever discovered in the UK. We can’t be precise about the location of the excavation for security reasons, but you’ll recognise from the gorgeous, honey-coloured limestone that we’re somewhere in the Cotswold country.
Things have changed a bit since Jurassic times, though.
No quaint villages and dry-stone walls back then; these parts were covered by a shallow sea, maybe 20-40m deep. And it was a damn sight warmer than your traditional English summer. The movement of tectonic plates means Britain was roughly where North Africa is today. So you can imagine the types of creatures that would have been living on this ancient, near-tropical seafloor.
The fossils are in clay layers that intersperse the Cotswold limestone
Stalked animals called sea lilies were tethered to the bed in great “meadows”. Their free-floating cousins, the feather stars, were ambling by, looking to grab the same particles of food. And down in the sediment, starfish and brittle stars were feeling their way across the bottom with their fives arms, no doubt bumping into the occasional passing sea urchin or sea cucumber. It’s exactly this scene that’s preserved in the rocks of our mystery quarry. The quantities involved are astonishing. Not hundreds, not thousands, but perhaps tens of thousands of these animals that scientists collectively call “the echinoderms”. It’s a great name, derived from the Greek for “hedgehog”, or “spiny”, “skin”. What is a sea urchin, if not an “underwater hedgehog“?
Echinoderms- Animals of the sea floor
Some may look like plants but they are all animals
Skeletons are made from calcite (calcium carbonate)
They display radial symmetry, in multiples of five
They have no brain but do have a nervous system
Arms and tube feet are moved by pumping seawater
Lost parts can be regrown, much like a gecko’s tail
Most of what we know about the deep history of echinoderms from British fossils comes from the few specimens that emerged from railway cuttings and quarrying in the Victorian age. Tim Ewin’s institution, the Natural History Museum in London, has these items tucked away in a small space that will now be utterly inadequate to accommodate the truckload of new examples that is coming.
The individual calcite plates, or ossicles, that made up the skeletal frames are preserved
“In this age of a rock from the Middle Jurassic, only two species of starfish were known, represented by five specimens,” he says. “In just a few days of collecting here, we’ve got 12 starfish specimens, and expect to find many more.
“And it’s the same for the comatulids, or stemless crinoids (feather stars) – 200 years’ worth of collecting is represented at the museum by about 25 specimens. Here, we’ve probably got 25 specimens just under our feet, and we’ve collected over 1,000.”
The NHM was given only a few days in the private quarry to collect the specimens
But it’s also the quality of the preservation that’s jaw-dropping. Lean in close to a slab of rock that’s just been cleaned up and you’ll observe what, at first sight, reminds you of a plate of noodles. It is in fact a great mass of fossil arms from who knows how many sea lilies. You can clearly discern the individual calcite plates, or ossicles, that made up the skeletal frames of these animals when they were alive. What’s more, the specimens are fully articulated. That’s to say, all parts are still intact. Everything is captured in three dimensions.
“We talk about the fives (radial symmetry) in echinoderms. They’re all there; you can see them,” says NHM senior fossil preparator Mark Graham. Specialists in fossil echinoderms believe the Cotswold quarry will help them better categorise the species’ different life stages, their ecology and their proper position in evolutionary history. To paraphrase that old cliche: the textbooks might not need to be rewritten but some extensive notes will almost certainly have to be added to the margins.
The arms of another crinoid are imprinted on a piece of Jurassic wood
And the new learning will go wider still, says echinoderm specialist Jeff Thompson.
“We live in a changing world today, and if we want to understand how climate change might affect not only the future of humanity but of all life on Earth’s surface, then the echinoderms are one of the best groups to study,” he tells me.
“We know quite well what happened to them through a variety of mass extinctions, so their experience can be really helpful as we try to understand the major changes in biodiversity across geological time.”
Sally Hollingworth is half-standing, half-sitting at the edge of a pool of muddy water. She’s busy trying to ease yet more feather stars from the clay layers that intersperse the quarry’s limestone units.
She’s gently prodding with a spatula, attempting to get under the specimens to lift them without breaking them.
“I call them ‘squiggly wigglies’,” she laughs. “The stalked crinoids, I call those ‘stalkie walkies’.”
It’s Sally and her husband, Neville, that the NHM have to thank for finding this marvellous site. The pair are keen amateur palaeontologists. They spend their weekends investigating the Cotswold hills and their surrounds, looking for interesting rocks. The most promising items they take home to “his and hers” studios (a shed and a garage) where they use air abrasion tools to lift off any obscuring sediment. It was while cooped up during lockdown that Sally and Neville first identified the potential of the quarry. After examining the location on Google Earth and comparing it with geological maps of the area, they sought permission from the landowner for a recce, which Sally says seemed somewhat underwhelming at the time.
“We were finding only tiny fragments of Jurassic sea creatures and we said, ‘well, OK, let’s take a slab home and see what we can reveal if we can clean it up’,” she recalls.
“I remember Nev shouting from the garage, ‘Sal, Sal! You’ve got to come and have a look at this!’ It was this beautiful sea lily emerging, coming to life, from the slab.”
Anatomy of a Crinoid (Sea Lily)
Sea lilies are the stalked variety of crinoids
Adult animals anchor themselves to the seabed
Their crowns are pointed into the water current
Feathery pinnules catch floating food particles
This detritus is propelled down towards a mouth
When Tim Ewin was notified, he immediately recognised the quarry’s importance and arranged for an expert team to come in and conduct a systematic search. Sally and Neville, far from being pushed aside by the professionals, are integral members of the group. Their local knowledge and homemade elderflower cordial are greatly appreciated.
Working the site is a mucky business. Recent rains have turned the floor of the quarry into a mud bath, and the precise and careful process of fossil excavation means the researchers have no choice but to get down on their hands and knees in the sticky mess.
“Some nice things are being protected by overturned food trays. It might not look like it in all this mud but there are actually some places where we’re not supposed to put our feet,” says NHM curator Zoe Hughes. “But there’s such an abundance, it’s maybe not such a concern,” quips colleague Katie Collins. “There’s such a bonanza of stuff.”
Slabs go through a triage process to select the best fossils for future study
The focus is those clay layers. These hold the mass of echinoderms. The context appears to be a busy swathe of sea-bottom where nutrients were constantly being delivered to the site. You see this in the occasional chunk of Jurassic wood that pokes out from the goo. Maybe there was a delta not far away that was directing food-laden waters to this scene. This can explain the abundance of fossil animals but it doesn’t explain their supreme preservation. For that, we have to return to the idea of a calamity. The clue to the drama is recorded in the harder, more sand-rich bands of clay – a signal of a sudden shift towards a more energetic environment.
“What we have is something very suggestive of a dramatic mudflow,” explains Zoe. “We have this happy little ecosystem and then, boom! – something catastrophic happens.
“Perhaps there was an earthquake that caused the mudslide and this came in and covered everything up. This is why the preservation is so amazing because the scavengers couldn’t then get to all those animals to pick them apart.”
As Neville Hollingworth likes to put it: “What we’ve got here is a sort of Jurassic Pompeii.”
NHM senior fossil preparator Mark Graham cleans up the fossils using a blast of air and powder
