Stunning dark ages mosaic found at Roman villa in Cotswolds
In Britain, life at the beginning of the dark ages is commonly perceived to be a fairly uncomfortable period, an epoch of trouble and misery with the expulsion of Roman rulers leading to economic misery and cultural stagnation.
But a stunning discovery at the Chedworth Roman villa in the Cotswolds suggests that some people at least managed to maintain a rich and sophisticated lifestyle.
National Trust archaeologists have established that a mosaic at the Gloucestershire villa was probably laid in the middle of the fifth century, years after such homes were thought to have been abandoned and fallen into ruin.
The mosaic, found in what may have been a summer dining room, is not quite as splendid as the ones at the villa dating to Roman times, but it seems to show the residents were clinging on to a very decent standard of living.
Martin Papworth, a National Trust archaeologist, said the find was hugely exciting. He said: “The fifth century is a time which marks the beginning of the sub-Roman period, often called the dark ages, a time from which few documents survive, and archaeological evidence is scarce.”
Four hundred years of Roman rule ended in Britain in about 410AD. Papworth said: “It has generally been believed that most of the population turned to subsistence farming and, after the break with Rome, Britannia’s administrative system broke down into a series of local fiefdoms.
Aerial view of the mosaic.
“What is so exciting about the dating of this mosaic at Chedworth is that it is evidence for a more gradual decline.
The creation of a new room and the laying of a new floor suggests wealth, and a mosaic industry continuing 50 years later than had been expected.”
The fifth-century mosaic is of an intricate design. Its outer border is a series of circles alternately filled with flowers and knots. It is of poorer quality than the fourth-century ones found at the villa and others like it.
There are several mistakes, suggesting the skills of the craftspeople were being eroded. But it is nevertheless an attractive floor.
The identities of the people living at the villa in this era are lost in the mists of time. “They could have been dignitaries, people with money, influence, and friends in high places,” said Papworth.
He suggested it was also possible that the area was not so badly affected by hostile raids that were taking place in the north and east.
“It is interesting to speculate why Chedworth villa’s owners were still living in this style well into the fifth century. It seems that in the West Country, the Romanised way of life was sustained for a while.”
It was possible to date the mosaic thanks to traces of carbon found in a trench dug to build a wall to create the room the mosaic was found in.
Dating the carbon strongly suggested the wall was built between 424 and 544 AD. The mosaic was laid in the newly created room after the wall was built.
Stephen Cosh, who has written about Britain’s known Roman mosaics, said: “I am still reeling from the shock. It will be important to research further sites in the region to see whether we can demonstrate a similar refurbishment at other villas which continued to be occupied in the fifth century. But there is no question that this find at Chedworth is of enormous significance – it’s tremendously exciting.”
Lidar Reveals Network of Ancient Villages in Brazil’s Rainforest
Jose Iriarte and Mark Robinson of the University of Exeter and their multinational team of scientists explored Brazil’s southern Acre State with Lidar remote sensing equipment, according to a statement issued by the University of Exeter, and revealed a sequence of more than 35 villages dating from A.D. 1300 to 1700 in the thick vegetation of the Amazon.
This is further evidence the rainforest has long-been occupied by indigenous communities, whose cultures rose, fell, transformed, and rose again, long before Europeans made an impact in the Americas.
The research shows after the abandonment of the large geometrically patterned ceremonial earthworks, around AD 950, a new culture arose with communities living in mounded villages with highly defined concepts of social and architectural space.
Lidar scanning the forest.
The circular mound villages are connected across the wider landscape through paired sunken roads with high banks that radiate from the village circle like the marks of a clock or the rays of the sun.
The villages have both minor roads and principal roads, which were deeper and wider with higher banks. Most villages have paired cardinally orientated principal roads, two leaving in a northward direction and two leaving in a southward direction.
The survey reveals that the straight roads often connect one village to another, creating a network of communities over many kilometres.
Deforestation in the region had previously revealed the presence of large geoglyph earthworks on the landscape with archaeological research also documenting the presence of circular mound villages.
However, until now the extent of earthwork constructions, their architectural layouts, and their regional organisation remained hidden beneath the remaining dense tropical forest.
