A 3,300-Year-Old Bird Claw Was Discovered By Archaeologists While Digging In A Cave
Scientists have estimated the Earth to be more or less 4.54 billion years old, predating even human existence. Indeed, there’s a lot more to learn about our home planet than what we were taught in schools. So, when a photo of an unusually massive bird claw surfaced online, people couldn’t help but be astounded by it.
The giant claw was discovered by the members of the New Zealand Speleological Society in 1987.
They were traversing the cave systems of Mount Owen in New Zealand when they unearthed a breathtaking find. It was a claw that seemed to have belonged to a dinosaur. And much to their surprise, it still had muscles and skin tissues attached to it.
Over three decades ago, archaeologists found an unusually massive bird claw while traversing the cave systems of Mount Owen in New Zealand
Later, they found out that the mysterious talon had belonged to an extinct flightless bird species called moa. Native to New Zealand, moas, unfortunately, had become extinct approximately 700 to 800 years ago.
So, archaeologists have then posited that the mummified moa claw must have been over 3,300 years old upon discovery!
The claw turned out to have belonged to a now-extinct flightless species called moa.
Moas’ lineage most likely began around 80 million years ago on the ancient supercontinent Gondwana. Derived from the Polynesian word for fowl, moas consisted of three families, six genera and nine species.
These species varied in sizes—some were around the size of a turkey, while others were larger than an ostrich. Of the nine species, the two largest had a height of about 12 feet and a weight of about 510 pounds.
Moas varied in sizes—with some as small as a turkey and others as big as an ostrich.
The now-extinct birds’ remains have revealed that they were mainly grazers and browsers, eating mostly fruits, grass, leaves and seeds.
Genetic studies have shown that their closest relatives were the flighted South American tinamous, a sister group to ratites. However, unlike all other ratites, the nine species of moa were the only flightless birds without vestigial wings.
Moas used to be the largest terrestrial animals and herbivores that dominated the forests of New Zealand. Prior to human arrival, their only predator was the Haast’s eagle. Meanwhile, the arrival of the Polynesians, particularly the Maori, dated back to the early 1300s. Shortly after, moas became extinct and so did the Haast’s eagle.
Sadly, they became extinct shortly after humans arrived on the island
Many scientists claimed that their extinction was mainly due to hunting and habitat reduction. Apparently, Trevor Worthy, a paleozoologist known for his extensive research on moa agreed with this presumption.
“The inescapable conclusion is these birds were not senescent, not in the old age of their lineage and about to exit from the world. Rather they were robust, healthy populations when humans encountered and terminated them.”
But whatever brought about these species’ extinction, may their remains serve as a reminder for us to protect other remaining endangered species
Evidence of Neolithic Dairy Farming Found in Wales
BBC News reports that dairy fat has been detected on pottery unearthed at the Trellyffaint Neolithic monument, a site in southwest Wales where two concentric earthen henges have been found.
The four-year project explored the monument and its surroundings near Newport, Pembrokeshire
Dairy farming could have been happening in Wales as early as 3,100BC, according to new research. Shards of decorated pottery taken from the Trellyffaint Neolithic monument near Newport, Pembrokeshire, were found to contain dairy fat residue. The residue could only originate from milk-based substances such as butter, cheese, or more probably yoghurt.
George Nash, of the Welsh Rock Art Organisation, said it was the earliest proof of dairy farming in Wales.
Project leader Dr Nash said Julie Dunne of the University of Bristol had detected the dairy fat residues from the inner surfaces of the pottery, as well as dating them with 94.5% accuracy to 3,100BC.
“It’s incredibly rare to find any archaeological remains such as bone and pottery in this part of Wales because of the soil’s acidity,” he said.
This stone feature was discovered during excavation
“So, we can’t say for certain that this is the earliest example of dairy farming, but it is the earliest that anyone has been able to prove, using new revolutionary direct dating methods.
“The discovery of this pottery is important because it is right on the cusp of when a new Neolithic ideology was taking hold.”
Early farmers
Dr Nash, who teaches at the University of Coimbra in Portugal, termed the period a “Neolithic package” that included animal husbandry, pottery making, food procurement and different ways of burying and venerating the dead.
It gradually replaced the hunting, fishing and gathering way of life which had typified the previous era.
