New research reveals how the black rat colonized Europe in the Roman and Medieval periods
New ancient DNA analysis has shed light on how the black rat, blamed for spreading Black Death, dispersed across Europe – revealing that the rodent colonized the continent on two occasions in the Roman and Medieval periods.
Archaeological black rat mandible.
The study – led by the University of York along with the University of Oxford and the Max Planck Institute – is the first ancient genetic study of the species (Rattus rattus), often known as the ship rat.
By analyzing DNA from ancient black rat remains found at archaeological sites spanning the 1st to the 17th centuries in Europe and North Africa, the researchers have pieced together a new understanding of how rat populations dispersed following the ebbs and flows of human trade, urbanism, and empires.
Disappearance
The study shows that the black rat colonized Europe at least twice, once with the Roman expansion and then again in the Medieval period – matching up with archaeological evidence for a decline or even disappearance of rats after the fall of the Roman Empire.
The authors of the study say this was likely related to the break-up of the Roman economic system, though climatic change and the 6th Century Justinianic Plague may have played a role too. When towns and long-range trade re-emerged in the Medieval period, so too did a new wave of black rats.
The black rat is one of three rodent species, along with the house mouse (Mus musculus) and the brown rat (Rattus norvegicus), to have become globally distributed as a result of its ability to live around humans by taking advantage of food and transportation.
Competition
Black rats were widespread across Europe until at least the 18th century, before their population declined, most likely as a result of competition with the newly arrived brown rat (Rattus norvegicus), the now dominant rat species in temperate Europe.
Dr. David Orton from the Department of Archaeology said: “We’ve long known that the spread of rats is linked to human events, and we suspected that Roman expansion brought them north into Europe.
“But one remarkable result of our study is quite how much of a single event this seems to have been: all of our Roman rat bones from England to Serbia form a single group in genetic terms.”
“When rats reappear in the Medieval period we see a completely different genetic signature – but again all of our samples from England to Hungary to Finland all group together. We couldn’t have hoped for clearer evidence of repeated colonization of Europe.”
Signature
Alex Jamieson, a co-author at the University of Oxford, said “The modern dominance of brown rats has obscured the fascinating history of black rats in Europe. Generating genetic signatures of these ancient black rats reveals how closely black rat and human population dynamics mirror each other.”
He Yu, the co-author from the Max Planck Institute, said “This study is a great showcase of how the genetic background of human commensal species, like the black rat, could reflect historical or economic events. And more attention should be paid to these often neglected small animals.”
Flourish
The study could also be used to provide information about human movement across continents, the researchers say.
Dr. Orton added: “Our results show how human-commensal species like the black rat, animals which flourish around human settlements, can act as ideal proxies for human historical processes”.
The research was a collaboration between York and partners including Oxford, the Max Planck Institute, and researchers in over 20 countries.
Defiant message discovered in Cuban Missile Crisis bunker
Sixty years ago during the Cuban Missile Crisis, a defiant individual — likely a Cuban soldier — wrote a message in a system of bunkers and trenches on the Cuban coast declaring that surrender was not in the cards, new research finds.
This photo shows a bunker that was built to defend the island in case the Americans invaded during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Archaeologists discovered the graffiti while documenting the remains of these bunkers and trenches, which Cuba prepared in case the United States invaded the island during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis — a 13-day standoff that brought the world to the brink of nuclear war.
The individual’s message, written in Spanish, indicates that they were determined to fight in the event of war breaking out.
Another photo of a bunker. The Cuban Missile Crisis brought the world to the brink of nuclear war.
The bunkers and trenches combined with storage areas formed an interconnected system of fortifications.
The crisis, which occurred in October 1962 during the Cold War, flared up when the Soviet Union placed nuclear missiles on communist-controlled Cuba — about 124 miles (200 kilometers) from the U.S. coast.
The United States responded by blockading the Caribbean island and threatening to invade it if the nuclear weapons were not removed — bringing the two nuclear superpowers close to World War III.
