‘Extinct Fossil Fish’ Dating Back 420 Million Years Found Alive in Madagascar
Shark hunters have found a 420m year-old ‘extinct’ four-legged fossil fish alive in ocean
Shark hunters have rediscovered a population of fish that predates dinosaurs that many believed to be extinct. The “four-legged fossil fish” known as the coelacanth, has been found alive and well in the West Indian Ocean off the coast of Madagascar, according to Mongabay News.
Their re-emergence is partly because of fishermen using gillnets in their shark-hunting expeditions.
As they continue to target sharks for their fins and oil these deep-sea nets can reach where the fish gathers, around 328 to 492 feet below the water’s surface.
The species, which dates back 420 million years, was thought to have been extinct until 1938.
But the conservation news site said scientists were shocked to find a member of the “Latimeria chalumnae” species still alive, with its eight fins, a specific spotting pattern on the scales and huge bodies.
A recent study in the SA Journal of Science indicated that the coelacanths might face a new threat to survival with the uptick in shark hunting, which began booming in the 1980s.
Researchers wrote in the paper: “The jarifa gillnets used to catch sharks are a relatively new and more deadly innovation as they are large and can be set in deep water,” the researchers noted in their paper.
“They fear that the coelacanths are now at risk for ‘exploitation’, particularly in Madagascar.
“There is little doubt that large mesh jarifa gillnets is now the biggest threat to the survival of coelacanths in Madagascar.”
The lead author of the study Andrew Cooke told Mongabay News he and the others were shocked at the increase of accidental captures of the creature.
Newsweek reported he said: “When we looked into this further, we were astounded [by the numbers caught]…even though there has been no proactive process in Madagascar to monitor or conserve coelacanths,”
Coelacanths or Latimeria are carnivorous fish that live up to 60 years and grow as large as 6.5 feet and weigh approximately 198 pounds.
Their study suggests that Madagascar is the “epicentre” of various coelacanth species and says vital conservation steps are taken to preserve the ancient species.
But Madagascan government marine researcher Paubert Tsimanaoraty Mahatante told the site he is not concerned with the species becoming a hot commodity among hunters.
He reportedly said: “Catching a coelacanth is totally uncommon and people are in some ways even afraid to catch something so uncommon. So I don’t think that coelacanths are being targeted deliberately,”
But Cooke and his team want to continue educating people about the unique species based on around 40 years of research.
The paper in the SA Journal of Science provides is first comprehensive account of Madagascar coelacanths and shows the existence of a regionally important population.
Mysterious three-mile wide ‘star map dating back 150,0000 YEARS’ found in Hawaii
Perhaps you haven’t still scrolled through the internet for the latest videos of mind-blowing discoveries that have been posted by some of the content creators of some platforms. However, we’ve found something interesting and of course incredible for you today.
The official content creator of the channel “Third Phase of Moon,” Brett Cousins, said that he had never made discoveries by himself and published until he found some information across an insane discovery.
He has only published discoveries that had been reported worldwide until this incredible moment. Anyhow, this is considered the oldest petroglyphs that humanity has ever found.
He was the first to come across this incredible discovery through the usage of Google Earth. He had discovered it on an ancient celestial star map.
The dating is believed to be more than 150,000 years.
As per Brett Cousins, his novel discovery that he was able to find in Hawaii can help reveal the hidden secrets of the ancient civilizations if we sit back and put some effort into it.
Brett was able to drag the attention of more than 19,000 viewers on his YouTube channel since the release of this great finding. Among them were some of the greats too.
Brett has an idea that this star map as well as the astronomical site have a connection with the mysterious Nazca Lines.
Pre-Human Fossils Suggest Mankind Emerged From Europe Rather Than Africa
The common lineage of great apes and humans split several hundred thousand earlier than hitherto assumed, according to an international research team headed by Professor Madelaine Böhme from the Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment at the University of Tübingen and Professor Nikolai Spassov from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.
The researchers investigated two fossils of Graecopithecus freybergi with state-of-the-art methods and came to the conclusion that they belong to pre-humans. Their findings, published today in two papers in the journal PLOS ONE, further indicate that the split of the human lineage occurred in the Eastern Mediterranean and not — as customarily assumed — in Africa.
