The skull, with a set of teeth in good condition, was partially exposed by a mechanical digger removing top-soil.
New excavations on the battlefield of Waterloo have unearthed a human skeleton, amputated limbs and the remains of at least three horses.
The discoveries were made at Mont-Saint-Jean farm, which was the main allied field hospital during the battle in which the Duke of Wellington defeated French Emperor Napoleon on 18 June 1815.
Archaeologists from Waterloo Uncovered, an international charity project helping veterans and serving military recover from combat trauma, found the remains close to the spot where amputated limbs were exhumed during a previous excavation in 2019.
The skull, with a set of teeth in good condition, was partially exposed by a mechanical digger removing topsoil. Wavre-based archaeologist Véronique Moulaert, from the Walloon Heritage Agency, immediately began the painstaking task of gently lifting compacted dry earth surrounding the body, using a specialist trowel and brushes.
Wavre-based archaeologist Véronique Moulaert (left) and Brussels anthropologist Caroline Laforest.
The human and equine remains, found alongside ammunition boxes, were almost certainly dumped in a ditch used for “battlefield clearance”. There are indications that the horses were shot to put them out of their misery after sustaining terrible injuries.
“Dead soldiers, horses, amputated limbs and more would have been quickly buried in a desperate attempt to contain the spread of disease around the hospital,” explained Véronique.
Caroline Laforest, an anthropologist from the archaeosciences unit at the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences in Brussels, is working alongside her.
“We’ve already fully exposed the head, shoulders, right arm and hand, and upper left arm of the dead soldier,” said Caroline. “Once we have unearthed the whole skeleton we will move it to the Institute for washing and microscopic analysis. This will enable us to confirm the likely age and gender of the individual, although we expect it to be a man of course.”
Speaking about the latest finds, Professor Tony Pollard, director of the Centre for Battlefield Archaeology at Glasgow University and member of the Waterloo Uncovered team, said: “I’ve been a battlefield archaeologist for 20 years and have never seen anything like it. We won’t get any closer to the harsh reality of Waterloo than this.”
Phil Harding, another leading archaeologist involved with the project, added: “Finding a skeleton in this condition is a very rare occurrence, but it’s possible we will find more remains in the same area as the burials are linear.”
Leading British archaeologist Phil Harding.
Over 10,000 men lost their lives during the battle and 20,000 horses were killed or severely maimed. The bodies, man and beast alike, were dumped in mass burial pits or burnt on pyres. It’s said that bones were later exhumed and ground down to be sold as agricultural fertiliser.
In an interview with The Brussels Times ahead of the dig (3 July 2022), Belgian archaeologist Dominique Bosquet predicted there was a “good chance” more human remains would be found on the battlefield, including under the Lion Mound.
Brussels-based Bosquet previously unearthed the only other complete skeleton found on the site – during an excavation 10 years ago under what is now the car park at the Waterloo Mémorial. The skeleton is on display in the museum.
Elsewhere on the battlefield, near the church of Plancenoit, behind Napoleon’s front line, a metal detector survey by the Waterloo Uncovered team found more than 20 musket balls, evidence of the fierce fighting between French and Prussian troops during the latter stages of the battle.
In his Waterloo dispatch, written immediately after the battle, Wellington hailed the timely arrival of the Prussians as “most decisive” in securing victory for the British, Dutch-Belgian and German allied armies.
Investigations Continue at Warsaw’s World War II Jewish Ghetto
Archaeological excavations in the former Warsaw ghetto – at a site where the Jewish underground resistance was based – have unearthed items including children’s shoes and pages from books in Hebrew and Polish.
The excavations, which began in early June and are scheduled to continue until the end of July, are being coordinated by Christopher Newport University and Vistula University together with the Warsaw Ghetto Museum.
They are centred on the Miła, Dubois, Niska and Karmelicka streets in the Muranów district of Warsaw around a memorial mound named after Mordechai Anielewicz.
On June 7, another round of archaeological research and excavations was conducted in the area of the former ghetto by the Warsaw Ghetto Museum together with a team of scientists from Christopher Newport University and the Academy of Aleksander Gieysztor in Pułtusk – a branch of AFiB Vistula.