An agreement was eventually reached in which the Soviet Union withdrew nuclear missiles from Cuba in exchange for the United States removing nuclear missiles from Turkey.
While the United States did not launch a full-scale invasion of Cuba, the system of bunkers and trenches that were built to defend the island still remains.
Some of the people stationed in these fortifications left defiant messages on the walls. “Some inscriptions relating to the time of the Missile Crisis are very interesting, including one that reads: ‘aquí no se rinde nadie’ (no one is giving up here),” Odlanyer Hernández de Lara, a doctoral candidate in archaeology at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs of Syracuse University in New York, told Live Science in an email.
Archaeologists are documenting these Cold War defenses using 3D photogrammetry — a technique in which a multitude of digital photos are taken of an object and then processed by software to create a digital 3D model.
The system of bunkers and trenches formed an interconnected system of fortifications designed to stop American troops from landing in Cuba.
“These bunkers are concrete structures with a main and an elevated/secondary embrasure [opening] facing the sea, and a main rear entrance with two alternative exits to the sides,” de Lara said. “The trenches are excavated into bedrock, connecting the bunkers with [a] storage area.”
Some of the bunkers and trenches are in good shape, but others have been damaged by coastal erosion or other effects due to the passage of time, de Lara said.
The Cuban military stopped using them sometime after the missile crisis and they are now abandoned.
The research, which is not yet published in a peer-reviewed journal, was presented at the annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology (SAA) that was held in Chicago from March 30 to April 3.
The SAA paper was co-authored by Esteban Grau González-Quevedo, a researcher at the Antonio Núñez Jiménez Foundation for Nature and Humanity (FANJ), a scientific institution in Cuba.
First-ever portrait of Jesus found in 1 of 70 ancient books?
The image is eerily familiar: a bearded young man with flowing curly hair. After lying for nearly 2,000 years hidden in a cave in the Holy Land, the fine detail is difficult to determine. But in a certain light, it is not difficult to interpret the marks around the figure’s brow as a crown of thorns. The extraordinary picture of one of the recently discovered hoards of up to 70 lead codices – booklets – found in a cave in the hills overlooking the Sea of Galilee is one reason Bible historians are clamouring to get their hands on the ancient artefacts. If genuine, this could be the first-ever portrait of Jesus Christ, possibly even created in the lifetime of those who knew him. The tiny booklet, a little smaller than a modern credit card, is sealed on all sides and has a three-dimensional representation of a human head on both the front and the back. One appears to have a beard and the other is without. Even the maker’s fingerprint can be seen in the lead impression. Beneath both figures is a line of as-yet undeciphered text in an ancient Hebrew script.
Discovery: The impression on this booklet cover shows what could be the earliest image of Christ
Astonishingly, one of the booklets appears to bear the words ‘Saviour of Israel’ – one of the few phrases so far translated. The owner of the cache is Bedouin trucker Hassan Saida who lives in the Arab village of Umm al-Ghanim, Shibli. He has refused to sell the booklets but two samples were sent to England and Switzerland for testing.
A Mail on Sunday investigation has revealed that the artefacts were originally found in a cave in the village of Saham in Jordan, close to where Israel, Jordan and Syria’s Golan Heights converge – and within three miles of the Israeli spa and hot springs of Hamat Gader, a religious site for thousands of years.
Precious: This booklet shows what scholars believe to be the map of Christian Jerusalem
According to sources in Saham, they were discovered five years ago after a flash flood scoured away the dusty mountain soil to reveal what looked like a large capstone. When this was levered aside, a cave was discovered with a large number of small niches set into the walls. Each of these niches contained a booklet. There were also other objects, including some metal plates and rolled lead scrolls. The area is renowned as an age-old refuge for ancient Jews fleeing the bloody aftermath of a series of revolts against the Roman empire in the First and early Second Century AD. The cave is less than 100 miles from Qumran, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered, and around 60 miles from Masada, the scene of the last stand and mass suicide of an extremist Zealot sect in the face of a Roman Army siege in 72AD – two years after the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem. It is also close to caves that have been used as sanctuaries by refugees from the Bar Kokhba revolt, the third and final Jewish revolt against the Roman Empire in 132AD.