The dairy fat residue was discovered on pottery at the site
Interest in Trellyffaint began when former University of Bristol archaeology graduates Les Dodds and Phil Dell conducted several geophysical surveys on and around the Neolithic stone chambers.
They discovered two concentric henges along with other buried objects. The henges – two circular earthen banks – are roughly contemporary with Stonehenge, dating from the mid to latter part of the Neolithic period, between 3,000BC and 2,000BC.
However, Dr Nash said it is important to view the period as a continuum of social and ritual development rather than a single event.
“As the population grew throughout this period, communities had to diversify the way in which they sourced their food,” he explained.
“Initially, farming was a far riskier economy than hunting, fishing and gathering, as if you had one outbreak of disease – one crop failure – then you were prone to starvation and instability.
“It is probable that throughout the Neolithic period in western Britain, both natural resources and farming played equal roles in providing communities with the resources they needed.
Markings on a stone in the monument suggest the night sky
“The pottery recovered from this excavation probably reveals something about the veneration of the earth and what it could provide, hence the offering of dairy products within a ritualised landscape”.
The survey discovered the main chamber was largely in a good state of preservation. However, at some point in the recent past, the enormous capstone covering the chamber had slipped off its supporting upright stones. Up to 75 engraved cupmarks – gouged circular indentations – and several intersecting lines were recorded on top of this stone.
New religious ideology
The cupmarks, which feature on only a handful of Neolithic burial-ritual monuments in Wales, suggest the stone formed part of a new religious ideology where rock art represented the night sky and constellations.
Maybe a few hundred years later, the community using Trellyffaint made the decision to yet again change their worldview, which resulted in the construction of the two concentric henges a few yards north of the monument.
For this new set of monuments, offering dairy products rather than looking towards the night sky became the new way of veneration. The artefacts discovered will be presented to the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff for safekeeping, while the team’s research is due for publication in several international scientific journals.
New clue to human evolution’s biggest mystery emerges in Philippines
Denisovans are an elusive bunch, known mainly from ancient DNA samples and traces of that DNA that the ancient hominids shared when they interbred with Homo sapiens. They left their biggest genetic imprint on people who now live in Southeast Asian islands, nearby Papua New Guinea and Australia.
Ayta people in the Philippines, shown here, belong to a group of ethnic communities that includes one with the highest level of Denisovan ancestry in the world, a new study finds.
Genetic evidence now shows that a Philippine Negrito ethnic group has inherited the most Denisovan ancestry of all. Indigenous people known as the Ayta Magbukon get around 5 per cent of their DNA from Denisovans, a new study finds.
This finding fits an evolutionary scenario in which two or more Stone Age Denisovan populations independently reached various Southeast Asian islands, including the Philippines and a landmass that consisted of what’s now Papua New Guinea, Australia and Tasmania.
Evolutionary geneticists Maximilian Larena and Mattias Jakobsson, both at Uppsala University in Sweden, and their team describe the new evidence on August 12 in Current Biology.
Even as the complexities of ancient interbreeding in Southeast Asia become clearer, Denisovans remain a mysterious crowd. “It’s unclear how the different Denisovan groups on the mainland and on Southeast Asian islands were related [to each other] and how genetically diverse they were,” Jakobsson says.
Papua New Guinea highlanders — estimated to carry close to 4 per cent Denisovan DNA in the new study — were previously thought to be the modern record-holders for Denisovan ancestry. But the Ayta Magbukon display roughly 30 per cent to 40 per cent more Denisovan ancestry than Papua New Guinea highlanders and Indigenous Australians, Jakobsson says.
That calculation accounts for the recent mating of East Asians with Philippine Negrito groups, including the Ayta Magbukon, that diluted Denisovan inheritance to varying degrees.
Genetic analyses suggest that Ayta Magbukon people retain slightly more Denisovan ancestry than other Philippine Negrito groups due to having mated less often with East Asian migrants to the island around 2,281 years ago, the scientists say.
Their genetic analyses compared ancient DNA from Denisovans and Neandertals with that of 1,107 individuals from 118 ethnic groups in the Philippines, including 25 Negrito populations. Comparisons were then made to previously collected DNA from present-day Papua New Guinea highlanders and Indigenous Australians.
The new report underscores that “still today there are populations that have not been fully genetically described and that Denisovans were geographically widespread,” says paleogeneticist Cosimo Posth of the University of Tübingen in Germany, who was not part of the new research.
