A Siberian cave filled with mammoth, rhino, and bear bones is an ancient hyena lair
Inhabitants of Siberia have stumbled upon a remarkable prehistoric time capsule in what paleontologists consider the largest hyena lair ever found in Asia. The cave was untouched for 42,000 years and held a variety of animal bones.
The bones found inside the cave in Siberia date back 42,000 years. Image Credit: V. S. Sobolev Institute of Geology and Mineralogy.
Fossils of various creatures, both hunters and hunted, were discovered by paleontologists from the Pleistocene period (spanning from 2.6 million to 11,700 years ago). These include brown bears, foxes, wolves, mammoths, rhinos, yaks, deer, gazelles, bison, horses, rodents, birds, fish, and frogs.
On June 20, the scientists released a video clip (in Russian) of their discovery.
Residents of Khakassia, a republic in southern Siberia, discovered the cave five years ago, according to a translated statement from the V. S. Sobolev Institute of Geology and Mineralogy. However, due to the remoteness of the area, paleontologists weren’t able to fully explore and examine the remains until June 2022.
Paleontologists gathered approximately 880 pounds (400 kilograms) of bones, including two full cave hyena skulls. It is hypothesized that the hyenas resided in the cave due to the gnaw marks on the bones matching hyena teeth.
The skull of a cave hyena found inside the Siberian cave. Image Credit: V. S. Sobolev Institute of Geology and Mineralogy.
“Rhinos, elephants, deer with characteristic bite marks. In addition, we came across a series of bones in anatomical order. For example, in rhinos, the ulna and radius bones are together,” Dmitry Gimranov, senior researcher at the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said in the statement. “This suggests that the hyenas dragged parts of the carcasses into the lair.”
The researchers also found the bones of hyena pups – which tend not to be preserved as they are so fragile – indicating they were raised in the cave. “We even found a whole skull of a young hyena, many lower jaws, and milk teeth,” Gimranov said.
The region of Siberia is teeming with ancient animal remains, which are generally too recent to have been fossilized.
The remains of these animals, including bones, skin, flesh, and even blood, often remain remarkably well-preserved, nearly unchanged from the time of their death. This is primarily due to the cold weather effectively preserving them.
Sent to Yekaterinburg for closer examination, the bones could reveal to researchers information about the flora and fauna of that time, what animals ate, and what the climate was like in this area.
Dmitry Malikov, senior researcher from the Institute of Geology and Mineralogy of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said in the statement.
“We will also get important information from the coprolites,” the fossilized feces of the animals, he added.
Ancient Siberian worm came back to life after 46,000 years, and began reproducing!
A novel nematode species from the Siberian permafrost shares adaptive mechanisms for cryptobiotic survival.
A report from the Washington Post detailed a remarkable discovery by scientists: a female microscopic roundworm had been preserved in the Siberian permafrost for 46,000 years, and when they revived it, the creature started reproducing via parthenogenesis – a process that does not require a mate.
Study site: a) location of the Duvanny Yar outcrope on the Kolyma River, northeastern Siberia, Russia. b) view of the upper part of the outcrop composed of ice wedges and permafrost silty deposits. c) lithostratigraphic scheme of deposits, showing the location of studied rodent borrow (red circle). d) fossil rodent burrow with herbaceous litter and seeds buried in permafrost deposits; (m a.r.l. = meters above river level). PLOS Genetics
The University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa’s press release discussed an organism that was in a prolonged dormancy called cryptobiosis for thousands of years. This state, which can be sustained for a long time, halts all metabolic processes, including reproduction, development, and repair.
In the PLOS Genetics journal published on Thursday, researchers identified a new species of worm based on their genome sequencing. They stated that the worm had not been previously classified.
It was recently reported by Live Science that nematodes such as Plectus murrayi and Tylenchus polyhypnus had been revived from moss and herbarium specimens after a few decades.
The new species, Panagrolaimus kolymaensis, however, had been in hibernation for tens of thousands of years.