The era is of critical importance to Biblical scholars because it encompasses the political, social and religious upheavals that led to the split between Judaism and Christianity. It ended with the triumph of Christianity over its rivals as the dominant new religion first for dissident Jews and then for Gentiles. In this context, it is important that while the Dead Sea Scrolls are rolled pieces of parchment or papyrus containing the earliest-known versions of books of the Hebrew Bible and other texts – the traditional Jewish format for written work – these lead discoveries are in the book, or codex, form which has long been associated with the rise of Christianity.
The codices are seen by The Mail on Sunday range in size from smaller than 3in x 2 to around 10in x 8in. They each contain an average of eight or nine pages and appear to be cast, rather than inscribed, with images on both sides and bound with lead-ring bindings. Many of them were severely corroded when they were first discovered, although it has been possible to open them with care. The codex showing what may be the face of Christ is not thought to have been opened yet. Some codices show signs of having been buried – although this could simply be the detritus resulting from lying in a cave for hundreds of years. Unlike the Dead Sea Scrolls, the lead codices appear to consist of stylised pictures, rather than text, with a relatively small amount of script that appears to be in a Phoenician language, although the exact dialect is yet to be identified. At the time these codices were created, the Holy Land was populated by different sects, including Essenes, Samaritans, Pharisees, Sadducees, Dositheans and Nazoreans.
One lucky owner: Hassan Saida with some of the artefacts that he says he inherited
There was no common script and considerable intermingling of language and writing systems between groups. This means it could take years of detailed scholarship to accurately interpret the codices. Many of the books are sealed on all sides with metal rings, suggesting they were not intended to be opened. This could be because they contained holy words which should never be read. For example, the early Jews fiercely protected the sacred name of God, which was only ever uttered by The High Priest in the Temple in Jerusalem at Yom Kippur. The original pronunciation has been lost, but has been transcribed into Roman letters as YHWH – known as the Tetragrammaton – and is usually translated either as Yahweh or Jehovah. A sealed book containing sacred information was mentioned in the biblical Book of Revelations.
One plate has been interpreted as a schematic map of Christian Jerusalem showing the Roman crosses outside the city walls. At the top can be seen a ladder-type shape. This is thought to be a balustrade mentioned in a biblical description of the Temple in Jerusalem. Below that are three groups of brickwork, to represent the walls of the city. A fruiting palm tree suggests the House of David and there are three or four shapes that appear to be horizontal lines intersected by short vertical lines from below. These are the T-shaped crosses believed to have been used in biblical times (the familiar crucifix shape is said to date from the 4th Century). The star shapes in a long line represent the House of Jesse – and then the pattern is repeated.
This interpretation of the books as proto-Christian artefacts is supported by Margaret Barker, former president of the Society for Old Testament Study and one of Britain’s leading experts on early Christianity. The fact that a figure is portrayed would appear to rule out these codices being connected to mainstream Judaism of the time, where the portrayal of lifelike figures was strictly forbidden because it was considered idolatry. If genuine, it seems clear that these books were, in fact, created by an early Messianic Jewish sect, perhaps closely allied to the early Christian church and that these images represent Christ himself. However another theory, put forward by Robert Feather – an authority on The Dead Sea Scrolls and author of The Mystery Of The Copper Scroll Of Qumran – is that these books are connected to the Bar Kokhba Revolt of 132-136AD, the third major rebellion by the Jews of Judea Province and the last of the Jewish-Roman Wars.
The revolt established an independent state of Israel over parts of Judea for two years before the Roman army finally crushed it, with the result that all Jews, including the early Christians, were barred from Jerusalem. The followers of Simon Bar Kokhba, the commander of the revolt, acclaimed him as a Messiah, a heroic figure who could restore Israel. Although Jewish Christians hailed Jesus as the Messiah and did not support Bar Kokhba, they were barred from Jerusalem along with the rest of the Jews. The war and its aftermath helped differentiate Christianity as a religion distinct from Judaism.