Experts from the UK and South America used a RIEGL VUX-1 UAV Lidar sensor integrated into an MD 500 helicopter to document architectural features below the forest canopy, revealing a more complex and spatially organised landscape than previously thought.
Over 35 villages and dozens of roads were documented in the research with many more predicted to still be hidden below the unexplored jungle.
The villages were composed of 3 to 32 mounds arranged in a circle, the diameter of which ranged from 40 m to 153 m with the area enclosed by the central plaza ranging from ~0.12 to 1.8 ha.
The research was carried out by Jose Iriarte, and Mark Robinson from the University of Exeter; Jonas Gregorio de Souza from Universitat Pompeu Fabra; Antonia Damasceno and Franciele da Silva from the Instituto do Patrimônio Histórico e Artístico Nacional; Francisco Nakahara from the Federal University of Pará; Alceu Ranzi from the Federal University of Acre and Luiz Aragao from the Brazil National Institute for Space Research.
The findings are published in a paper in the Journal of Computer Applications in Archaeology and footage of Jose Iriarte and Ella Al-Shamahi locating the village on foot, can be seen on the programme Jungle Mystery: Lost Kingdoms of the Amazon on Channel 4 at 6.30 pm on 5th December.
Professor Iriarte said: “Lidar has allowed us to detect these villages, and their features such as roads, which wasn’t possible before because most are not visible within the best satellite data available. The technology helps to show diverse and complex construction history of this part of the Amazon.
“Lidar provides a new opportunity to locate and document earthen sites in forested parts of Amazonia characterized by dense vegetation. It can also document the smallest surficial earthen features in the recently opened pasture areas.”
Fossilized Insect Discovered Not in Amber, But in Opal
For not just its lush, fiery hues, but also its elaborate contributions to the fossil record of the Earth, Amber has long been prized. As Vasika Udurawane writes for Earth Archives, the petrified tree resin starts out as a viscous liquid, slowly hardening over millions of years and preserving the entrapped remains of creatures that find themselves caught up in the process.
To date, researchers have recovered amber fossils featuring such lively scenes as a spider attacking a wasp, an ant beleaguered by a parasitic mite, and even a lizard seemingly suspended in mid-air—or rather mid-amber.
Until now, Gizmodo’s Ryan F. Mandelbaum reports, most scientists believed that such high-quality fossil specimens were unique to amber. But an intriguing find by gemologist Brian Berger could upend this notion, proving that the slow-forming gemstone opal is also capable of preserving the remains of ancient animals.
Writing in a blog post for Entomology Today, Berger explains that he recently purchased an opal originating from the Indonesian island of Java. Dotted with a rainbow of colors—from amber-Esque shades of yellow and red to neon green and dark blue—the gemstone is impressive in and of itself. Add in the insect seemingly entombed within, however, and the opal transforms from a precious stone into a significant scientific discovery.
“You can see what appears to be a complete insect encased beautifully inside,” Berger notes. “… The insect appears to have an open mouth and to be very well preserved, with even fibrous structures extending from the appendages.”
Gemologist Brian Berger purchased the Indonesian opal last year (Brian Berger)
According to Gizmodo’s Mandelbaum, it’s possible the bug was trapped in amber that then underwent a process known as opalization. Much like fossilization turns bone into stone, opalization can render organic specimens opals’ hapless prisoners.
Michelle Starr of Science Alert points out that researchers currently have a limited understanding of opal formation. Right now, the dominant theory involves silica-laden water, which flows across sediment and fills cracks and cavities in its path. As the water evaporates, it leaves behind silica deposits, starting a process that repeats until an opal finally forms.
In Indonesia, home of Berger’s specimen, opalization takes on an added twist. Volcanic fluid, rather than simply water, races over the Earth and fills faults. As the fluid cools down, water contained within leaves behind silica deposits, launching the lengthy journey of opal formation.
It’s worth noting, according to Starr, that opalization appears to require a hollow cavity. Amber, however, does not fit these parameters, leaving scientists puzzled over how the opal in question if it indeed started out as amber, came to be.