But it’s too early to say whether Stone Age Homo fossils found on Southeast Asian islands come from Denisovans, populations that interbred with Denisovans or other Homo lineages, Posth says. Only DNA extracted from those fossils can resolve that issue, he adds. Unfortunately, ancient DNA preserves poorly in fossils from tropical climates.
Fossils from the Philippines initially classed as H. luzonensis, dating to 50,000 years ago or more (SN: 4/10/19), might actually represent Denisovans. But a lack of consensus on what Denisovans looked like leaves the evolutionary identity of those fossils uncertain.
Larena and Jakobsson’s findings “further increase my suspicions that Denisovan fossils are hiding in plain sight” among previously excavated discoveries on Southeast Asian islands, says population geneticist João Teixeira of the University of Adelaide in Australia, who did not participate in the new study.
Denisovans may have genetically encompassed H. luzonensis and two other fossil hominids found on different Southeast Asian islands, H. floresiensis on Flores and H. erectus on Java, Teixeira suspects. H. floresiensis, or hobbits, survived from at least 100,000 years ago to around 60,000 years ago (SN: 6/8/16). H. Erectus arrived on Java about 1.6 million years ago and died out between 117,000 and 108,000 years ago (SN: 12/18/19).
Geographic ancestry patterns on Southeastern Asian islands and in Australia suggest that this region was settled by a genetically distinct Denisovan population from southern parts of mainland East Asia, Teixeira and his colleagues reported in the May Nature Ecology & Evolution.
Irish archaeologists have unearthed a 1,600-year-old wooden pagan idol from a bog in Co Roscommon. The artefact was retrieved from a bog in Gortnacrannagh, around six kilometres from the prehistoric royal site of Rathcroghan.
Wood Specialist, Cathy Moore inspecting the Gortnacrannagh Idol. Only a dozen such idols have been found in Ireland and at more than two and a half metres, the Gortnacrannagh Idol is the largest to date.
The idol was made during the Iron Age from a split trunk of an oak tree, with a small human-shaped head at one end and several horizontal notches carved along its body.
Only a dozen such idols have been found in Ireland and at more than two and a half metres, the Gortnacrannagh Idol is the largest to date.
The wooden carving was discovered by a team from the Archaeological Management Solutions (AMS), working in advance of the N5 Ballaghaderreen to Scramoge Road Project.
Dr Eve Campbell, director of the AMS excavation site said the idol was carved just over 100 years before St Patrick came to Ireland.
“It is likely to be the image of a pagan deity,” Dr Campbell said.
“Our ancestors saw wetlands as mystical places where they could connect with their gods and the Otherworld.
“The discovery of animal bone alongside a ritual dagger suggests that animal sacrifice was carried out at the site and the idol is likely to have been part of these ceremonies.”
Wooden idols are known from bogs across northern Europe where waterlogged conditions allow for the preservation of ancient wood.
“The lower ends of several figures were also worked to a point suggesting that they may once have stood upright,” said wood specialist, Cathy Moore.
“Their meaning is open to interpretation, but they may have marked special places in the landscape, have represented particular individuals or deities or perhaps have functioned as wooden bog bodies, sacrificed in lieu of humans.”
The idol was made during the Iron Age from a split trunk of an oak tree, with a small human-shaped head at one end and several horizontal notches carved along its body.
The Gortnacrannagh Idol is currently at University College Dublin (UCD), where conservator Susannah Kelly is undertaking the three-year process of preserving the artefact.
Once conserved the idol will go on display at the National Museum of Ireland.
A replica of the idol, made by AMS staff in collaboration with members of the UCC Pallasboy Project and the UCD Centre for Experimental Archaeology and Material Culture, will go on display at the Rathcroghan Centre in Tulsk, Co Roscommon.
Dr Ros Ó Maoldúin of AMS says the Gortnacrannagh Idol is such “a unique and significant find”, and the replica will “help us understand the idol better and appreciate how it was made.
“It will be possible for people to see this in action at the Craggaunowen Archaeology Park in Co. Clare during the last weekend of August.”
AMS says the discovery will have no impact on the progress of the N5 Ballaghaderreen to Scramoge Road Project.