Wonder: The cave in Jordan where the metal books were discovered
The spiritual leader of the revolt was Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, who laid the foundations for a mystical form of Judaism known today as Kabbalah, which is followed by Madonna, Britney Spears and others. Yochai hid in a cave for 13 years and wrote a secret commentary on the Bible, the Zohar, which evolved into the teaching of Kabbalah. Feather is convinced that some of the text on
The codices carry the name of Rabbi Bar Yochai.
Feather says that all known codices prior to around 400AD were made of parchment and that cast lead is unknown. They were clearly designed to exist forever and never to be opened. The use of metal as a writing material at this time is well documented – however, the text was always inscribed, not cast.
The books are currently in the possession of Hassan Saida, in Umm al-Ghanim, Shibli, which is at the foot of Mount Tabor, 18 miles west of the Sea of Galilee. Saida owns and operates a haulage business consisting of at least nine large flatbed lorries. He is regarded in his village as a wealthy man. His grandfather settled there more than 50 years ago and his mother and four brothers still live there. Saida, who is in his mid-30s and married with five or six children, claims he inherited the booklets from his grandfather. However, The Mail on Sunday has learned of claims that they first came to light five years ago when his Bedouin business partner met a villager in Jordan who said he had some ancient artefacts to sell. The business partner was apparently shown two very small metal books. He brought them back over the border to Israel and Saida became entranced by them, coming to believe they had magical properties and that it was his fate to collect as many as he could. The arid, mountainous area where they were found is both militarily sensitive and agriculturally poor. The local people have for generations supplemented their income by hoarding and selling archaeological artefacts found in caves.
More of the booklets were clandestinely smuggled across the border by drivers working for Saida – the smaller ones were typically worn openly as charms hanging from chains around the drivers’ necks, the larger concealed behind car and lorry dashboards. In order to finance the purchase of booklets from the Jordanians who had initially discovered them, Saida allegedly went into partnership with a number of other people – including his lawyer from Haifa, Israel. Saida’s motives are complex. He constantly studies the booklets but does not take particularly good care of them, opening some and coating them in olive oil in order to ‘preserve’ them.
Masterpiece: Later versions of Christ, including Leonardo Da Vinci’s interpretation in his fresco The Last Supper, give Jesus similar characteristics
The artefacts have been seen by multi-millionaire collectors of antiquities in both Israel and Europe – and Saida has been offered tens of millions of pounds for just a few of them, but has declined to sell any. When he first obtained the booklets, he had no idea what they were or even if they were genuine. He contacted Sotheby’s in London in 2007 in an attempt to find an expert opinion, but the famous auction house declined to handle them because their provenance was not known.
Soon afterwards, the British author and journalist Nick Fielding was approached by a Palestinian woman who was concerned that the booklets would be sold on the black market. Fielding was asked to approach the British Museum, the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge and other places. Fielding travelled to Israel and obtained a letter from the Israeli Antiquities Authority saying it had no objection to their being taken abroad for analysis. It appears the IAA believed the booklets were forgeries on the basis that nothing like them had been discovered before.
None of the museums wanted to get involved, again because of concerns over provenance. Fielding was then asked to approach experts to find out what they were and if they were genuine. David Feather, who is a metallurgist as well as an expert on the Dead Sea Scrolls, recommended submitting the samples for metal analysis at Oxford University. The work was carried out by Dr Peter Northover, head of the Materials Science-based Archaeology Group and a world expert on the analysis of ancient metal materials. The samples were then sent to the Swiss National Materials Laboratory at Dubendorf, Switzerland. The results show they were consistent with ancient (Roman) period lead production and that the metal was smelted from ore that originated in the Mediterranean. Dr Northover also said that corrosion on the books was unlikely to be modern.