The female of the species P. kolymaensis has a general morphology which is pictured here. PLOS Genetics
Holly Bik, a deep sea biologist, believes that millions of different species of nematode worms can be found in various habitats, such as ocean trenches, tundras, deserts, and volcanic soils.
Nevertheless, out of these, only 5,000 marine species have been documented by researchers.
Crow, a nematologist from the University of Florida who was unconnected to the research, suggested to the Post that this worm might be a species that vanished in the prior 50,000 years.
Crow commented that it is possible that the nematode is one which has yet to be described, as it is encountered frequently.
Scientists have been aware for some time that minuscule creatures, such as the one studied, have the capacity to cease their functions in order to endure even the most extreme conditions, hence the lack of surprise over the worm’s survival of all those years, as stated in the press release.
The PLOS Genetics paper concluded that nematodes possess capabilities that could enable them to survive for long periods of geological time.
Hundreds of well-preserved prehistoric animals were found in an ancient ash bed in Nebraska
Scientists have excavated fossils of 58 rhinos, 17 horses, 6 camels, 5 deers, 2 dogs, a rodent, a saber-toothed deer, and dozens of birds and turtles in Nebraska.
In that distant past, Nebraska was a grassy savanna. Trees and shrubs dotted the landscape. It likely resembled today’s Serengeti National Park in East Africa.
The watering holes attracted prehistoric animals among Nebraska’s tall grasslands. From horses to camels and rhinoceroses, with wild dogs looming nearby, animals roamed the savanna-like region.
Teleoceras mother “3” and nursing calf (above mother’s neck and head).
Then, one day, it all changed. Hundreds of miles away, a volcano in southeast Idaho erupted. Within days, up to two feet of ash covered parts of present-day Nebraska.
Some of the animals died immediately, consumed with ash and other debris. Most of the animals lived for several more days, their lungs ingesting ash as they searched the ground for food. Within a few weeks, northeast Nebraska was barren of animals, except for a few survivors.
More than 12 million years later, in 1971, a fossil was found in Antelope County, near the small town of Royal. The skull of a baby rhino was discovered by a Nebraska paleontologist named Michael Voorhies and his wife while exploring the area. The fossil was exposed by erosion. Soon after, exploration started in the area.
It was found that birds and turtles died quickly as their skeletons lie at the bottom of the ash, right on what was the sandy bottom of the watering hole. Other animals occur in layers.
The Ashfall water hole drew creatures of all descriptions to its muddy banks. Some would probably look strange to modern eyes. Some would resemble familiar creatures that still walk the Earth. (Nebraska during the Cenozoic Era)
Above the birds and turtles lie dog-sized saber-tooth deer. Then five species of pony-sized horses, some with three toes. Above those are camel remains.
Atop them, all are the biggest, the rhinos, in a single layer. All of this is buried under about 2.5 meters (8 feet) of ash. It must have blown into the water, covering the dead.
Fossils in the ash bed are whole. They haven’t been squashed flat. Their bones are all still in place. They’re also fragile. Most fossils form when groundwater soaks into bones and teeth.
Over time, minerals from the water fill in the gaps and even replace some of the original bone. The result is a hard, rock-like fossil that can stand the test of time.
Here, however, the ash eventually locked the skeletons away from the water. After the watering hole dried up, the super-fine ash left no room between particles for new water to seep in.
The ash protected the bones, preserving them in their original positions. But they didn’t mineralize much. When scientists remove the ash around them, these bones start to crumble.
Within a few years, as more discoveries were made, the fossil site grew into a tourist attraction. Today, people visit Ashfall Fossil Beds State Historical Park to check out hundreds of fossils from 12 species of animals, including five types of horses, three species of camels, as well as a saber-toothed deer. The infamous saber-toothed cat remains a dream discovery.
Visitors view fossils inside the Hubbard Rhino Barn, a 17,500-square-foot facility that protects the fossils while allowing visitors to roam on a boardwalk. Kiosks provide information on fossils located in specific areas.