Ben McHenry, senior collection manager of Earth sciences at the South Australian Museum, tells Starr that the specimen could share similarities with opalized wood, which is a common occurrence in Indonesia.
In an interview with Gizmodo’s Mandelbaum, Ryan McKellar, curator of invertebrate paleontology at the Royal Saskatchewan Museum in Canada, adds that Berger’s opal reminds him of a specimen featuring wood partially embedded in resin.
The section of the wood covered in amber was preserved much like a fossilized insect, but the other side, exposed to the natural environment, transformed into petrified wood.
Moving forward, Berger hopes to recruit an entomologist or paleontologist better equipped to study the unusual opal and its insect resident.
As Science Alert’s Starr notes, the gemologist has already submitted the stone to the Gemological Institute of America, which issued a report authenticating the specimen as “unaltered, untampered precious opal, with a genuine insect inclusion.”
Reflecting on the find’s potential significance in an interview with Starr, Berger concludes, “If the process of formation is correct, from tree sap with an insect through a sedimentary process, to copal, to amber, to opal it could mean the insect has the possibility to be one of the oldest ever discovered.”
The largest gold nugget ever found is named the Alaska Centennial Nugget
The largest gold nugget ever found in Alaska is named the Alaska Centennial Nugget. It weighs a whopping 9.1475325 kilograms and was found near the town of Ruby, Alaska in 1998.
Barry Clay was placer mining an area along Swift Creek that was known for producing large nuggets. He was pushing dirt with his bulldozer when something unusual caught his eye.
He jumped out of the dozer and picked up the object. He immediately knew by the weight that he had unearthed a huge gold nugget. He immediately buried the nugget under a nearby tree until he could figure out what to do with it.
When he finally took it into town for further examination, it was determined that he had found the largest nugget ever found in Alaska, and the second-largest nugget ever found in the Western Hemisphere behind the Boot of Cortez nugget found in Mexico.
It was named the Centennial nugget because it was found on the 100th anniversary of the Klondike Gold Rush, which brought thousands of men north to Alaska in search of gold.
Its discovery in 1998 shows that there are without a doubt lots of huge gold nuggets left to be discovered. They haven’t all been discovered, not by a long shot!
With the record high gold prices in recent years and the renewed interest in gold mining, there is a very good chance that more big gold nuggets will be found in the very near future.
Correspondingly, if you would like to learn more about gold prices and the potential wealth boosting benefits of investing in precious metals like gold then you can get gold at gsiexchange.com and other similar websites online. Just remember to do plenty of research before making any major investments.
Many other large nuggets have been found in the Ruby Mining District as well, including numerous nuggets that weighed over a pound.
Alaska has by far the most commercial mining operations compared to other states, mainly due to its miner friendly regulations comparison to other states.
Alaska has a reputation for large nuggets as well. Overall gold produced here is not as high as other states like California and Nevada, but if you want to find a huge gold nugget in the United States, Alaska is the best place to look.
The ancient buried city of Akrotiri, Santorini: Greece Pompeii
The ruins of a Bronze Age sophisticated settlement that thrived centuries before being eradicated by a major volcanic eruption are tucked away from the southern tip of Santorini.
The remains of the Minoan town of Akrotiri are remarkably well preserved, like the Roman ruins of Pompei. In the middle of the second millennium BC, the settlement erupted, when Thera sat on a volcano, and its people fled.
The volcanic matter enveloped the entire island of Santorini and the town itself, preserving the buildings and their contents, and visitors can still identify houses and pots.
The archaeological site of Akrotiri.
The settlement of Akrotiri is one such site. Unlike Pompeii, however, no literary evidence for the destruction of Akrotiri is available to us. As a matter of fact, the city was only discovered by an archaeological excavation conducted in 1967.
Akrotiri was a Bronze Age settlement located on the southwest of the island of Santorini (Thera) in the Greek Cyclades. This settlement is believed to be associated with the Minoan civilization, located on the nearby island of Crete, due to the discovery of the inscriptions in Linear A script, as well as similarities in artifacts and fresco styles.
The earliest evidence for human habitation of Akrotiri can be traced back as early as the 5 th millennium B.C. when it was a small fishing and farming village. By the end of the 3 rd millennium, this community developed and expanded significantly.