Meanwhile, the politics surrounding the provenance of the books is intensifying. Most professional scholars are cautious pending further research and point to the ongoing forgery trial in Israel over the ancient limestone ossuary purporting to have housed the bones of James, brother of Jesus. The Israeli archaeological establishment has sought to defuse problems of provenance by casting doubt on the authenticity of the codices, but Jordan says it will ‘exert all efforts at every level’ to get the relics repatriated. The debate over whether these booklets are genuine and, if so, whether they represent the first known artefacts of the early Christian church or the first stirrings of mystical Kabbalah will undoubtedly rage for years to come.
The director of Jordan’s Department of Antiquities, Ziad Al-Saad, has few doubts. He believes they may indeed have been made by followers of Jesus in the few decades immediately following his crucifixion.
‘They will really match, and perhaps be more significant than, the Dead Sea Scrolls,’ he says. ‘The initial information is very encouraging and it seems that we are looking at a very important and significant discovery – maybe the most important discovery in the history of archaeology.’
If he is right, then we really may be gazing at the face of Jesus Christ.
Tests Indicate Bronze Age Daggers Had a Practical Purpose
Analysis of Bronze Age daggers has shown that they were used for processing animal carcasses and not as non-functional symbols of identity and status, as previously thought.
One of the experimental daggers.
This is a significant breakthrough as the new method enables the analysis of a wide variety of copper-alloy tools and weapons from anywhere in the world.
Professor Andrea Dolfini
First appearing in the early 4th millennium BCE, copper-alloy daggers were widespread in Bronze Age Europe including Britain and Ireland. Yet archaeologists have long debated what these objects were used for.
As daggers are often found in weapon-rich male burials or ‘warrior graves, many researchers speculated that they were primarily ceremonial objects used in prehistoric funerals to mark out the identity and status of the deceased. Others suggested that they may have been used as weapons or tools for crafts.
However, the lack of a targeted method of analysis for copper-alloy metals, like those available for ceramic, stone, and shell artefacts, left this problem unresolved.
A revolutionary new method, pioneered by an international research team led by Newcastle University, UK, has enabled the world’s first extraction of organic residues from ten copper-alloy daggers excavated in 2017 from Pragatto, a Bronze Age settlement site in Italy.
The new method reveals, for the first time, how these objects were used, for what tasks, and on what materials.
The project team, led by Professor Andrea Dolfini and Isabella Caricola, developed a technique that used Picro-Sirius Red (PSR) solution to stain organic residues on the daggers.
The residues were then observed under several types of optical, digital, and scanning electron microscopes. This allowed the team to identify micro-residues of collagen and associated bone, muscle, and bundle tendon fibres, suggesting that the daggers had come into contact with multiple animal tissues and were used to process various types of animal carcasses. Uses seem to have included the slaughtering of livestock, butchering carcasses, and carving the meat from the bone.
The EU-funded project team then carried out wide-ranging experiments with replicas of the daggers that had been created by an expert bronzesmith. This showed that this type of dagger was well suited to processing animal carcasses.
The residues extracted from the experimental daggers were also analysed as part of the research and matched those observed on the archaeological daggers.
Professor Andrea Dolfini, Chair of Archaeology, Newcastle University, said: “The research has revealed that it is possible to extract and characterise organic residues from ancient metals, extending the range of materials that can be analysed in this way.
This is a significant breakthrough as the new method enables the analysis of a wide variety of copper-alloy tools and weapons from anywhere in the world.
The possibilities are endless, and so are the answers that the new method can and will provide in the future.
A new study tells Stonehenge was ‘built on land inhabited by deer, elk and wild boar’
Red deer, elk and wild boar would have roamed opened woodland and meadow-like clearings in the area of Stonehenge 4,000 years before the iconic standing stones were constructed, according to new research.
The study reveals the environmental history of the Wiltshire site
Scientists from the University of Southampton have examined Blick Mead, a Mesolithic archaeological site about a mile away, and found that the area had not been covered in dense, closed-canopy forests as previously thought.