He was head of the Jewish Combat Organization (ŻOB), which was based at 18 Miła Street, and was among those thought to have died there in May 1943, during the ghetto uprising that had begun the previous month.
“This is a unique place because of the history that played out here in 1943,” Jacek Konik, an archaeologist and historian from the Warsaw Ghetto Museum who is leading the excavations, told TVN24.
“It was here that the soldiers of the Jewish Combat Organisation, surrounded by the Germans, probably committed mass suicide. Only a small group of people survived,” Konik explained. The archaeologists hope to learn about how people lived in the ghetto through the artefacts they find.
A shoe found at the site probably belonged to a Jewish child aged around 10, although nothing is known about its owner.
It is “a symbol of this place and the entire tragedy that took place here – both in the Warsaw ghetto in 1943 and later in 1944 in the whole of Warsaw [during the Warsaw Uprising]…a symbol of all the children whom somebody did not allow to grow up”, said Konik.
The brown leather slipper, made of cheap material, was found early on in the excavations An even smaller shoe was later discovered, reports Gazeta Wyborcza. They have been sent for conservation.
Among the other items the team have found are written accounts of the events that took place on the site, the remains of a burnt book collection, tableware, and ceramic tiles.
The archaeologists have managed to preserve pages from some books – “after the charred pages came into contact with the air, letters appeared” – including texts in Hebrew – probably passages from the Talmud – as well as a Jewish prayer book and an as-yet-unidentified Polish novel.
They are also investigating the possible size of a hidden shelter stretching under a number of townhouses and with six entrances. The team have managed to excavate down to the level of the floor of the cellars, which is where they have found the artefacts.
Konik said that any volunteers “interested in research and…who would like to help to regain and restore memory” are welcome to join the excavations by emailing jkonik@1943.pl or b.jozefow-czerwinska@vistula.edu.pl.
“We treat it as a kind of social obligation for as many people as possible who perhaps are not necessarily professional archaeologists to see and understand what type of history we are dealing with…history that affects us directly,” Konik added.
Warsaw’s ghetto was the largest of all those established by Nazi Germany during the Second World War. At one point it held around 460,000 Jews captive in an area of 3.4 square km (1.3 square miles).
The vast majority of those victims died in the gas chambers of Treblinka and Majdanek following deportation from the ghetto. In April 1943, the ghetto uprising – the largest single act of Jewish resistance during the war – temporarily halted the deportations.
The uprising was brutally suppressed by the German occupiers, with tens of thousands of Jews killed in the ghetto or after capture and deportation to extermination camps.
A visualisation showing the walls of the Warsaw Ghetto superimposed on the modern city.
Gold coins emerged when the earth was full; Ancient hoard of gold Roman coins discovered in plowed UK field
A cache of gold coins found buried on farmland in the United Kingdom has caught the attention of coin experts, who have linked the treasure trove to the Roman Empire.
One of the gold coins from the Roman empire was found in the English countryside. Augustus Caesar is featured on the front, and his grandson Gaius on horseback is depicted on the back.
So far, metal detectorists have discovered 11 coins on a remote stretch of cultivated field located in Norfolk, a rural county near England’s eastern coast, and experts remain hopeful that more could be unearthed in the future.
Damon and Denise Pye, a pair of local metal detectorists, found the first of several gold coins in 2017 after local farmers finished plowing the soil at the end of the harvest season, which made the land prime for exploration. The haul has been dubbed “The Broads Hoard” by local numismatists (coin specialists and collectors), for its geographic location near The Broads, a network of rivers and lakes that run through the English countryside.
“The coins were found scattered around in the plow soil, which has been churned up year after year, causing the soil to be turned over constantly and led to them eventually coming to the surface,” said Adrian Marsden, a numismatist at Norfolk County Council who specializes in ancient Roman coins.
“The first year, [the Pyes] found four coins, and the following year one more, and then they found a few more the year after that. They’ve said to me that they think they found the last one, and I always say, ‘I bet not.’ They’re slowly coming to the surface; I think there’s more.”
Marsden dated the “exceptional” bounty of gold coins to sometime between the first century B.C. and the first century A.D. Interestingly, all of the coins were minted before the Roman conquest, when Britain became occupied by Roman forces starting in A.D. 43 after an invasion launched by Rome’s fourth emperor, Claudius.