Mysterious 5,500-Year-Old Sumerian Star Map Recorded Massive Asteroid Hit To Earth
A 5,500-year-old clay tablet discovered in the 19th century in the underground library of King Ashurbanipal in Nineveh is an astronomical treasure.
The ancient “document” excavated in present-day Iraq by Sir Henry Layard offers unprecedented insight into astronomical observations that took place more than 5,500 years ago in ancient Mesopotamia. Long believed to be an Assyrian tablet, computer analysis that compared it to Mesopotamia’s sky in 3300 BC has revealed that it actually has much older Sumerian origins.
The “Astrolabe,” the earliest known astronomical instrument, is depicted on the tablet. It consists of a segmented disk-shaped star chart with rim markings for the many angles that can be measured. For more than 150 years, experts have been baffled by the ancient clay tablet housed in the British Museum. The Cuneiform tablet No. K8538 in the British Museum collection is known as “the Planisphere.” (Source)
Over 5,600 years ago, an amazing event occurred when a kilometer-long asteroid collided with the Alps in Köfels, Austria. Unfortunately, significant portions of the planisphere on this tablet (approximately 40%) are missing, due to damage caused by the sacking of Nineveh. The reverse of the tablet is not inscribed.
Archibald Sayce and Robert Bosanquet discovered the tablet’s astronomical relation in 1880 and named it “Astrolabe.” Leonard William King took the first step toward content analysis by creating a picture facsimile of the tablet. In 1912, his work was published.
The image facsimile of the cuneiform writing signs is perfectly transliterated, but he did not translate the facsimile signs into modern language. He joined an archaeological expedition to the same site at Nineveh hoping to find other astronomical tablets with additional information, but nothing useful was ever found. King presumed that K8538 was a “Planisphere,” showing the night sky over Nineveh.
Three years later, in 1915, Ernst F. Weidner released his work on K8538. He made an effort to decipher each of the 8 distinct tablet parts on the book’s six pages, but the text remained a mystery to him. He described it as “magic.” Because the star distributions on the tablet do not match those in the Nineveh sky, he rejected King’s term “Planisphere.”
K.8538, part of a circular clay tablet with depictions of constellations (planisphere)
Two authors, Alan Bond and Mark Hempsell ultimately made significant advances twenty years later. They note in the introduction to their book that, up until 2008, “there has never been a comprehensive and consistent translation of this unique tablet [which] might relate to an impact of a Near Earth Object.” (Source)
They re-translated the cuneiform inscription and claimed the tablet recorded the Köfels’ Impact, an ancient asteroid strike that struck Austria somewhere around 3100 BC. This caused a stir in the archaeological community.
Since geologists first examined the massive landslide in the 19th century, it has been a mystery. It is 500m deep and has a five-kilometer circle. It is situated near Köfels in Austria. Due to the evidence of crushing pressures and explosions, researchers in the middle of the 20th century came to the conclusion that it must have been caused by a very huge meteor impact.
Since Köfels lacks a crater, it does not appear as an impact site should to modern eyes. The idea that it is just another landslide, however, does not account for the facts that confounded the prior experts. What ties the complex Sumerian star chart found in the Nineveh library’s subterranean to the enigmatic impact that happened in Austria?
The clay tablet may be examined to determine that it is an astronomical work because it features drawings of constellations and names of recognized constellations in the text. Although it has received a lot of attention, no one has offered a credible explanation for what it is after more than a century.
The researchers have identified what the Planisphere tablet alludes to using contemporary computer algorithms that can mimic trajectories and recreate the night sky thousands of years ago. The K8538 observation tablet was created by an unknown alert Sumerian astronomer who recognized the historical significance of the event on his astronomical lookout tower and decided to record it. Bond and Hempsell dubbed him “Lugalansheigibar – the great man who observed the sky.”