Present-day chimpanzees are humans’ nearest living relatives. Where the last chimp-human common ancestor lived is a central and highly debated issue in palaeoanthropology. Researchers have assumed up to now that the lineages diverged five to seven million years ago and that the first pre-humans developed in Africa.
According to the 1994 theory of French palaeoanthropologist Yves Coppens, climate change in Eastern Africa could have played a crucial role. The two studies of the research team from Germany, Bulgaria, Greece, Canada, France and Australia now outline a new scenario for the beginning of human history.
Dental roots give new evidence
The team analyzed the two known specimens of the fossil hominid Graecopithecus freybergi: a lower jaw from Greece and an upper premolar from Bulgaria. Using computer tomography, they visualized the internal structures of the fossils and demonstrated that the roots of premolars are widely fused.
The lower jaw of the 7.175 million-year-old Graecopithecus freybergi (El Graeco) from Pyrgos Vassilissis, Greece (today in metropolitan Athens).
“While great apes typically have two or three separate and diverging roots, the roots of Graecopithecus converge and are partially fused — a feature that is characteristic of modern humans, early humans and several pre-humans including Ardipithecus and Australopithecus,” said Böhme.
The lower jaw, nicknamed ‘El Graeco’ by the scientists, has additional dental root features, suggesting that the species Graecopithecus freybergi might belong to the pre-human lineage. “We were surprised by our results, as pre-humans were previously known only from sub-Saharan Africa,” said Jochen Fuss, a Tübingen PhD student who conducted this part of the study.
An upper premolar found in the Balkans. Scientists say it is 7.24 million years old. (Wolfgang Gerber, University of Tübingen)
Furthermore, Graecopithecus is several hundred thousand years older than the oldest potential pre-human from Africa, the six to seven million-year-old Sahelanthropus from Chad. The research team dated the sedimentary sequence of the Graecopithecus fossil sites in Greece and Bulgaria with physical methods and got a nearly synchronous age for both fossils — 7.24 and 7.175 million years before the present. “It is at the beginning of the Messinian, an age that ends with the complete desiccation of the Mediterranean Sea,” Böhme said.
Professor David Begun, a University of Toronto paleoanthropologist and co-author of this study added, “This dating allows us to move the human-chimpanzee split into the Mediterranean area.”
Environmental changes as the driving force for divergence
As with the out-of-East-Africa theory, the evolution of pre-humans may have been driven by dramatic environmental changes. The team led by Böhme demonstrated that the North African Sahara desert originated more than seven million years ago. The team concluded this based on geological analyses of the sediments in which the two fossils were found. Although geographically distant from the Sahara, the red-coloured silts are very fine-grained and could be classified as desert dust. An analysis of uranium, thorium and lead isotopes in individual dust particles yields an age between 0.6 and 3 billion years and infers an origin in Northern Africa.
Moreover, the dusty sediment has a high content of different salts. “These data document for the first time a spreading Sahara 7.2 million years ago, whose desert storms transported red, salty dusts to the north coast of the Mediterranean Sea in its then form,” the Tübingen researchers said. This process is also observable today. However, the researchers’ modelling shows that, with up to 250 grams per square meter and year, the amount of dust in the past considerably exceeds recent dust loadings in Southern Europe more than tenfold, comparable to the situation in the present-day Sahel zone in Africa.
Fire, grass, and water stress
The researchers further showed that, contemporary to the development of the Sahara in North Africa, a savannah biome formed in Europe.
Using a combination of new methodologies, they studied microscopic fragments of charcoal and plant silicate particles, called phytoliths. Many of the phytoliths identified derive from grasses and particularly from those that use the metabolic pathway of C4-photosynthesis, which is common in today’s tropical grasslands and savannahs. The global spread of C4-grasses began eight million years ago on the Indian subcontinent — their presence in Europe was previously unknown.