Which raises the question: How did the coins end up in a field years before the arrival of Roman forces? While Marsden said that there’s no way of knowing for sure, he thinks there could be a couple of logical explanations for the stockpile of riches.
“It’s apparent that [the coins] went into the ground before the invasion,” Marsden told Live Science. “It’s possible that they could’ve been part of some type of offering to the gods, but more likely someone buried them with the intention of recovering them later. Gold was often used as trade, so it’s possible that a local tribe could’ve gotten ahold of the coins and perhaps planned to use them for other things, such as melting them down to make jewellery.”
The fronts and backs of six of the 11 gold coins from the Roman Empire were found in the English countryside.
The farmland where the coins were found sits on land once occupied by the Iceni, a tribe of British Celts. During the Roman invasion, the tribe’s leader, Queen Boudica, led a revolt against Roman forces, attempting to drive them off their land in A.D. 60. However, despite their initial success, the queen’s army was no match for the Romans, who ultimately won the fight in what is known as the Battle of Watling Street.
The defeat led the queen to kill herself, according to the ancient Roman historian Publius Cornelius Tacitus. However, another ancient Roman historian, Cassius Dio, reported that Boudica died of illness.
In an article written by Marsden and published in a recent issue of The Searcher, a metal detectorist publication, he described there being two types of gold coins in the stash: one type was marked with the portrait of Augustus Caesar, the first emperor of Rome, with Gaius and Lucius, his grandsons and heirs to the throne, on the back of the coin. (However, both grandsons died before they could don the purple and become emperor.) The other also featured Augustus in profile on one side, but with Gaius on horseback on the reverse.
“In the second half of Augustus’ reign, when his position was consolidated, the types [of coins] with dynastic reference increased as an indication of his succession, as is the case here with the extensive coinage for his grandsons, Gaius and Lucius Caesar,” Marjanko Pilekić, a numismatist and research assistant at the Coin Cabinet of the Schloss Friedenstein Gotha Foundation in Germany, who wasn’t involved with the new findings, told Live Science. “They are depicted as the chosen successors of Augustus on the coins, which is indicated by the inscription PRINC(ipes) IVVENT(utes): ‘the first among the young.'”
Each of the coins also features a small indentation at the top, likely indicating that someone tested the coins for their purity, perhaps after they had been minted. Otherwise, “they’re high quality, 20-karat gold,” Marsden said. “If they had been churned around in the soil a lot, I would expect for them to be more scuffed up, but these are not.” Pilekić added that cutting “knicks” into the faces of gold coins was common practice in the Roman Empire, where forgeries were abundant.
“[Some can be seen] even on the portrait of Augustus,” Pilekić said. “This made it possible to check whether the coin was really a gold coin and not a gilded bronze coin, for example. The distrust must have been great, which could indicate many forgeries in circulation.”
In addition to the newfound gold coins, over the years metal detectorists have discovered a treasure trove of Roman possessions in the region, including 100 copper alloy coins, two denarii (Roman silver coins), brooches and more. According to Marsden’s estimate, the gold coins together are valued at approximately $20,000 pounds ($25,000 USD). The British Museum recently acquired the coins as part of its permanent collection.
The findings were published in the May issue of the magazine The Searcher.
“[Some can be seen] even on the portrait of Augustus,” Pilekić said. “This made it possible to check whether the coin was really a gold coin and not a gilded bronze coin, for example. The distrust must have been great, which could indicate many forgeries in circulation.”
In addition to the newfound gold coins, over the years metal detectorists have discovered a treasure trove of Roman possessions in the region, including 100 copper alloy coins, two denarii (Roman silver coins), brooches and more. According to Marsden’s estimate, the gold coins together are valued at approximately $20,000 pounds ($25,000 USD). The British Museum recently acquired the coins as part of its permanent collection.
Quarry Discovered Under Ancient Church in Jerusalem
Remains of construction dating back to the period of Roman Emperor Constantine at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher are among the discoveries uncovered during on-going excavations at the Christian holy site since March 2022 as part of a complex two-year project to repair and restore pavement stones of the ancient church.
Remains dating back to the period of Roman Emperor Constantine at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher have been uncovered in excavations carried out in conjunction with a complex two-year project to repair and restore pavement stones of the ancient church.