Instead, they believe that it would have been populated by grazing animals and hunter-gatherers.
An Aurochs bone with cut marks
Lead researcher, Samuel Hudson, of Geography and Environmental Science at Southampton, explained: “There has been the intensive study of the Bronze Age and Neolithic history of the Stonehenge landscape, but less is known about earlier periods.
“The integration of evidence recovered from previous excavations at Blick Mead, coupled with our own fieldwork, allowed us to understand more about the flora and fauna of the landscape prior to construction of the later world-famous monument complex.
“Past theories suggest the area was thickly wooded and cleared in later periods for farming and monument building.
“However, our research points to pre-Neolithic, hunting-gatherer inhabitants, living in open woodland which supported aurochs and other grazing herbivores.”
The research team analysed pollen, fungal spores and traces of DNA preserved in ancient sediment (sedaDNA), combined with optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) and radiocarbon dating to produce an environmental history of the Wiltshire site.
Using this evidence, they built a picture of the habitat in the area from the later Mesolithic (5500 BC) to the Neolithic period (from 4,000 BC).
Scientists examined Blick Mead
A university spokesman said: “The study indicates that later Mesolithic populations at Blick Mead took advantage of more open conditions to repeatedly exploit groups of large ungulates (hoofed mammals) until a transition to farmers and monument-builders took place.
“In a sense, the land was pre-adapted for the later large-scale monument building, as it did not require clearance of woodland, due to the presence of these pre-existing open habitats.
“The researchers suggest there was continuity between the inhabitants of the two eras, who utilised the land in different ways but understood it to be a favourable location.”
The findings of the team from Southampton, working with colleagues at the universities of Buckingham, Tromso and Salzburg, are published in the journal PLOS ONE.
Rare 1000-Year-Old Maya Canoe Found in Yucatan Cenote
Archaeologists have discovered a wooden Maya canoe in southern Mexico, believed to be over 1,000 years old. Measuring over 5ft (1.6m), it was found almost completely intact, submerged in a freshwater pool near the ruined Maya city of Chichen Itza.
Archaeologists also found fragments of ceramics and a ritual knife during the excavation in southern Mexico
Mexico’s antiquities institute (Inah) says it may have been used to extract water or deposit ritual offers.
The rare find came during construction work on a new tourist railway known as the Maya Train.
Experts from Paris’s Sorbonne University have been helping with pin-pointing the canoe’s exact age and type, the statement said. A 3D model of it would also be made to allow replicas to be made, and to facilitate further study, it added.
It’s believed the canoe may have been used to extract water from the pool or to make ritual offerings
The Maya civilisation flourished before Spain conquered the region. In their time, the Mayas ruled large stretches of territory in what is now southern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize and Honduras.
The boat has been tentatively dated between 830-950 AD, towards the end of the Maya civilisation’s golden age.
Around this period, the Mayas suffered a major political collapse, marked by the abandonment of cities dotted around modern-day Central America – leaving ruins of towering pyramids and other stone buildings.
No single theory for this collapse has been widely accepted, but it is believed a combination of internal warfare, drought and overpopulation may have been contributing factors.
The Maya Train is a multi-billion-dollar project, led by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s government, which will run through five southern Mexican states.
Advocates have said the rail network will help to alleviate poverty in the region. But critics argue that it risks damaging local ecosystems and undiscovered sites of historic importance.
Lost Maya City Inside Volcano Crater Explored by Archaeologists
A lost Mayan city that collapsed inside a volcano crater has been explored by a team of archaeologists. In the Late Preclassic period—400 BC to AD 250—there was a thriving Mayan city consisting of temples, houses and squares, in the middle of the volcanic Lake Atitlán.
The Atitlán, situated in the highlands of Guatemala, lies within a volcano carter more than 5,000 feet above sea level.
A catastrophic event—which experts believe was caused by some sort of volcanic activity—caused the city to collapse from its bottom, forcing the Mayans to flee.