“The phytolith record provides evidence of severe droughts, and the charcoal analysis indicates recurring vegetation fires,” said Böhme. “In summary, we reconstruct a savannah, which fits with the giraffes, gazelles, antelopes, and rhinoceroses that were found together with Graecopithecus,” Spassov added
“The incipient formation of a desert in North Africa more than seven million years ago and the spread of savannahs in Southern Europe may have played a central role in the splitting of the human and chimpanzee lineages,” said Böhme. She calls this hypothesis the North Side Story, recalling the thesis of Yves Coppens, known as East Side Story.
The findings are described in two studies pubished in PLOS ONE titled “Potential hominin affinities of Graecopithecus from the Late Miocene of Europe” and “Messinian age and savannah environment of the possible hominin Graecopithecus from Europe.”
They reveal the age of the figure of the naked giant of Cerne Abbas (it is older than previously believed)
Aerial shot of the Cerne Abbas Giant.
The age of an ancient naked figure carved into a chalk hillside is being investigated by archaeologists. The Cerne Abbas Giant in Dorset was sampled for soil samples. The results of the tests are likely to show a “date range” for when the landmark was created.
It is hoped results, on soil samples from the giant’s elbows and feet will be available in July. The technique used will be the same as that used to date the Uffington White Horse in Oxfordshire in the 1990s.
Prof Phillip Toms, of the University of Gloucestershire, will attempt to date the samples using a technique called optically stimulated luminescence (OSL).
Martin Papworth, the senior archaeologist at the National Trust, said the OSL technique was used to “determine when mineral grains in soil were last exposed to sunlight”.
He said the Uffington White Horse was found to be nearly 3,000 years old which was “even more ancient than we had expected”.
“It is likely that the tests will give us a date range, rather than a specific age, but we hope they will help us better understand, and care for, this famous landmark,” he continued. The earliest recorded mention of the Cerne Abbas Giant was in 1694.
The Uffington Horse is considered the oldest hill figure of them all.
To preserve the landmark, last year a team of volunteers hammered 17 tonnes of new chalk by hand.
Local folklore has long held the 180ft (55m) chalk man to be a fertility aid. It was gifted to the National Trust in 1920 by the Pitt-Rivers family.
Early antiquarians linked the giant with the Anglo-Saxon deity Helis, while others believe he is the classical hero Hercules.
Others have said he was carved during the English Civil War as a parody of Oliver Cromwell, although he is commonly believed to have some association with a pagan fertility cult.
A further layer of mystery was revealed in the 1980s when a survey revealed anomalies that suggested he originally wore a cloak and stood over a disembodied head.
There has also been a suggestion his significant anatomy is in fact the result of merging a smaller penis with a representation of his navel during a re-cut by the Victorians.
Gordon Bishop, chairman of the Cerne Historical Society, said although some villagers would “prefer the giant’s age and origins to remain a mystery” the “majority would like to know at least whether he is ancient or no more than a few hundred years old”.
In a separate analysis, environmental archaeologist Mike Allen will analyse soil samples containing the microscopic shells of land snails to learn more about the site’s past.
Indonesia’s Early Rock Art Damaged by Climate Change
Cosmos Magazine reports that climate change is rapidly weathering rock art at the Maros-Pangkep site in Sulawesi, Indonesia, which dates to at least 44,000 years ago.
Local archaeologists and site keepers for the ancient artworks of Maros-Pangkep in Sulawesi, including intergenerational custodians, told the scientists that the rock art “is disappearing now faster than any other time in living memory,” says lead author Jillian Huntley from Griffith University, Australia.
The paintings are dated up to at least 44,000 years ago, during the Pleistocene era. Rivalling European cave art, the illustrations of hunting scenes and mystical beings are thought to be the oldest evidence of figurative art and artistic creativity on the planet.
Advanced decay of recently discovered rock art at Leang Tedongnge. This Warty Pig is part of a panel dated to more than 45,500 years in age. Credit: Basran Burhan.
Staff from the BPCB conservation agency undertaking rock art monitoring in Maros-Pangkep.
Upon investigating the chemistry of the limestone rock face, Huntley and colleagues were surprised to find pervasive evidence of salt crystallisation (haloclasty). “When I saw how high some of the chemical indicators for salts like gypsum were, I was astonished,” she says.
The salts chemically weaken the rock and mechanically separate the surface of the panels from the limestone wall and ceiling, causing the rock art to flake off the walls.