The finds were presented to leaders of the Christian community of the church during a visit to the excavations on July 11 by Drs. Beatrice Brancazi and Stefano De Togni, members of the archaeological team from the Department of Antiquities of the Sapienza University of Rome who are carrying out the work under the direction of Professor Francesca Romana Stasolla, assisted by Professors Giorgia Maria Annoscia and Massimiliano David.
The researchers said the rock layers of the stone quarry used during the construction of the church during Constantine’s period had been uncovered.
“The rock layers of the quarry have been found,” Romana Stasolla said in a press release issued by the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land following the visit of the Christian leaders.
According to tradition, up until the first century BCE the area on which the church stands was a stone quarry and traces of these activities are still clearly visible in the chapels below the current church.
Remains dating back to the period of Roman Emperor Constantine at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher have been uncovered in excavations carried out in conjunction with a complex two-year project to repair and restore pavement stones of the ancient church.
The excavations
The excavations take place according to where restoration work is being done on the pavement stones and in May the archaeologists began excavation in the north nave of the basilica, also known as the Arches of the Virgin, and part of the north-western rotunda. The work is carried out round the clock and in a way not to disturb the daily movement within the church. It is the first time such a systematic excavation of the church has been carried out.
The archaeologists said they also found evidence of trenches dug by Italian Franciscan Friar and Studium Biblicum Franciscanum professor of archaeology Virginio Corbo in the 1960s.
The press report noted that the quarry rock layers are of made up of different heights from “deep and uneven cuts.”
“The operations of the Constantinian construction site had as their primary requirement that of bridging such unevenness of elevation to create a unitary and homogeneous plan to build the structures of the church and its annexes,” Romana Stasolla said in the release.
Progressive layers of soil rich in ceramic material allowing for water drainage were used to level the area, she said.
They were also able to analyze the construction methods of the foundation of the north perimeter wall of the Constantinian complex, she said, and uncovered mosaic tiles believed to be from floor pavements.
Constantine began construction on a church at the site in 326 CE, building on top of Roman Emperor Hadrian’s temple of Capitoline Jupiter built between 135 and 136 CE as he repressed an anti-Roman revolt by founding the city of Aelia Capitolina.
“The operations of the Constantinian construction site had as their primary requirement that of bridging such unevenness of elevation to create a unitary and homogeneous plan to build the structures of the church and its annexes.”
Romana Stasolla
In the north-western area of the rotunda, the archaeologists continued with the excavation of a tunnel near the aedicule, traditionally held to be the tomb of Jesus by Christians, which had been uncovered during the first phase of restoration work at the church. The tunnel descends vertically 2.8 m. next to the aedicule and then continues horizontally to the north, said the report.
“Its discovery in relation to the excavation stratigraphy and its connection with the entire water outflow system is an important aspect in the study of the architectural elements and will be analyzed within the project,” said the report.
Processing of the materials uncovered at the dig is carried out in real-time between Jerusalem and Rome, noted in the report, and data processed during the excavation is entered into a database created for the project which is linked to different historical and archive sources with remote support from team members in Rome.
This second phase of restoration work at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is being conducted under the direction of the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land in cooperation with the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate and the Armenian Patriarchate, the three historical guardians of the Church according to the 1852 Status Quo agreement that solidified the territorial division among the Christian communities in the church and other holy Christian sites.
At the start of the recent restoration and excavation work in March, Prof. Giorgio Piras, director of the Department of Ancient Sciences at the Sapienza University of Rome, told The Jerusalem Post that most of the remains found would likely be covered up in accordance with the status quo.
19th-Century Industrial Site Uncovered in Southwest England
Archaeologists digging up a car park in South Bristol have unearthed the full extent of one of the city’s most ‘secretive’ companies – less than 60 years after it closed down. The team from Wessex Archaeology were given access to the old NCP car park on Dalby Avenue in Bedminster – and discovered, almost entirely intact at ground level, what was left of the site of the Bedminster Smelting Works.
And the below ground discoveries are now helping to shed more light on what was one of South Bristol’s darkest – and dirtiest – chapters, when a highly-polluting chemical work operated for more than 100 years, surrounded by people’s houses.