Half of the tablet records planet positions and cloud cover, just like any other night, but the other half records an object large enough to note its shape even though it is still in space. The astronomers accurately recorded its trajectory relative to the stars, which is consistent with an impact at Köfels to within one degree of error.
The observation indicates that the asteroid is larger than a kilometer in diameter and that its original orbit around the Sun was an Aten type, a class of asteroid that orbits close to the Earth and is resonant with the Earth’s orbit.
This trajectory explains why there is no crater at Köfels. The incoming angle was very low (six degrees), which means the asteroid clipped a mountain called Gamskogel above the town of Längenfeld, 11 kilometers from Köfels, causing the asteroid to explode before it reached its final impact point. It grew into a five-kilometer-wide fireball as it traveled down the valley (the size of the landslide).
When it hit Köfels, it created enormous pressures that pulverized the rock and caused the landslide, but it did not create a classic impact crater because it was no longer a solid object.
Mark Hempsell, discussing the Köfels event, said: “Another conclusion can be made from the trajectory. The back plume from the explosion (the mushroom cloud) would be bent over the Mediterranean Sea re-entering the atmosphere over the Levant, Sinai, and Northern Egypt.”
“The ground heating though very short would be enough to ignite any flammable material – including human hair and clothes. It is probable more people died under the plume than in the Alps due to the impact blast.”
As a very rare scientific observation tablet, the K8538 provides comparative facts that aid in realistic forecasts of asteroid devastation and the resulting megadroughts on Earth. The British Museum is now in charge of preserving and protecting this valuable document, which was created by Sumerian astronomer Lugalansheigibar.
Mystery behind Cleopatra’s tomb: Two mummies discovered in Egypt could help solve it
The mummies of two high-status ancient Egyptians discovered in a temple on the Nile delta may bring researchers a step closer to finding the remains of Cleopatra, the legendary Egyptian queen.
The mummies, which had lain undisturbed for 2,000 years, are in a poor state of preservation because water had seeped into the tomb, according to the Guardian.
But they were originally covered with gold leaf – a luxury reserved for only the top members of society’s elite – meaning they may have personally interacted with Cleopatra.
The male and female mummies may have been priests who played a key role in maintaining the power of the legendary Egyptian queen and her lover, Mark Anthony.
Also found at the site were 200 coins bearing Cleopatra’s name and her face, which would have been pressed based on Cleopatra’s direct instructions. The location of the long-lost tomb of Mark Antony and Cleopatra VII from the year 30 BC remains unknown, although it’s somewhere near the Egyptian city of Alexandria.
But this research team are convinced excavations at the ancient city of Taposiris Magna, which is marked by a temple that still stands today, will soon uncover the ancient couple’s resting place. Despite the fact researchers have been excavating the site since 2005, only a tiny percentage of the vast site has been explored.
The two mummies found inside a sealed tomb at Taposiris Magna, where digs are ungoing to oncover the grave of Cleopatra
The temple is located near Alexandria, the capital of ancient Egypt and where Cleopatra killed herself in 30 BC
The mummies were found in what is the first ever intact tomb to be opened at Taposiris Magna – an event that’s the subject of a Channel 5 documentary to be broadcast this week.
‘Although now covered in dust from 2,000 years underground, at the time these mummies would have been spectacular,’ Dr Glenn Godenho, a senior lecturer in Egyptology at Liverpool University, told the Guardian.
‘To be covered in gold leaf shows they would have been important members of society.’
One of the mummies was found wearing an image of a scarab, pained in gold leaf, symbolising rebirth. But the 200 coins bearing Cleopatra’s likeness links the pharaoh ruler directly to Taposiris Magna, which was founded in the third century BC.
The ‘prominent nose and double chin’ of the queen as depicted on the coins suggest she wasn’t as conventionally beautiful as the actresses that portrayed her on screen – most memorably by Elizabeth Taylor in the 1963 film ‘Cleopatra’.
Dr Godenho said that the tomb of Anthony and Cleopatra is expected to be a ‘way grander affair’ than this mummified couple.