One factor for Akrotiri’s growth may be the trade relations it established with other cultures in the Aegean, as evidenced in fragments of foreign pottery at the site. Akrotiri’s strategic position between Cyprus and Minoan Crete also meant that it was situated on the copper trade route, thus allowing it to become an important center for processing copper, as proven by the discovery of molds and crucibles there.
Remarkably preserved artifacts are revealed from the ruins of ancient Akrotiri, Greece.
Akrotiri’s prosperity continued for about another 500 years. Paved streets, an extensive drainage system, the production of high-quality pottery, and further craft specialization all point to the level of sophistication achieved by the settlement. This all came to an end, however, by the middle of the 2 nd century B.C. with the volcanic eruption of Thera. Although the powerful eruption destroyed Akrotiri, it also managed to preserve the city, very much like that done by Vesuvius to Pompeii.
The volcanic ash has preserved much of Akrotiri’s frescoes, which can be found in the interior walls of almost all the houses that have been excavated in Akrotiri. This may be an indication that it was not only the elites who had these works of art.
The frescoes contain a wide range of subjects, including religious processions, flowers, everyday life in Akrotiri, and exotic animals. In addition, the volcanic dust also preserved negatives of disintegrated wooden objects, such as offering tables, beds, and chairs.
This allowed archaeologists to produce plaster casts of these objects by pouring liquid Plaster of Paris into the hollows left behind by the objects. One striking difference between Akrotiri and Pompeii is that there were no uninterred bodies from in the former. In other words, the inhabitants of Akrotiri were perhaps more fortunate than those of Pompeii and were evacuated before the volcanic dust reached the site.
Plaster castings of the corpses of a group of human victims of the 79 AD eruption of the Vesuvius, found in the so-called “Garden of the fugitives” in Pompeii. No such remains exist at Akrotiri, indicating the people had time to evacuate.
‘Spring flowers and swallows’ detailed in a delicate Akrotiri fresco
In 2016, Russian cybersecurity expert Eugene Kaspersky gave archaeologists interested in excavating Akrotiri a huge economic boost by funding three major projects at the ancient site. This is how he explained his reason for financial support:
“What I find magical about Akrotiri and the decades-long, ongoing archaeological research is the sense of an unpredictable past. The fact that following a volcano eruption 3,500 years ago, we modern people are trying to comprehend how these people lived back then. And I believe that we have plenty to discover. Do you think that 3,500 years from now anyone will be interested in finding out how we lived?”
The eruption of Thera also had an impact on other civilizations. The nearby Minoan civilization, for instance, faced a crisis due to the volcanic eruption. This is debatable, however, as some have speculated that the crisis was caused by natural disasters occurring prior to the eruption of Thera.
The short term climate change caused by volcanic eruption is also believed to have disrupted the ancient Egyptian civilization. The lack of Egyptian records regarding the eruption may be attributed to the general disorder in Egypt during the Second Intermediate Period.
Nevertheless, the available records speak of heavy rainstorms occurring in the land, which is an unusual phenomenon. These storms may also be interpreted metaphorically as representing the elements of chaos that needed to be subdued by the Pharaoh.
Some researchers have even claimed that the effects of the volcanic eruption were felt as far away as China. This is based on records detailing the collapse of the Xia Dynasty at the end of the 17th century B.C., and the accompanying meteorological phenomena. Finally, the Greek myth of the Titanomachy in Hesiod’s Theogony may have been inspired by this volcanic eruption, whilst it has also been speculated that Akrotiri was the basis of Plato’s myth of Atlantis.
Thus, Akrotiri and the eruption of Thera serve to show that even in ancient times, a catastrophe in one part of the world can have repercussions on a global scale, something that we are more used to in the better-connected world of today.
This abandoned site was once the ‘City of 1,001 Churches’
You know that heavy feeling you get when you see an ancient site or ruin and can almost feel all the lives that have passed through it and try to imagine it in all its former glory? Well, look no further than Ani, a medieval Armenian city on the Turkish border, deemed worthy of being called a treasure of world cultural heritage when UNESCO recognized it as such in the early hours of July 15, 2016.