Just a couple of feet beneath the surface of the car park just off the A38 at Dalby Avenue in Bedminster, the archaeologists found the foundations and ground-level footprint of all the huge smelting work chimneys, furnaces, underground furnaces and stoking cellars, where generations of Bedminster residents worked in often unbearable heat and fumes. The profits from the business meant that, by the third generation of the Capper Pass family-run business, the family was able to buy a huge country estate in Dorset, far away from the fumes, smoke and stench that characterised the smelting works which stood opposite Bedminster’s main tobacco factory at the bottom of Bedminster Parade.
Wessex Archaeology carried out an excavation there between January and March this year, as work began to dig up the car park, clear the site and build huge blocks of student accommodation that will eventually house up to 837 students, as part of the massive Bedminster Green development project. One of the reasons the archaeologists were called in was because little was known about the company and how it was set up – the site was quickly demolished and covered over when it eventually closed in 1963, and the car park, Dalby Avenue and the St Catherine’s Place shopping centre was built over the top of it.
According to Simon Cox, from the Bristol and Bath Heritage Consultancy, who worked on the dig too, what went on in the smelting works was a closely-guarded secret.
“This excavation shows us that there is still a great deal to be learned about our relatively recent industrial heritage from archaeological investigations in advance of urban regeneration projects. Documentary research undertaken by Bristol & Bath Heritage Consultancy in preparation for the planning application uncovered much about the history of Capper Pass, but it was clear that they were very secretive about their processes, many of which were highly experimental and unpredictable in nature,” he said.
“The firm originated in Bedminster in the early 19th century and had premises there until the 1960s when its operations moved to its premises in Melton, Yorkshire. It ultimately became globally important as a world-leading producer of tin from secondary sources, and a wholly-owned subsidiary of Rio Tinto Zinc by the late 20th century.
The archaeological excavation of the Bedminster Smelting Works at Dalby Avenue, Bedminster
“The excavation has helped us to better understand the origins and plan form of the 19th and 20th-century works through various phases of redevelopment – information that was largely kept secret and was therefore not available through documentary sources such as historic maps and plans.
“Along with analysis of samples taken of industrial residues, this information should help us to further refine our understanding of the function of the different furnaces, solder pans and pots revealed during the work by Wessex Archaeology, and therefore the evolution of this internationally important Bedminster-based company,” he added.
The archaeologists found most of the excavated remains date from the later 19th and early 20th centuries and comprise the foundations of industrial buildings containing numerous coal-fired metal smelting furnaces with associated underground flues and stoking cellars, and the bases of three huge Lancashire boilers that provided the steam for the steam engines that powered the works.
“This has been a fascinating site to excavate,” said Wessex Archaeology’s fieldwork director Cai Mason. “It’s hard to imagine what a different place Bedminster must have been in the 19th and early 20th centuries – a densely populated area full of heavy industry, noise, and smoke.
The archaeological excavation of the Bedminster Smelting Works at Dalby Avenue, Bedminster
“Capper Pass & Sons was a very innovative and secretive company – this was the best way of preventing your competitors from stealing your ideas – and before we started our excavation, we really had no idea how the smelting works was laid out inside, or how it developed over time.
“One of the things our excavations have shown is that the company seems to have been constantly rebuilding the works. New furnaces were built, then a few years later, they’d be knocked down and replaced with a new – presumably more efficient – design. In the early days of the company it seems to have been very much a case or trial and error – were literally making it up as they went along!” he added.
The 200-year history of smelting in Bedminster
The smelting works was established 182 years ago by a local metal refiner called Capper Pass II, who had learnt his trade from his father, who had been transported to Australia for 14 years for handling stolen metal in 1819.
The junior Capper Pass bought a plot of land in Bedminster’s sprawling slums in 1840 on the new Coronation Street – a street that no longer exists, but was laid out and named after the coronation of William IV and Queen Adelaide in 1832. He built a house for his family and a small smelting work around the back, which was experimental, but not particularly successful.
The archaeological excavation of the Bedminster Smelting Works at Dalby Avenue, Bedminster
Capper Pass II tried extracting gold and silver from Sheffield plate and gilded buttons, then refining lead, copper and zinc from cheap waste products like metal ashes, slags and poor-quality ores – it didn’t exactly work and for more than 20 years the smelting works barely broke even.