‘Although we don’t know what Ptolemaic rulers’ tombs looked like because none have ever been firmly identified yet, it’s really unlikely that they’d be nondescript and indistinguishable from the burials of their subjects,’ he told MailOnline.
‘Add to that the fact that most consider the tomb of Cleopatra and Mark Antony to be in the vicinity of Alexandria rather than out here at Taposiris Magna, and all the evidence points to these not being royal mummies at all.’
Archaeologists searching for the tomb of Anthony and Cleopatra (pictured played by Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor in the 1963 film) have zeroed in on a site in northern Egypt
Dr Kathleen Martinez, an academic from the Dominican Republic, is leading the dig at the Taposiris Magna temple. After working there for over 14 years, Dr Martinez and her colleagues are more convinced than ever Cleopatra’s tomb will be found there.
Dr Martinez is seen reacting to the opening of the newly-found mummies at Taposiris Magna in the Channel 5 documentary, which will broadcast on Thursday.
After an initial limestone slab is removed, she says: ‘Oh my god, there are two mummies … See this wonder.’
Osteoarchaeologist, Dr Linda Chapon, working to conserve the two mummies found inside a sealed tomb at Taposiris Magna
Experts believe Cleopatra made plans for herself and Anthony to be buried at a temple called Taposiris Magna in order to imitate the ancient myth of Isis and Osiris
Cleopatra was Egypt’s last pharaoh and the ruler of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt, from 51 BC to 30 BC. Cleopatra and her Roman lover Mark Anthony may have been buried at the site 2,000 years ago because of her desire to imitate an ancient prophecy, Dr Martinez believes.
During her life, which ran from 69 BC to 30 BC, Cleopatra was known both as a seductress and as a captivating personality. She famously used her charms to first seduce Julius Caesar to cement Egypt’s alliance with Rome, and then to seduce one of his successors, Mark Anthony.
In order to fix herself and Anthony as rulers in the minds of the Egyptian people, she also worked hard to associate them with the myth of Isis and Osiris. According to the myth, Osiris was killed and hacked into pieces that were scattered across Egypt. After finding all of the pieces and making her husband whole again, Isis was able to resurrect him for a time.
Dr Glenn Godenho and Dr Kathleen Martinez inside Taposiris Magna temple near Alexandria in Egypt
Kathleen Martinez, who is leading the dig, believes the site was strongly associated with the myth of Isis and Osiris – a myth that Cleopatra often tried to imitate during her life
Martinez believes Taposiris Magna was closely associated with the myth as the name means ‘tomb of Osiris’.
The inclusion of ‘Osiris’ could mean it was one of the places where his body was scattered in the story. After Mark Anthony killed himself following defeat to Octavian but before her own suicide, Cleopatra put detailed plans in place for them both to be buried there, in echoes of the myth, Dr Martinez thinks.
The temple at Taposiris Magna. The opening of the first-ever intact tomb found at Taposiris Magna will be shown on Channel 5 this week
The inside of Taposiris Magna temple, where excavation work is taking place. The temple was established between 280 and 270 BC
She previously told National Geographic: ‘Cleopatra negotiated with Octavian to allow her to bury Mark Antony in Egypt.
‘She wanted to be buried with him because she wanted to reenact the legend of Isis and Osiris.
‘The true meaning of the cult of Osiris is that it grants immortality. After their deaths, the gods would allow Cleopatra to live with Antony in another form of existence, so they would have eternal life together.’
Doubts have been cast on the theory, however, as other experts believe Cleopatra was hastily buried in Alexandria itself – the city from where she ruled Egypt until her death, believed to have been caused by snake venom.
Rare Ancient Stamps Found in Falster May Show Way to an Unknown King’s Home
In the center of Falster, southeast of Denmark, a man with a metal detector has made an important discovery. The discovery is so important that it could help write a few chapters for Danish history or at least the local history of Falster.