Once a hustling and bustling commercial center on a branch of the ancient Silk Road, sitting at the crossroads of other trade routes that flowed into the heart of Anatolia, Ani now lies off the beaten track – deserted and exotic in all its remoteness.
As with many other important archaeological sites, Ani, too, was built high on a secluded hilltop on fertile volcanic tuff, not far from a nearby water source. With deep-running gorges to its east and west that acted as natural borders and a great defense, the area was the perfect place to call home, once upon a time.
The Monastery of the Hripsimian Virgins, in the ruins of the city of Ani,The monastery is thought to have been built between 1000 and 1200 AD, near the height of Ani’s importance and strength. The Akhurian River below acts as the modern border between Turkey and Armenia.
The first people to settle in the area did so around 3000 B.C., setting up camp on the banks of the emerald green Akhurian River (locally known as Arpaçay).
From the outside, the city seems like a fortress to many, with majestic walls saluting visitors, their sheer expanse growing ever-so overwhelming upon entrance through the Lion Gate but inside lies a different world.
A Military warning sign with the Citadel behind, in Ani
If you were expecting perfectly preserved grandiose buildings that have stood the test of time, you are likely to be very disappointed. Time, nature, earthquakes, and people through wars and invasion have not been kind to Ani, and it shows. It is run down, it is forgotten but that’s what makes it different. It reeks of history. It carries that daunting air that makes you question your very existence, with the ruins of the city crumbling under the heaviness of all the countless experiences of Saka Turks, Sassanids, the Byzantines, Georgian Atabegs, Seljukians, Ottomans, and Russians, just to name a few.
It is deemed a “world city” and the cradle of civilizations and rightly so – it bore witness to 23 civilizations and dynasties throughout the centuries.
Ani saw its best times and expanded greatly when it became the capital of the Bagratid Kingdom of Armenia in the 10th and 11th centuries, growing to a population of about 200,000 at its peak, much larger than London at the time.
The ancient city shows its multicultural fabric in every square inch. From the Seljuk geometric wall patterns to frescoes and elaborate carvings, the influences of Armenian pagan rituals as well as Christian and Muslim religious traditions are evident in the city of tolerance.
Ani, as viewed from across the border, in Armenia.
Still a hidden gem
The city exudes authentic beauty throughout all of the seasons. In winter, under a blanket of pristine snow, it looks like a long-lost frozen kingdom, in autumn it looks mystique and broody, hiding secrets awaiting to be discovered.
Once warmer weather comes round, it almost springs back to life, growing more verdant with every raindrop and filling you up with a sense of adventure that doesn’t come with many historic European sites choked by hordes of tourists.
Thanks to its remote location, once you step in the ruins, it gives you this rush that makes you feel like you’re the first people to (re)discover such profound age in a long time.
All the structures in Ani were built using local volcanic basalt, which was easy to carve, a functional insulator, and came in many vibrant colors such as rosy reds and jet blacks. Not all of the buildings are situated on the central route used by guides or explorers nor are they easily accessible, and the usual half-day trips give you nowhere near enough time to explore every single one scattered across the plateau. So if you’d like to take it all in, it’s best to set aside a few days.
The largest building standing in Ani is the cathedral. A rather Gothic looking structure with novel features such as pointed arches and a now nonexistent dome, the cathedral is an impressive piece of Armenian architecture.
Its importance as a house of God was preserved even when it changed hands throughout history, becoming the first place where Muslim prayers were held in Anatolia after the Seljuk’s momentous victory in the Battle of Manzikert (1071), which opened up the gates of Anatolia to the Turks.
The cathedral, however, was greatly damaged in a devastating earthquake in 1319 as well as during the Mongol invasion, events that marked the beginning of the city’s great decline. By the time the 17th century rolled around, the city was left desolate.
There are numerous other sanctuaries and structures in the city that shed light on the past. The Ebul Menucehr Mosque, the first Turkish mosque on Anatolian soil, the churches of Amenaprgich (the Holy Savior Cathedral), Tigran Honentz (the Church of St. Gregory) and Abugamir Pahlavuni (the Church of the Holy Redeemer), in addition to countless monasteries and chapels dotting the vast meadows, are just a few that have contributed to Ani’s historical reputation.