Archaeologists dove into the Lake’s depths to explore the lost city
The city sunk into the Atitlán’s depths and now lies 39 and 65 feet below its surface, according to Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology.
The lost city has now been explored by a team of archaeologists, lead by the head of the Yucatan Peninsula Office at the National Institute of Anthropology, Helena Barba Meinecke. Their aim was to raise awareness of the city’s significance to the Indigenous communities in the region and promote its conservation.
To reach the sunken city, archaeologists carried out dives in the area.
During the dives, archaeologists uncovered the remains of buildings, columns, ceremonial stones, and other structures. From these findings, they were able to generate a planimetric map of the city.
“With this planimetry, we can speak of a site that measures at least 200 by 300 meters,” Barba Meinecke said in a statement.
Archaeologists also gathered silt samples from the lake in order to assess the dynamics of the site and measure its decay over time. The exploration also laid “groundwork” for a cultural centre, which will allow people to explore the site virtually.
It is not the only archaeological site within Lake Atitlán. There are two other lost cities lying below the surface of the lake called Samabaj and Chiutinamit.
Samabaj was the first underwater Mayan ruin excavated in Guatemala in Lake Atitlán. It was discovered in the late 1990s by a scuba diver who had been exploring the lake’s depths, according to a Reuters report from 2009.
The Maya civilization was an Indigenous society stretching across what is now Mexico and Central America. The earliest settlements in the Maya civilization were formed during the Preclassic period. The civilization thrived for over 3,000 years until it mysteriously disappeared. Towards the end of the ninth century, cities were gradually abandoned one by one.
To this day, experts are still unsure what happened but there are several theories. One is that ongoing warfare among cities caused a breakdown, while others believe that the civilization could no longer thrive in the surrounding environment.
Archaeologists found ceremonial stones and the remains of buildings during their exploration
Tanis: Fossil found of dinosaur killed in an asteroid strike, scientists claim
Scientists have presented a stunningly preserved leg of a dinosaur. The limb, complete with skin, is just one of a series of remarkable finds emerging from the Tanis fossil site in the US State of North Dakota. But it’s not just their exquisite condition that’s turning heads – it’s what these ancient specimens are purported to represent.
Tanis: Fossil found of dinosaur killed in an asteroid strike, scientists claim
The claim is the Tanis creatures were killed and entombed on the actual day a giant asteroid struck Earth. The day 66 million years ago when the reign of the dinosaurs ended and the rise of mammals began. Very few dinosaur remains have been found in the rocks that record even the final few thousand years before the impact. To have a specimen from the cataclysm itself would be extraordinary.
The BBC has spent three years filming at Tanis for a show to be broadcast on 15 April, narrated by Sir David Attenborough. Sir David will review the discoveries, many of that will be getting their first public viewing. Along with that leg, there are fish that breathed in impact debris as it rained down from the sky.
We see a fossil turtle that was skewered by a wooden stake; the remains of small mammals and the burrows they made; skin from a horned triceratops; the embryo of a flying pterosaur inside its egg; and what appears to be a fragment from the asteroid impactor itself.
“We’ve got so many details with this site that tells us what happened moment by moment, it’s almost like watching it play out in the movies. You look at the rock column, you look at the fossils there, and it brings you back to that day,” says Robert DePalma, the University of Manchester, UK, a graduate student who leads the Tanis dig.
Robert DePalma: “Dinosaurs and the impact are two things that are absolutely linked in our minds”
It’s now widely accepted that a roughly 12km-wide space rock hit our planet to cause the last mass extinction. The impact site has been identified in the Gulf of Mexico, off the Yucatan Peninsula. That’s some 3,000km away from Tanis, but such was the energy imparted in the event, its devastation was felt far and wide.
The North Dakota fossil site is a chaotic jumble.
The remains of animals and plants seem to have been rolled together into a sediment dump by waves of river water set in train by unimaginable earth tremors. Aquatic organisms are mixed in with land-based creatures.