While Lennart Larsen was out on a rainy day and searching for anything of historical value, he suddenly heard a faint beep in his equipment, and when he checked the ground, he discovered small, interesting objects, unlike anything he had seen before.
A faint beep has indeed revealed a special stamp in the ground – a so-called Patrice – that was used to make gold images, which are believed to be gifted to the gods.
The Museum Lolland-Falster has been informed. The only two-centimeter-long object in Falster’s soil may be a trace of a former royal power on Falster, the museum said.
“This indicates that we are standing in a place that has meant some trade and probably also had some form of cultic activity. And although it’s a bit wild to say, it could also indicate that it was once a center of power on Falster,” museum inspector and archaeologist Marie Brinch from the Lolland-Falster Museum told Tv2 Øst.
This small discovery could be crucial to our comprehension of Lolland and Falster’s history.
She emphasizes that the discovery was made in an area with names dating back to the Viking Age or even earlier and that the marshland was discovered in an area that had been sacrificed to the gods in the century preceding the stamp’s creation.
Archaeologists have before come across several signs of activity from the Iron Age and the Viking Age have been found, including an enormous shipyard and a large castle from the Viking Age at Falster. However, only a small number of discoveries have been made that can demonstrate where the island’s wealthy elite resided in the years prior to the beginning of the Viking Age. The new find may help to shed light on that.
Researchers have determined the tiny objects are stamps from the era just before the Viking Age. They were created between the years 500 and 700.
According to Margrethe Watt of the National Museum, who collects and researches ancient gold coins and stamps, these are extremely rare. There have only been 28 stamps discovered in the entire Nordic region, including the one from Falster, and it is a very unique stamp. South of the Baltic Sea, no stamps or gold coins have been discovered.
This is what the figure may have looked like. However, whether the drawing behind the person’s head is a tuft of hair can determine whether it is a man or a woman on the stamp.
“The stamps are all very special. We only find them in the most important places of residence – those that we call the central places in the technical language. These are the places that we associate with the greatest magnates or kings. That’s the league we’re in here. And this stamp is at the same time very much for itself in its style,” she says.
“On the stamp from Falster, you can see a person in fine clothes, standing with their hands at a very special angle. The hands are down, and the palms are visible. It is something that we know in both Christian and pre-Christian cultures as either a sign of submission or a revelation. It is also a symbol that we see in many churches today, Watt explains.
Neither the god nor the king were shown as weak or flawed in any way. And you don’t see that on the stamp from Falster either.
Photo: Museum Lolland Falster
“This means that it is either a royal figure who submits to a god – or that it is a god who reveals himself to a human being,” she says.
“It is actually difficult to see if it is a man or a woman who is depicted. You would see that by the fact that there is a tuft of hair on the back of the piston. But it may well appear that there is, she says, and emphasizes that it requires further investigations to determine whether this is the case.
As there may be more finds in the ground at the site, Museum Lolland-Falster does not yet want to publish where the find was made – but states that it was made in central Falster.
An adult man (top skeleton) buried some 6,000 years ago in what is now France was a son of the man from whom dozens of people also buried at the site are descended.Credit: Stéphane Rottier
In the mid-2000s, archaeologists excavating a burial site in France uncovered a 6,500-year-old mystery. Among the remains of more than 120 individuals, one grave stood out.
It contained a nearly complete female skeleton alongside a few assorted bones that looked like they had been dug up and moved from another grave.
Ancient DNA from the enigmatic relocated remains now shows that they belonged to the male ancestor of dozens of the other people buried nearby.
This insight comes from a study that used ancient genomics to build the largest-ever genealogy of a prehistoric family, providing a snapshot of life in an early farming community. The study1 was published on 26 July in Nature.
Ordinary folk
Western Europe is littered with monuments that served as burying grounds for high-status individuals from a period, roughly 7,000 to 4,000 years ago, called the Neolithic.
The dozens of burials at Gurgy ‘Les Noisats’, located about 150 kilometers southeast of Paris, lack any signs of such monuments or rich grave goods, indicating that they might have belonged to commoners, says study co-author Wolfgang Haak, an archaeogeneticist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.