“Road projects such as the N5 provide a significant opportunity for the investigation of our archaeological heritage, said Deirdre McCarthy, a resident archaeologist with Roscommon County Council.
“Gortnacrannagh is an excellent example. Were it not for the road, we would never have known about this extraordinary site.”
Analysis of the artefact and the site it was found in is ongoing.
Egypt’s secrets revealed: Possibly a second Sphinx & mysterious hidden chambers??
According to Egyptologist Bassam El Shammaa’s 2007 study, there was a “second sphinx” on the Pyramids Plateau. El Shammaa said the famous half-lion, the half-man statue was an Egyptian deity constructed close to another Sphinx that has since been vanished without a trace.
The discovery of a lost city in Egypt was reported in many newspapers in 1935, including this report in the Sunday Express on July 7, 1935.
Today, our attention is focused on the most recent attempt to discover the true ancient story of an advanced civilization that left us with great wonders above and below the Giza plateau sands.
Ancient lost city unearthed in Egypt
The earliest reports of a “Secret City” appeared in the World Press in the first week of March 1935. Many more were discovered in July of that year, and the Sunday Express carried an article by Edward Armytage, who had just returned from Egypt to England, where he had witnessed the excavation of an ancient Egyptian metropolis thought to date back 4,000 years.
Following then, there was stillness, as if every Egyptologist alive had lost interest in this fantastic underground metropolis. Throughout the years that followed, all of his articles focused on tombs of queens and arrows. Surprisingly, at one point, such a massive find of an entire underground metropolis dating back at least 4,000 years was completely ignored.
Denial of previous findings
Zawi Hawass examining a chamber at the back of the Sphinx.
However, he retains his power – and it is not a little one. Much has been written about the Egyptian ‘Indiana Jones’ (Zahi Hawass), who smiles large one moment and goes crimson with rage the next when he is questioned. This aspect of his personality is widely chronicled in the book “Breaking the Mirror of Heaven” by Robert Bauval and Ahmed Osman.
However, such attitude does not explain why Zahi Hawass has publicly said that there is nothing beneath the Sphinx, no tunnel, or a single chamber, despite several photographs of him entering the lowering pits of the Sphinx’s head and another in the rear of the body the lion. Should we ignore what we’ve seen several times before and accept such denials without question?
Statements contradict photographic evidence
Zawi Hawass descending through a well towards a chamber filled with water that contained a large sarcophagus.
He appears to have ignored queries concerning underground tunnels underneath the Giza plateau and chambers beneath the Sphinx, claiming that it was impossible to investigate deeper since the rooms were either sealed or filled with water. This might be true, however, we can see in one of the images of a posterior axis descending on the Sphinx’s side that the ground is extremely dry.
We know that Hawass climbed the steps from the Sphinx’s rear entrance, into a deep room, and then farther down to a lower chamber containing a very big sarcophagus and filled with water; these events are all seen in a documentary made by Fox. It’s difficult to conceive how he could subsequently refute what he’d said and done.
A hole in the Sphinx’s head
Vivant Denon’s 1798 sketch of the sphinx depicts a man being pulled out of a hole in the Sphinx’s head.
Vivant Denon made a sketch of the Sphinx in 1798, although he didn’t replicate it perfectly. He must have known there was a hole in the top of his head since he had sketched the image of a guy being dragged out.
1920s aerial photo shows a hole in the Sphinx’s head.
A drawing is hardly evidence, but an aerial shot of the sphinx taken from a hot air balloon in the 1920s revealed that there is such an opening at the top of its head.
The Sphinx’s head puzzle
According to Tony Bushby in his ” The Secret in The Bible”, a fragmented Sumerian cylinder tells a story that could easily be interpreted as having taken place in Giza, involving a beast that had a lion’s head with a tunnel entrance hidden by the sand.
A new study now points out that the Sphinx’s body was carved from natural stone when there was frequent heavy rain and this takes us back to the same time that Robert Bauval and Robert Schoch calculated the construction of the Pyramids of the ‘Belt of Orion’, ie, about 10,450 BC.
The second Sphinx
Giza plateau with the second sphinx mound buried.
The Giza complex (the ancient Egyptian term Gisa meaning “Stone Hewn”) has been sketched since 1665, and some depict two heads ‘peering’ out of the sand, one with female characters, possibly the second Sphinx.