But in the 1860s, the company discovered a new and highly profitable thing to manufacture – solder, the multi-purpose metal glue that was used to stick metal objects together, especially the new invention of mass-produced tin cans.
The production of solder took off, and as soon as they made enough money, the by now old Capper Pass moved the family away from the smelting works to a new large house in the new and genteel suburb of Redland, high above the stench of industrial South Bristol.
He died in 1870, but his son Alfred Capper Pass took over and expanded the business massively, moving north and south of the existing site and occupying much of the area between the ancient main road through Bedminster and the parallel railway line.
“Pass was a typical Victorian paternalistic industrialist, who used some of his wealth to help fund the Bristol General Hospital and Bristol University College and gave land for the building of St Michael’s Church on Windmill Hill,” said a Wessex Archaeology spokesperson.
From 1870 until Alfred Capper Pass’s death in 1905, the company employed more and more men in the dirty and unhealthy work in the smelting yards, and gave some money to local good causes, including helping to fund the Bristol General Hospital in Redcliffe and the University College, as well as giving land for the building of St Michael’s Church on Windmill Hill. Most of the money the family kept, however, and they were able to move out of Redland and Bristol altogether, moving to a succession of bigger and bigger homes, ending up with the purchase of a large country estate at Wootton Fitzpaine in Dorset.
The Bedminster Smelting Works, on a map dating from the 1880s
The demand for solder continued to increase into the 20th century, with the new development of electrical goods, circuit boards and cars, and the works needed to expand more – but the site was now surrounded by tightly-packed terrace homes, with space in Bedminster also in demand from the growing tobacco factories and a number of tanneries.
The company found a new site in Melton, near Hill, and from 1937 onwards, production gradually shifted there. The Bedminster Smelting Works closed in 1963 and the site was levelled, and covered with the car park and St Catherine’s Place shopping centre, with a new bypass of East Street – Dalby Avenue and Malago Road – put through the middle of it.
Now the next generation of use for the area – the Bedminster Green regeneration project – will see huge blocks of flats built in the area, including at the car park off Dalby Avenue.
A 193-million-year-old nesting ground with more than 100 dinosaur eggs offers evidence they lived in herds
A 193-million-year-old nesting ground containing more than 100 dinosaurs’ eggs is upending palaeontologists’ understanding of an early dinosaur species.
An artist’s reconstruction of a Mussaurus patagonicus nest.
Research published Thursday describes a collection of eggs and juvenile and adult skeletons from a dinosaur called Mussaurus patagonicus, which were found in Patagonia, Argentina. The dino is an ancestor of long-necked herbivores called sauropods, such as Brachiosaurus.
Most of the chicken-sized eggs were discovered in clusters of eight to 30, suggesting they resided in nests as part of a common breeding ground. Scientists also found Mussaurus skeletons of similar sizes and ages buried together. Combined, these patterns offer evidence that the dinosaurs lived in herds.
“I went to this site aiming to find at least one nice dinosaur skeleton. We ended up with 80 skeletons and more than 100 eggs (some with embryos preserved inside!)” Diego Pol, a researcher with the Egidio Feruglio palaeontology museum in Patagonia and the lead author of the new study, told Insider via email.
He called the site “one of a kind.”
Before this discovery, researchers thought herding behaviour was restricted to dinosaurs that came much later, in the very late Jurassic and early Cretaceous periods. That’s because the earliest fossil evidence of sauropod herds only dates back 150 million years. This nesting ground, however, pushes that timeline back more than 40 million years. It’s the earliest known evidence of social groups among dinosaurs, the study authors said.
X-rays offer a peek into fossilized dinosaur eggs
A fossilized Mussaurus egg that’s more than 190 million years old, found in southern Patagonia, Argentina.
Argentine palaeontologists discovered the first Mussaurus skeletons at this Patagonian site in the late 1970s. The dinosaurs they found were no more than 6 inches long. Unaware that they’d uncovered newborns, the researchers named the creature “mouse lizard” because of the skeletons’ tiny size.
Pol decided to reexplore the area starting in 2002, and by 2013, he’d helped find the first adult Mussaurus fossils there. Those bones revealed that full-grown versions of these “mouse lizards” were closer in size to modern-day hippos. They grew to weigh about 1.5 tons, reaching lengths of 26 feet from nose to tail tip. But infants could fit in the palm of a human hand.