The team conducted further analysis of the types of salts to understand what was causing them to form and reviewed paleoclimate records. Results suggest natural geological weathering processes in the tropical region are being exacerbated.
“These processes are accelerated by increasing temperatures, more extreme weather,” Huntley explains: “more consecutive dry days, prolonged droughts, water from storms and flood and increasing humidity from standing water in floods and food production such as rice field and aquaculture ponds.”
Next to extensive quarry mining of limestone, the weathering poses the greatest threat to the preservation of the irreplaceable cave art, the authors say.
“The amount we have learned from studying this rock art just in the last few years is staggering,” says Huntley. It “houses the earliest yet known animal depiction and the first complex narrative scene yet found. These are important markers of people’s cognitive and social capacities.”
Another example of the wide-ranging impacts of climate change, the discovery underscores the importance of research and conservation efforts in Maros-Pangkep and across Australasia, where more sites are being discovered every year, she adds.
“We are in a race against time to document and learn from this rock art before it is irrevocably damaged.”
Hurriyet Daily News reports that archaeological investigation in Istanbul ahead of the construction of a subway station near the European shore of the Bosphorus uncovered burials dated to between 3500 and 3000 B.C.
A giant pier was built in the area and a canvas was laid on it in order to protect the finds from the weather incidents that would disrupt the excavations, which have been continuing at full speed since 2016.
The remains from the late Ottoman period and the late Byzantine period were found during the field works in addition to the ruins of a tram line and depots built-in 1910.
Below this layer, some small finds belonging to the Hellenistic and Roman periods were also unearthed, which are considered as “very significant” for the Bosphorus line.
However, the findings that excited the archaeologists the most were found in excavations made at a depth of one and a half meters above sea level.
In this section, it was revealed that there were kurgan-type graves under the stone rows.
Since all of the oldest kurgan-type tombs found in the country belonging to the early bronze age were buried after the cremation, the bones of the remains have cracked and disintegrated.
For this reason, archaeologists in the field continue their work meticulously using dental tools.
A very delicate work is done and all the graves are opened and documented during the excavations, according to Mehmet Ali Polat, an archaeologist involved in excavations.
“Kurgan-type graves found dates back to 3,500 B.C., that is, they belong to the era that we call the first bronze period in chronology,” Polat said, adding that nearly 82 graves were found inside and outside the kurgans in rows of stones.
“A total of 75 of these 82 tombs belong to cremation, that is, bodies buried by burning. Seven of them were direct burials,” he noted.
Pointing out that two terracotta figurines were found inside a tomb, Polat drew attention to the fact that such figurines had not been found before.
“There were some symbols on the figurines. When we did some research, we saw that these were runic alphabet symbols. Symbols are seen in the Vinca culture in Romania,” Polat added.
When the tombs are evaluated together with the small finds and runic alphabet symbols, it can change the migration map from Anatolia to the Balkans, to the northeast of Europe and the Black Sea, according to the expert.
Polat announced that the findings unearthed during excavations in Beşiktaş, one of the busiest squares of Istanbul, would be exhibited to the public at the top of the metro station.
Bent Sword Found in 5th-Century Soldier’s Grave in Greece
Live Science reports that Errikos Maniotis of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and his colleagues have uncovered seven graves, including a 1,600-year-old soldier’s arch-shaped grave, in an early Christian basilica discovered in 2010 ahead of subway construction in northern Greece.
This iron sword was folded in a ritual “killing” before it was buried with a soldier about 1,600 years ago.
The soldier was buried with a shield, a spear, and a spatha, a type of long straight sword used from about A.D. 250 to 450, that had been bent. “Usually, these types of swords were used by the auxiliary cavalry forces of the Roman army,” Maniotis said.
The discovery of the folded sword was “astonishing,” because the soldier was buried in an early church, but the folded sword was part of a known pagan ritual, said project co-researcher Errikos Maniotis, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Byzantine Archaeology at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece.
Although this soldier, who was likely a mercenary, may have “embraced the Roman way of life and the Christian religion, he hadn’t abandoned his roots,” Maniotis told Live Science in an email.