It was an ancient Egyptian custom to enlist two lions, known as Akerw, outside their doorways for heavenly protection, which would take us the right to a mystery mound near the sphinx, which Gerry Cannon (Book: The Giza Plateau Secrets and a Second Sphinx Revealed) identified and measured. Is it possible that this mound contains the buried body of a second sphinx?
One would have thought that this mysterious, large, covered shape so close to the sphinx would have been greeted with great enthusiasm by the Egyptian authorities, but Hawass and Mark Lehner didn’t want to hear or pay attention to it, according to one source.
Gerry had contacted someone at a renowned institute in Cairo who had equipment that could detect objects under the sand. This person asked the Supreme Council of Antiquities for permission to investigate the mound, but they did not respond. Apparently, no one else was allowed to investigate the specific area of the mound where we believe a Second Sphinx could be unearthed. No doubt they had a reason for this!
Why the denial?
Why would those two Egyptologists be so concerned about the possibility of discovering something that had been lost for centuries? Is it conceivable they don’t want to expose what’s behind that mound? It is illogical to oppose any type of probe or even a simple aerial image being taken, which may lead to the discovery of yet another great wonder of the world, attracting many thousands of more tourists to Egypt.
They don’t even admit to have inspected the mystery mound, and if they had, they would have been the first to admit it. Zahi Hawass appears to have an agenda, which is to maintain the conventional view of ancient Egyptian history (to not allow anything to disrupt the path of conventional history), regardless of how many new findings contradict what is now considered to be true.
Gerry Cannon has previously hinted at a timetable for constructing the three great pyramids, as well as the Sphinx, which is many thousands of years older than most of us assume. He also identified an undiscovered mound on the Giza plateau, where another sphinx is most likely hidden, based on ancient documents and data he presented.
Giants and beings of unknown origin were recorded by the ancients
Found in many regions of the world, cave paintings have been a valuable source of information for understanding the lifestyle and beliefs of early humans. Some depict scenarios that are fairly simple to understand, such as men hunting or entire families in a village.
Cave paintings in Tassili n’Ajjer.
The cave paintings discovered on the Tassili n’Ajjer plateau in southern Algeria, are a major conundrum for scholars.
They sketched what they observed, assuming that ancient humans did not have the ability to imagine such art: “One of the images appears to portray an extraterrestrial pursuing human being towards an oval object, comparable to a small spaceship.”
To see up close what many consider to be the world’s finest museum of prehistoric art, visitors must journey to the parched plains of the Sahara desert. Specifically in southern Algeria, 700 metres above sea level, is the Tassili plateau.
It is feasible to reach one of the earliest sources of information on ancient terrestrial life by traversing many cliffs. Years of wear and tear, as well as the strong forces of nature, have rendered the road nearly inaccessible. Rock formations that resemble enormous stone sentinels may be seen.
It is precisely in this location where caverns and more caves, with around 1,500 cave paintings dating from 10 to 15 thousand years, come into play.
Some paintings make sense, but others are enthralling, leaving you to ponder the true meaning for hours on end. First and foremost, everything discovered in this remote location supports what was originally thought about the Sahara Desert: this location was once bustling with life. A diverse range of plant and animal species coexisted in this area, as well as in many other parts of Africa and the world.
The patterns on ledges and rocks appear to imply that flowers, olive groves, cypresses, and other species grew in a fertile and vibrant environment. Furthermore, the current wildlife included antelopes, lions, ostriches, elephants, and rivers teeming with crocodiles. Unquestionably, a totally different scenario than what is now occurring in the Sahara.
Similarly, human beings can be seen in their daily activities in over a thousand primitive depictions discovered in Tassili.
Men hunting, swimming, and farming, as well as other routine activities in an archaic civilization. Nothing out of the ordinary for numerous experts and scholars who have visited this genuine book of stones.
Now, there are certain fascinating aspects that even the most sceptical brains can detect. To begin with, the tonality of the paintings is considerably more diverse than that which was typically used at that period. The rock art scenes from the same time period are not as vibrant as those seen here.
Tassili n’Ajjer Painting Figure. This “God” very closely resembled a paleo-astronaut in a space suit.
The images that appear to portray creatures wearing helmets and diving suits, quite similar to current astronauts, are the most stunning and difficult to accept. Furthermore, other pictures depict humanoids with enormous round heads and excessively large limbs.