A screen shot from a video showing how scientists like Diego Pol used high-energy X-rays to peek inside a Mussaurus egg without destroying it.
Since then, Pol’s team has also uncovered and studied the contents of the nesting ground, which measures just under half a square mile. In 2017, he took 30 of the eggs to a lab in France, and his group then used X-ray technology to peek inside and confirm the species of the embryos without breaking the shells.
By analyzing the sizes and types of bones in the nesting ground, the researchers determined that the animals were buried near counterparts of a similar age. Some clusters had juveniles less than a year old, others consisted of individuals that were slightly older but not yet fully grown, and finally, there were smatterings of adults that had died solo or in pairs.
That type of age segregation, the researchers said, is a key sign of herds: Juveniles hung out with others their age while adults looked for food and protected the community.
“They were resting together and likely died during a drought,” Pol said. “This is compatible with a herd that stays together for many years and within which the animals get close to each other to rest, or to forage, or do other daily activities.”
Another strong indication of herd behaviour is the nesting ground itself: If Mussaurus lived as a community, it would make sense that they’d lay eggs in a common area.
Living in herds may have helped Mussaurus survive
Nest with Mussaurus eggs dated to more than 190 million years ago, found in Patagonia. Diego Pol
To figure out the fossils’ ages, researchers examined minerals in volcanic ash that was scattered around the eggs and skeletons and determined that the fossils were about 193 million years old.
Previously, scientists thought this type of dinosaur lived during the late Triassic period, about 221 million to 205 million years ago. But the new date suggests instead that Mussaurus thrived during the early Jurassic period. That, in turn, is evidence that Mussaurus’ ancestors survived a mass extinction event 200 million years ago.
The key to that survival, the study suggests, may have been their herding behaviour.
“These were social animals and we think this may be an important factor to explain their success,” Pol said.
An artist’s depiction of the nesting ground of a Mussaurus herd of in what is now Argentina. Jorge Gonzalez
Communal living likely helped Mussaurus find enough food, perhaps by making it easier for them to forage over larger areas. Mussaurus of the same size would likely “group together to coordinate their activities,” Pol said, given that larger adults and tinier juveniles moved at different speeds.
He added that given the size difference between newborns and adults, it probably took these dinosaurs many years to reach full size. So young Mussaurus might have been vulnerable to predation.
By staying in herds, adults could better protect their young.
Archaeologists find a skeleton in Alexander the Great-era tomb
Archaeologists in Greece have uncovered a skeleton from a tomb dating back to the era of Alexander the Great. The excavation has refuelled rumours about the Greek conqueror, whose final resting place remains a mystery.
Greece’s Culture Ministry confirmed on Wednesday that an excavation site in the country’s north had once again produced exciting results, namely, that of a skeleton.
The remains would “be studied by researchers,” the Culture Ministry announced in a statement.
Archaeologists discovered the skeleton under the third chamber
An archaeological team digging roughly 600 kilometres (370 miles) north of Athens near the city of Amphipolis in recent months discovered the bones in the third chamber of the massive tomb.
According to preliminary information, parts of the skeleton were strewn around a rectangular wooden casket, which had been buried under the floor (pictured) of the cavernous room.
The occupant was probably some “outstanding personality, a great general,” head archaeologist Katerina Peristeri said.
Peristeri is to disclose the findings in detail at the end of November.
Nearly intact statues and expansive mosaics have fascinated the team, which is gradually making its way through the mysterious tomb. While the opulence points to a final resting place for an important person, the archaeologists on site still do not know to whom it belonged.
The discovery of a skeleton was “a very important find because it will help us learn the sex of the person buried there, and possibly their approximate age,” University of Thessaloniki archaeology professor Michalis Tiverio, who is not participating in the dig, told the Associated Press news agency.
The tomb houses intricate mosaics including one of the Rape of Persephone
Tomb fuels speculation
The tomb dates back to the time during which Alexander the Great ruled much of the surrounding region. Born in 356 BC, the young king of Macedon launched a successful military campaign through the Middle East, pushing into Asia to modern-day India, as well as into northeastern Africa.