The soldier’s burial is the latest finding at the site of a three-aisled paleochristian basilica dating from the fifth century.
The basilica was discovered in 2010, during an excavation ahead of the construction of a subway track, which prompted researchers to call the ancient building the Sintrivani basilica, after the Sintrivani metro station. The station is in the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki, which was an important metropolis during Roman times.
The basilica was built over an even older place of worship; a fourth-century chapel, which might be the oldest Christian church in Thessaloniki, Maniotis said.
The individual’s burial in the ancient basilica.
In the seventh century, the church was damaged and only poorly renovated before it was eventually abandoned in the eighth or ninth century, Maniotis said.
During recent excavations, archaeologists found seven graves that had been sealed inside. Some of the graves contained two deceased individuals but didn’t have any artefacts. However, an arch-shaped grave contained an individual buried with weapons, including a bent spatha — a type of long, straight sword from the late Roman period (A.D. 250-450).
“Usually, these types of swords were used by the auxiliary cavalry forces of the Roman army,” Maniotis said. “Thus, we may say that the deceased, taking also into consideration the importance of the burial location, was a high-ranking officer of the Roman army.”
The individual was buried with the folded sword, a shield-boss and a spearhead.
The archaeologists still have to study the individual. “We don’t know anything about his profile: age of death, cause of death, possible wounds that he might have from the wars he fought, etc.,” Maniotis said. However, they were intrigued by his folded sword and other weapons, which included a shield-boss (the circular center of a shield) and spearhead.
So far, the folded sword is the most revealing feature in the grave. “Such findings are extremely rare in an urban landscape,” Maniotis said. “Folded swords are usually excavated in sites in Northern Europe,” including in places used by the Celts, he said. This custom was also observed in ancient Greece and much later by the Vikings, but “it seems that Romans didn’t practice it, let alone when the new religion, Christianity, dominated, due to the fact that this ritual [was] considered to be pagan,” Maniotis said.
The bent sword is a clue that the soldier was a “Romanized Goth or from any other Germanic tribe who served as a mercenary (foederatus) in the imperial Roman forces,” Maniotis wrote in the email.
The Latin word “foederatus” comes from “foedus,” a term describing a “treaty of mutual assistance between Rome and another nation,” Maniotis noted. “This treaty allowed the Germanic tribes to serve in the Roman Army as mercenaries, providing them with money, land and titles. [But] sometimes these foederati turned against the Romans.”
The archaeological team recently found ancient coins at the site, so they plan to use these, as well as the style of the sword’s pommel, or the knob on the handle, to figure out when this soldier lived, Maniotis noted.
“The soldier’s armament [weapons] will shed light to the impact that the presence of the community of foreign mercenaries had in the city of Thessaloniki, the second greatest city, since the fall of Rome and after Constantinople, in the Eastern Roman Empire.”
Mosaic and cemetery
The discovery of the ancient basilica has revealed other ancient artefacts. Archaeologists led by Melina Paisidou, an associate professor of archaeology at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, have also excavated the building’s beautiful mosaic floor, Maniotis said.
The mosaic shows a vine with birds on its stalks, including the mythical phoenix with a halo that has 13 rays at its center. Only seven other depicted birds have survived, but the archaeological team posits that there were originally 12 birds, and that the mosaic is likely an allegorical representation of Christ and the 12 apostles, Maniotis said.
In addition, a discovery at the site in 2010 revealed about 3,000 ancient burials in Thessaloniki eastern cemetery, a burial ground that was used from the Hellenistic period (about 300-30 B.C.) until just before late antiquity (A.D. 600-700), according to Ancient Origins.
The Mysterious Bronze Objects That Have Baffled Archaeologists for Centuries
One August day in 1987, Brian Campbell was refilling the hole left by a tree stump in his yard in Romford, East London, when his shovel struck something metal.
He leaned down and pulled the object from the soil, wondering at its strange shape. The object was small—smaller than a tennis ball—and caked with heavy clay. “My first impressions,” Campbell tells Mental Floss, “were it was beautifully and skillfully made … probably by a blacksmith as a measuring tool of sorts.”