Everything appears to imply that these strange and perplexing artworks show that creatures from other worlds visited our planet in the distant past. It is thought that primitive humans were unable to envision this type of art. Instead, they just sketched what they saw, which became part of their memories.
A strange huge creature and we can see a probable ‘kid’ being abducted by something or someone close alongside him. Surprisingly, the beings around this behemoth (at least some of them) do not appear to be human.
This entire collection of cave paintings might be the oldest evidence of a meeting between mankind and creatures from other worlds. In fact, one of the photos appears to depict a group of aliens escorting several people towards an oval object like a small spaceship.
Some experts who have visited the site believe that the early painters witnessed something unusual and left pictorial proof of it. These depictions of creatures with huge round heads are of ‘Tassili’s gods of unknown origin.’
The first dinosaurs may have laid soft eggs without hard shells
The new finding forces scientists to rethink how dinosaur eggs evolved. The earliest dinosaur eggs were more like leathery turtle eggs than hard bird’s eggs. That’s the conclusion of a new study of fossilized dino embryos.
A team of palaeontologists studied embryos from two types of dinosaurs. One came from early in dinosaur history. The other lived about 150 million years later. Both sets of eggs were enclosed by soft shells. The researchers described their findings online on June 17 in Nature. It’s the first report of soft-shelled dino eggs.
“This new hypothesis provides an answer to these problems,” says Stephen Brusatte. He is a palaeontologist at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. He was not involved in the work. Until now, palaeontologists thought that all dinosaurs laid hard eggs.
This fossilised egg was laid by Mussaurus, a type of long-necked, plant-eating dinosaur that grew to 6 metres in length and lived in what is now Argentina
Minerals such as calcite make such shells hard and help them to fossilize. But scientists couldn’t explain a lack of fossil eggs from the earliest dinosaurs. Nor did they know why tiny structures within eggshells are so different across the three main types of dinosaurs.
Further analyses of these and other dinosaur eggs suggest that hard eggshells evolved three separate times. The team thinks the long-necked sauropods, plant-eating ornithischians (Or-nuh-THISH-ee-uns) and fierce theropods each evolved their own hard shells.
Unearthing soft dino eggs
The researchers analyzed a clutch of dinosaur eggs found in Mongolia. The eggs are thought to come from Protoceratops. That was a sheep-sized ornithischian. The fossil dates to between 72 million and 84 million years ago.
The team also analyzed an egg found in Argentina. It is between 209 million and 227 million years old. Scientists believe it to be Mussaurus. It was a sauropod ancestor.
The soft eggshells weren’t easy to spot. “When they are preserved, they’d only be preserved as films,” says Mark Norell. An author of the new study works as a palaeontologist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.
When his team examined the fossilized embryos, they noticed egg-shaped halos around the skeletons. On closer look, those halos had thin brown layers. But the layers were not evenly arranged. That suggested the material was biological, not made solely of minerals. Minerals tend to create very orderly patterns.
This well-preserved clutch of eggs is from Protoceratops, a plant-eater that lived more than 70 million years ago. Chemical studies of its eggs show that they had soft shells. The arrow points to an embryo that still has remnants of a softshell.
Before a few years ago, “people thought that everything that’s soft and squishy decays away immediately post mortem,” says study author Jasmina Wiemann. She is a palaeontologist at Yale University in New Haven, Conn. But growing evidence suggests that soft biological material can fossilize. The right conditions can preserve soft tissues, she says.
The team used lasers to probe the chemical composition of the brown layers. They used a method that would not damage the fossils. This Raman spectroscopy shines laser light on a sample, then measures how the light bounces off.
The properties of the scattered light show what type of molecules are present. Wiemann has used the approach to identify pigments in dinosaur eggs.
The researchers compared the chemical fingerprints of these fossilized eggs with those of eggs from hard-shelled dinosaurs. They also compared them with eggs from present-day animals. The Protoceratops and Mussaurus eggs were most similar to modern soft-shelled eggs.
Next, the scientists combined eggshell data with what’s known about the family trees of extinct and living egg-laying animals. From that, the researchers calculated the most likely scenario for the evolution of dinosaur eggs.
Early dinosaurs laid soft-shelled eggs, they determined. Hard shells evolved in later dinos. And it happened several times — at least once in each major limb of the dino family tree.