His team analysed the genomes of 94 of the 128 individuals recovered from the site, and used the data to determine how they were related to one another.
The researchers expected some individuals to be related, based on the composition of other Neolithic sites.
But they were astounded to discover that around two-thirds belonged to a single family tree that spanned seven generations. The closer people were buried, the more closely related they were.
Scientists used DNA to draw a family tree of people buried at the archaeological site called Gurgy ‘Les Noisats’. Dotted squares and circles represent genetically male and female individuals whose DNA could not be analysed. Portraits were drawn based on physical traits estimated from the DNA
At the top of the genealogy is the man from the mysterious grave. The jumble of bones was unique to the site, yet no grave goods or other evidence signalled his position or the reason his remains had been exhumed, says study co-author Maïté Rivollat, an archaeologist at the University of Ghent in Belgium.
The researchers have so far failed to extract DNA from the woman buried alongside him. If she is like the other adult women from the site — most of whom were not closely related to anyone else — she might have joined the family from another community.
This points to a social structure similar to those uncovered at some other prehistoric sites in which male descendants tended to stick around, whereas the women moved elsewhere.
Prehistoric social scene
The giant family tree revealed other previously hidden aspects of Neolithic life. All siblings shared the same mother and father, with no-half siblings present.
This suggests that no individuals had multiple partners. “Here it’s fairly straightforward and fairly monogamous,” says Haak. “Is that the standard life of the commoner and the non-elite?”
This contrasts with a later Neolithic burial in the United Kingdom, Hazleton North, where researchers identified a man who had reproduced with four women.
Researchers must build family trees from other ancient burials to figure out what is typical, says Chris Fowler, an archaeologist at the University of Newcastle, UK, who was part of that study.
“This type of work really breathes new life into our understanding of ancient peoples,” says Kendra Sirak, an ancient-DNA specialist at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts. She’s most curious about the man at the root of the family tree. “I would love to know what made this person so important.”
Affectionately known locally as “The Clumps”, the site is owned and managed by Earth Trust
The remains of a tiny Roman dog have been discovered at a popular walking spot.
An archaeological dig at Wittenham Clumps in Oxfordshire has uncovered the 1,800-year-old remains of a 20cm tall pooch.
The animal’s remains were unearthed at the site of a villa believed to have been owned by a wealthy Roman family.
Researchers say the dog is one of the smallest found in the UK, and was likely to have been a “much-loved pet”.
A sketch of what researchers believe the small dog would have looked like
The discovery was made at the site of charity Earth Trust’s headquarters by archaeologists from DigVentures, a social enterprise that organizes crowdfunded archaeological excavations.
Hannah Russ, a zooarchaeologist who analyzed the animal remains, said: “While it’s possible that this dog was used for hunting, we know that Romans in other parts of the empire had begun to breed and keep small dogs as pets.
“The fact that this dog was so small and had bowed legs suggests that she probably wasn’t bred for hunting [and] makes it far more likely that she was kept as a house dog, lap dog, or pet.”
A member of DigVentures holds a brooch also uncovered at the site
Maiya Pina-Dacier, from DigVentures, said the uncovered villa would have been occupied by a “relatively wealthy Roman family, who ran a farm with an assortment of working animals, including hunting or herding dogs – as well as this tiny canine”.
The remains, along with other items from the dig, including a brooch and a copper bracelet, will be displayed for the first time at Earth Trust in August, as part of the Clumps Go Ancient festival.
The Earth Trust said it would include a pop-up exhibition featuring “never-before-seen artefacts” from the dig, and demonstrations to bring to life the discoveries about the people of Wittenham Clumps and their animals.
It said in a statement: “From the Iron Age communities who created the hillfort that is now Castle Hill – and the Roman families who later lived downslope – to the farmers and tenants who manage the land today, this area has been shaped by human use and intervention throughout the ages.”