Roman dodecahedra date from the 2nd or 3rd centuries AD and typically range from 4cm to 11cm (1.57-4.33 inches) in size. To date, more than one hundred of these artefacts have been found across Great Britain, Belgium, Germany, France, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland, and Hungary.
An incomplete cast copper-alloy dodecahedron (1 – 400 AD), discovered by a metal detectorist in Yorkshire, England.
What were Roman Dodecahedra Used for?
The great mystery is: how do they work and what do they do? Unfortunately, there is no documentation or notes about them from the time of their creation, so the function of the dodecahedra has not been determined.
Nevertheless, many theories and speculations have been put forward over the centuries: candlestick holders (wax was found inside one example), dice, survey instruments, devices for determining the optimal sowing date for the winter grain, gauges to calibrate water pipes or standard army bases, staff or scepter decorations, a toy to throw and catch on a stick, or simply a geometric sculpture. Among these speculations, some deserve attention.
A popular hypothesis these days for the purpose of the dodecahedra is that they were used as knitting tools to make gloves. Whether it solves the mystery or not, the YouTube video by Martin Hallett, who tested his idea with a 3D printed replica of a Roman dodecahedron and some experimental archaeology, has inspired others to try out this knitting method to make their own hand warmers.
This idea could explain the different sizes of the dodecahedra – making gloves of different sizes – and the purpose of the holes – to form the glove’s fingers.
However, one of the most accepted theories is that the Roman dodecahedron was used as a measuring device, more precisely as a range measuring an object on the battlefield. The hypothesis is that the dodecahedron was used for calculating the trajectories of projectiles. This could explain the different sized holes in the pentagrams.
A similar theory involves dodecahedra as a surveying and levelling device. However, neither of these theories has been supported by any proof and exactly how the dodecahedron could be used for these purposes has not been fully explained.
Dodecahedron from the region of Stuttgart; 2nd to 3rd Century, shown at the Württembergisches Landesmuseum, Stuttgart, Germany; Approximately 60 such dodecahedra from this region and time are known, however their function is not clear.
Or Maybe they were Astronomical Tools, Religious Relics or Toys?
One of the more interesting theories is the proposal that dodecahedra were astronomic measuring instruments for determining the optimal sowing date for winter grain.
According to G.M.C. Wagemans, “the dodecahedron was an astronomic measuring instrument with which the angle of the sunlight can be measured and thereby one specific date in springtime, and one date in the autumn can be determined with accuracy. The dates that can be measured were probably of importance for the agriculture”.
Nevertheless, opponents of this theory have pointed out that use as a measuring instrument of any kind seems to be prohibited by the fact that the dodecahedra were not standardized and come in many sizes and arrangements.
Another unproven theory claims that the dodecahedra are religious relics, once used as sacred tools for the druids of Britannia and Caledonia. However, there is no written account or archaeological evidence to support this view. Could it be that this strange item was simply a toy or a recreational game for legionnaires, during the war campaigns?
Some sources suggest they were the central objects in a bowl game similar to that of our days, with these artefacts used as markers and the players throwing stones to land them in the holes within the dodecahedra.
Two ancient Roman bronze dodecahedrons and an icosahedron (3rd c. AD) in the Rheinisches Landesmuseum in Bonn, Germany. The dodecahedrons were excavated in Bonn and Frechen-Bachem; the icosahedron in Arloff.
A Roman Icosahedron Adds to the Mystery
Another discovery deepens the mystery about the function of these objects. Some time ago, Benno Artmann discovered a Roman icosahedron (a polyhedron with 20 faces), misclassified as a dodecahedron on just a superficial glance, and put away in a museum’s basement storage. The discovery raises the question about whether there are many other geometric artefacts of different types – such as, icosahedra, hexagons, octagons – yet to be found in what was once the significant Roman Empire.
The Roman icosahedron found by Benno Artmann.
Despite the many unanswered questions, one thing is certain, the Roman dodecahedra were highly valued by their owners. This is evidenced by the fact that a number of them were found among treasure hoards, with coins and other valuable items. We may never know the true purpose of the Roman dodecahedra, but we can only hope that advances in archaeology will unearth more clues that will help solve this ancient enigma.