Following his death in 323 at the age of 32, his wife, Roxana, and their son, Alexander, were exiled to Amphipolis. They, along with his mother, brother and sister-in-law were later murdered there.
Alexander the Great’s final resting place is believed to be in Alexandria, Egypt.
However, the findings of the current excavation in northern Greece have re-fuelled speculation that perhaps he had been buried closer to his home after all.
“Astonishing” 500-Million-Year-Old Fossilized Brains Prompt a Rethink of the Evolution of Insects and Spiders
What had spiny claws protruding from its mouth, sported a body shaped like a toilet brush and looked as though it slithered off the cover of a sci-fi novel? An ocean predator from the Cambrian period is known as Stanleycaris hirpex. Newfound fossils of the bizarre creature are exceptionally complete, preserving the brain, the nervous system and a third eye.
Royal Ontario Museum/Illustration by Sabrina Cappelli
Researchers at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) in Toronto recently announced the discovery of fossils belonging to that strange animal as part of an “astonishing” treasure trove of fossils dating to 506 million years ago, according to a statement.
Palaeontologists found these ancient treasures in the Burgess Shale, a formation in British Columbia’s Canadian Rockies that is known for its abundant and well-preserved fossilized animal remains, and among the half-a-billion-year-old fossils were numerous specimens of the marine predator S. hirpex.
“What makes this find so remarkable is that we have dozens of specimens showing the remains of the brain and other elements of the nervous system, and they’re incredibly well preserved and show really fine details,” said Joseph Moysiuk, lead author of a study describing the fossils and a University of Toronto doctoral candidate in ecology and evolutionary biology.
“Before this, there had only been a few other finds of fossilized brains, particularly from the Cambrian period, but this is still something that is quite rare, and it’s only something that’s been observed in the last 10 years or so,” Moysiuk told Live Science.
“Most of the species where we’ve seen fossilized brains, there are only one or two specimens available.”
Despite being small — measuring less than 8 inches (20 centimetres) in length — S. hirpex was likely an imposing sight to its even smaller prey.
“It had this really ferocious apparatus of spiny claws and round mouth that made it look absolutely fierce,” Moysiuk said. “It also had long, rake-like spines to comb the seafloor to hunt for any buried organisms, side flaps to help it glide through the water and trident-shaped spines that project toward each other from the opposite appendage that we think it used as a jaw to crush its prey.”
A pair of fossil specimens of Stanleycaris hirpex, specimen ROMIP 65674.1-2.
The fossils show that the brain of S. hirpex was divided into two segments: the protocerebrum, which is connected to its eyes, and the deutocerebrum, which is linked to the frontal claws. This brain structure differs from the three-lobe structure of modern arthropods that are distant relatives of S. hirpex, such as insects. The brains of these modern relatives, in contrast, comprise a protocerebrum, a deutocerebrum and a tritocerebrum, which connects the brain to an insect’s labrum, or upper lip, among other body parts.
“The preservation of the brains in these animals gives us direct insight into the evolution of the nervous system from the perspective of the fossil record,” Moysiuk said.
Radiodonta, an extinct offshoot of the arthropod evolutionary tree that includes Stanleycaris, “is an important group to know, since it offers us a better understanding of the evolution of modern arthropods.” Moysiuk said.
Another interesting aspect of S. hirpex was its oversize median third eye, a characteristic observed for the first time in a radiodont. While the study authors are uncertain about how the ancient arthropod used this eye, it may have helped the animal track its prey, Moysiuk suggested.
“Finding the third eye was quite a shock to us because we were starting to think we understood radiodonts and what they looked like pretty well,” he said. “For the first time, we were able to recognize this gigantic median eye in addition to the pair of stock eyes that we already knew about in radiodonts.”
Though some modern arthropods, like dragonflies and wasps, also have median eyes, they are usually more sensitive than the other two eyes and yet don’t focus as well. “We can only speculate, but we think that this third eye helped with orienting an animal, and it’s especially important for a predator like Stanleycaris that has to move around rapidly and precisely in the environment,” Moysiuk said.
Three of the S. hirpex fossils that were excavated during the dig are now on permanent display at the Royal Ontario Museum in its Willner Madge Gallery, Dawn of Life.
The findings were published July 8 in the journal Current Biology.