These results suggest it may be time to rethink dinosaur parenting, says Wiemann. In the past, many ideas came from studying fossils of theropods, such as T. rex. For example, some of them sat on eggs in open nests, like modern birds. But if eggs evolved separately in different lines of dinos, parental behaviour may have, too.
“If you have a soft-shelled egg,” Norell says, “you’re burying your eggs. [There’s] not going to be a lot of parental care.” In some ways, he now suspects, dinosaurs that laid soft eggs might resemble early reptiles more than they do birds.
Now that palaeontologists know what to look for, the search is on for more soft-shelled dino eggs. Palaeontologist Gregory Erickson works at Florida State University in Tallahassee. He says, “I would not be surprised if other people come forward with other specimens.”
Archaeologists find child’s skeleton in Turkey’s Tozkoparan Mound
A child’s skeleton discovered during continuing archaeological excavations at Tozkoparan Mound, a first-degree archaeological site in the Pertek district of Tunceli’s eastern region, has been kept in the city’s newly opened museum.
An archaeologist inspects the remains of a skeleton during excavations at the Tozkoparan Mound site in Tunceli, Turkey, Aug. 11, 2021.
The excavation has been initiated because the mound, which is located in Tozkoparan village of the district and considered to have traces of thousands of years of history, remained in the village settlement area and has been damaged by the houses built on it.
Academics from various universities are working at the excavations, carried out under the leadership of the Tunceli Museum.
The remains of a skeleton are marked during excavations at the Tozkoparan Mound site in Tunceli, Turkey, Aug. 11, 2021.
A team of about 15 people, consisting of anthropologists, archaeologists, art historians and intern students, take part in the excavations. For the first time since 1968, scientific methods are now used in the excavations.
While working in the field, the team has recently discovered a skeleton, thought to belong to a child. The skeleton pieces, which were removed from their place with the help of a brush and spatula, were taken under protection at Tunceli Museum.
In addition to terracotta potteries obsidians, bones, stone tools and arrowheads were also found during the excavations. Artefacts that shed light on history will be exhibited in the museum.
Speaking to the state-run Anadolu Agency, Düzce University Archeology Department academic Yasemin Yılmaz said that they have been conducting surveys in Tunceli for about six years and have identified all archaeological periods in the city starting from the Lower Paleolithic period.
Stating that they completed the survey this year, Yılmaz said that they carry out excavations in Tozkoparan Mound with a delegation under the supervision of academics from universities in Tunceli, Düzce, Erzurum and Diyarbakır.
Ancient historical artefacts can be seen during excavations at the Tozkoparan Mound site in Tunceli, Turkey, on Aug. 11, 2021.
Yılmaz noted that they carry out work in the areas where the mound was destroyed.
“Here we are working to determine the boundaries of the archaeological sites. Archaeological remains began to be found just below the surface soil.
On the third day of the excavation, a human skeleton was unearthed. It belongs to an individual who appears to be a child. It was lying in an oval-shaped pit, excavated in the north and south directions. This skeleton is very important because it belongs to the ancient society and provides direct information about that period,” Yılmaz said.
Yılmaz stated that there have been interdisciplinary studies on skeletons recently, adding, “We can determine the age of the skeletons and their nutritional system. If the diseases they suffered left traces on the bones, we can determine them. We cannot obtain much data with a single sample, but it is a pleasing finding to begin with.”
Yılmaz stated that they have completed the archaeological chronology of the city during their surveys, and added, “As of this year, we completed our surveys because we have achieved all our goals. Tunceli is located on the transit route of many civilizations. Our findings also confirmed this. We started to prepare our findings for publication.”
Yılmaz stated that with the publication of their scientific articles, the city will attract the attention of history and archaeology enthusiasts.
The head of the excavations and Tunceli museum director, Kenan Öncel, also emphasized that with the opening of the museum in the city, archaeological work gained momentum.
In this context, Öncel stated that they started the first salvage excavations in Tozkoparan Mound.
“We plan to work in the field for about one more month. Our aim is to determine the extent and boundaries of the mound. Tunceli Museum is currently the newest museum in Turkey. Our artefacts found in this rescue excavation will enrich the collection of the Tunceli Museum and will also contribute to understanding the cultural background of the city,” he said.