The ruined church of the Holy Redeemer
And as if you needed another excuse to catch the nostalgic Eastern Express, to embark on your journey to the ancient archaeological site of Ani all you need is to hop on that train from Ankara. Once you arrive in Kars’ city center, it’s up the hills we go by car or bus, over bends and rocks for about 42 kilometers, passing flocks of sheep and herds of cows, where the famous Kars gruyere comes from, slowly leaving behind city life to step back in time.
Oldest fossils on Earth discovered in 3.7bn-year-old Greenland rocks
According to recent research, tiny sediment ripples on an ancient seafloor, captured inside a 3.7 billion-year-old rock in Greenland, possibly the earliest fossils of living organisms ever found on Earth.
The research, led by Allen Nutman, head of the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Wollongong in Australia, described the discovery of what looks like tiny waves, 0.4 to 1.5 inches (1 to 4 centimeters) high, frozen in a cross-section of the surface of an outcrop of rock in the Isua Greenstone Belt in southwestern Greenland, a formation made up of what geologists regard as the oldest rocks on the Earth’s surface.
The researchers said the ripples are the fossilized remains of cone-shaped stromatolites, layered mounds of sediment, and carbonates that build up around colonies of microbes that grow on the floor of shallow seas or lakes.
According to the scientists, the new discovery, detailed online today in the journal Nature, supports theories that life on Earth originated during the so-called Hadean eon more than 4 billion years ago, a period of intense volcanic activity when large meteorites and icy comets frequently bombarded Earth. This was also the time when the first bodies of water formed on the planet’s surface.
The rock outcrop was found only after a series of warm summers in southwestern Greenland caused large patches of snow at the site to melt earlier than normal, revealing rocks that had not been examined by researchers since the Isua Greenstone Belt was first explored in the 1980s, Nutman told Live Science.
The stromatolites in figure a are from Greenland; those in c and d are younger stromatolites from Western Australia. Figure b shows the layers created by microbes as they formed the Greenland stromatolites (blue lines). ‘Storms’ are several overlapping stromatolites.
“Most of the rocks there are very deformed and modified by later mountain-building processes, but you do find just very tiny little areas that have survived with their original volcanic or sedimentary structures not destroyed,” Nutman said. “But this is the first one of the surviving structures where we actually have stromatolites.”
Under pressure
Remarkably, the structures were found in an outcrop of metamorphic rock that was once subject to intense underground heating and pressure, which distorted their original shapes and changed their chemical composition.
Allen Nutman (left) and Vickie Bennet (right) with a specimen of 3.7-billion-year-old stromatolites from Isua, Greenland
“The overall features, such as the shape of the stromatolites, are preserved,” Nutman said. “But some of the finer details of the very fine layering have certainly been erased — although, as we show in the paper, there are vestiges of that left.”
Sediment structures that look like stromatolites can form without the involvement of microbial life, but the researchers said they examined the chemistry and minerals in the rocks and were able to establish that they contain the fossilized remains of a colony of ancient microbes.
The 3.7-billion-year-old structures described in the new study are about 220 million years older than the fossils previously regarded as the oldest known fossils on Earth. Those 3.5-billion-year-old stromatolites, found in sedimentary rocks in Western Australia, precipitated over billions of years without metamorphic heating. Abigail Allwood, an astrobiologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, whose 2006 study about the Australian fossils established their biological origin, said the new study will likely face close scrutiny.
“These kinds of discoveries always do [cause controversy], especially when they first come out, and in this case, it’s particularly amazing because they were found in metamorphic rocks that have been significantly altered and transformed from their original characteristics,” Allwood told Live Science.
Allwood reviewed the new study by Nutman and his colleagues for a separate opinion piece published in the journal Nature. Allwood’s 2006 study is cited in the new paper, but she did not contribute directly to the latest research.
“It’s remarkable that they have found [the structures], and they’ve done a good job of analyzing what’s there — but the alteration that the rocks have seen means that there’s just a whole lot of stuff that you’d typically like to see to make such an extraordinary claim, that just isn’t preserved,” she said.