The sturgeon and paddlefish in this fossil tangle are key. They have small particles stuck in their gills. These are the spherules of molten rock kicked out from the impact that then fell back across the planet. The fish would have breathed in the particles as they entered the river.
The spherules have been linked chemically and by radiometric dating to the Mexican impact location, and in two of the particles recovered from preserved tree resin, there are also tiny inclusions that imply an extraterrestrial origin.
“When we noticed there were inclusions within these little glass spherules, we chemically analysed them at the Diamond X-ray synchrotron near Oxford,” explains Prof Phil Manning, who is Mr DePalma’s PhD supervisor at Manchester.
“We were able to pull apart the chemistry and identify the composition of that material. All the evidence, all of the chemical data, from that study suggests strongly that we’re looking at a piece of the impactor; of the asteroid that ended it for the dinosaurs.”
Sir David examines the remains of a triceratops dinosaur
The existence of Tanis, and the claims made for it, first emerged in the public sphere in the New Yorker Magazine in 2019. This caused a furore at the time.
Science usually demands the initial presentation of new discoveries is made in the pages of a scholarly journal. A few peer-reviewed papers have now been published, and the dig team promises many more as it works through the meticulous process of extracting, preparing and describing the fossils.
To make its TV programme, the BBC called in outside consultants to examine a number of the finds. Prof Paul Barrett from London’s Natural History Museum looked at the leg. He’s an expert in ornithischian (mostly plant-eating) dinosaurs.
“It’s a Thescelosaurus. It’s from a group that we didn’t have any previous record of what its skin looked like, and it shows very conclusively that these animals were very scaly like lizards. They weren’t feathered like their meat-eating contemporaries.
“This looks like an animal whose leg has simply been ripped off really quickly. There’s no evidence on the leg of disease, there are no obvious pathologies, there’s no trace of the leg being scavenged, such as bite marks or bits of it that are missing,” he tells me.
“So, the best idea that we have is that this is an animal that died more or less instantaneously.”
Artwork: The thinking is that a water surge buried all the creatures at Tanis
The big question is whether this dinosaur did actually die on the day the asteroid struck, as a direct result of the ensuing cataclysm. The Tanis team thinks it very likely did, given the limb’s position in the dig sediments.
If that is the case, it would be quite the discovery.
But Prof Steve Brusatte from the University of Edinburgh says he’s sceptical – for the time being.
He’s acted as another of the BBC’s outside consultants. He wants to see the arguments presented in more peer-reviewed articles, and for some palaeo-scientists with very specific specialisms to go into the site to give their independent assessment. Prof Brusatte says it’s possible, for example, that animals that had died before the impact was exhumed by the violence on the day and then re-interred in a way that made their deaths appear concurrent.
“Those fish with the spherules in their gills, they’re an absolute calling card for the asteroid. But for some of the other claims – I’d say they have a lot of circumstantial evidence that hasn’t yet been presented to the jury,” he says.
“For some of these discoveries, though, does it even matter if they died on the day or years before? The pterosaur egg with a pterosaur baby inside is super-rare; there’s nothing else like it from North America. It doesn’t all have to be about the asteroid.”
A pterosaur embryo inside an egg was found at the Tanis site…
…here digitally extracted and constructed into a model
There’s no doubting the pterosaur egg is special.
With modern X-ray technology, it’s possible to determine the chemistry and properties of the eggshell. It was likely leathery rather than hard, which may indicate the pterosaur mother buried the egg in sand or sediment like a turtle.
It’s also possible with X-ray tomography to extract virtually the bones of the pterosaur chick inside, print them and reconstruct what the animal would have looked like. Mr DePalma has done this. The baby pterosaur was probably a type of azhdarchid, a group of flying reptiles whose adult wings could reach more than 10m from tip to tip.
Mr DePalma gave a special lecture on the Tanis discoveries to an audience at the US space agency Nasa’s Goddard Space Flight Center on Wednesday. He and Prof Manning will also present their latest data to the European Geosciences Union General Assembly in May.