Life or nonlife?
Geochemist Balz Kamber, chair of geology and mineralogy at Trinity College Dublin in Ireland, has also studied the stromatolite fossils from Western Australia. He told Live Science that the new finds would no doubt face further scientific tests to assess the strength of the claims for a biological origin. But he added that the new structures appear to be a far better prospect for evidence of ancient life than another set of fossils reported nearly two decades ago on Greenland’s Akilia Island, which were later shown not to have a biological origin.
Kamber also said there can be little doubt that the conical structures identified in the new research are the result of sedimentation on the floor of a marine environment, regardless of whether they can be shown to have a biological origin. This means that the structures are not only evidence of standing bodies of water on the Earth’s surface 3.7 billion years ago, but also bodies of land crossed by rivers that carried chemical solutes into the ancient oceans, he said.
Both Kamber and Allwood also said the new findings have implications for the field of astrobiology and the search for evidence of past life on other planets — particularly on Mars. Kamber said these potential clues about the very early emergence of life on Earth in the Hadean period supports his own recent research, published earlier this year, about the prospects for life in the water-filled craters caused by meteorite and comet impacts on the early Earth.
“I think the enclosed impact basins at the tail end of the bombardment at 3.8 [billion] to 3.85 billion years ago would have made great places for life to emerge from,” he said.
Allwood added that there is also clear evidence that, at the time the rocks at Isua were forming 3.7 billion years ago, conditions on Mars were similar to those on early Earth.
“[T]here were similar environments in bodies of water standing at the surface of Mars, offering a similar kind of environment to the ones that hosted the early evidence of life on Earth, at Isua and younger,” she said.
Until now, there had been a gap between the start of the fossil record on Earth and the youngest areas on Mars, where there was good evidence for standing bodies of water in the past.
“And you had to imagine that life could have arisen there before they dried up — but now at least we may have one example in the fossil record showing us that life can arise that quickly,” Allwood said.
5,000-year-old Bryde’s whale skeleton unearthed in Thailand
An unusual, partly fossilized skeleton belonging to a Bryde whale, estimated to be about 5,000 years old, has been discovered by researchers in Thailand at an inland site west of Bangkok.
At the beginning of November, a skeleton weighing 12.5 meters (41ft), about the length of a truck, was discovered by a cyclist who saw some of the vertebrae coming out of the ground.
Since then, a team of scientists has been excavating the site.
Scientists say the bones need to be carbon-dated to determine the exact age of the skeleton
“This whale skeleton is thought to be the only one in Asia,” said Pannipa Saetian, a geologist in the Fossil Protection division of the Department of Mineral Resources.
“It’s very rare to find such a discovery in near-perfect condition,” said Pannipa, estimating that about 90 percent of the whale’s skeleton had been recovered.
“Yesterday, we found the right shoulder and fin,” she said, noting that about 36 backbone pieces had been unearthed. The bones needed to be carbon-dated to determine the exact age of the skeleton, she said.
An archaeologist works at the excavation site at Samut Sakhon on Friday.
Once the painstaking process of cleaning and preserving the fragile skeleton is complete, it will be exhibited.
Scientists hope the skeleton will provide more information to aid research into Bryde’s whale populations existing today as well as the geological conditions at the time.
Bryde’s whales, sometimes known as tropical whales for their preference for warmer waters, are found in coastal waters in parts of the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic Oceans, including in the Gulf of Thailand.
Highly endangered, there are some 200 remaining of the whales in the South Pacific nation’s waters, and about 100,000 worldwide.
In 2016, New Zealand researchers gained insight into a pair of Bryde’s whales feeding off an Auckland coast in one of the first uses of drone technology to study the animals.
The footage revealed an adult and calf frolicking in the water and using a “lunge” feeding technique to feast on plankton and shoals of small fish.
In 2014, a 10.8-meter-long whale thought to be a Bryde’s whale, washed up at a remote beach in Hong Kong’s New Territories.
Conservationists said it could have died at sea before drifting to an the inner bay off Hung Shek Mun, in Plover Cove Country Park.
