BULGARIA, ENGLAND, EUROPE

7,000 years old Copper Age Kilns Unearthed in Bulgaria

7,000 years old Copper Age Kilns Unearthed in Bulgaria

Bulgarian archaeology records that two kilns were dated between 4800 and 4600 B.C. A team of researchers from the Ruse Regional Museum of History were discovered on the Bazovets Settlement Mound near the Danube River in northeastern Bulgaria.

7,000 years old Copper Age Kilns Unearthed in Bulgaria
The two prehistoric pottery-making kilns found at the Bazovets Settlement Mound are from an archaeological layer from 4,800 – 4,600 BC.

In the excavation season, 2019 one of the two almost 7,000-year-old prehistoric ovens or furnaces was first partially excavated.

In recent excavations on the Bazovets Settlement Mound, it was fully exposed and a second kiln from the same Chalcolithic facility has been found, the Ruse Regional Museum of History has announced.

The 2020 archaeological excavations at the Copper Age settlement in question took place in September and were led by archaeologist Dimitar Chernakov from the Ruse Regional Museum of History, and his deputy, archaeologist Irena Ruseva from the Svilengrad Museum of History, with archaeologists from the Dobrich Regional Museum of History and the Veliko Tarnovo University “St. Cyril and St. Methodius” also participating.

A total of 57 archaeological artefacts from the said Early Chalcolithic period (4,800 – 4,600 BC) have been found during the latest excavations at the Bazovets Settlement Mound.

An aerial view of the Bazovets Settlement Mound, a 7,000-year-old prehistoric settlement in Northeast Bulgaria close to the Danube River.
An aerial view of the nearly 7,000-year-old Early Copper Age structures exposed during the 2020 excavations of the Bazovets Settlement Mound.

These include artefacts made of flint, animal bones, horns, and ceramics – including fragments from anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figurines. As a result of the research of the Early Copper Age archaeological layer on the site, the archaeologists discovered that the easternmost periphery of the prehistoric settlement was used for manufacturing.

The second of the prehistoric kilns, which was found during the 2020 excavations, had two chambers, a lower chamber for the burning to generate heat, and an upper chamber for the baking of the pottery items.

The Early Chalcolithic kiln was 1.2 meters long, and 1 meter wide, and it was made of wood wattle plastered with a thick layer of clay from the inside and outside.

The opening of the kiln was on its southeastern side, and it was closed with three flat stones which have been discovered right next to it.

The kiln had a groove that would allow for the regulating of the heating temperature, a type of furnaces for the baking of clay that would also be used in later archaeological eras, the Ruse Museum of History notes.

Above the two kilns, the archaeologists have discovered the ruins of a rectangular building with a north-south orientation.

Right next to its entrance, there was a small room seemingly used for food storage where the researchers have unearthed traces from food residues such as animal bones and lots of shells from freshwater mollusks.

In addition to the nearly 7,000-year-old Early Chalcolithic pottery-making kilns, during their 2020 excavations at the Bazovets Settlement Mound, the archaeologists have also found and started to unearth a prehistoric building which was even older than the kilns themselves.

The 2020 excavations of the 7,000-year-old Bazovets Settlement Mound near Bulgaria’s Danube city of Ruse took place in September 2020, building upon the partial exposure of one of the Copper Age kilns in the 2019 season.

The prehistoric building in question was built of wood and clay and was destroyed by a large fire.

In its southern part, the archaeologists have found several intact pottery vessels and bases as well as a horn tool which were placed on a podium. They are going to continue researching the prehistoric building further during their next excavations of the Bazovets Settlement Mound.

In the Neolithic and Chalcolithic, the territory of today’s Bulgaria and much of the rest of the Balkans, for instance, today’s Romania and Serbia, saw the rise of Europe’s first civilization, the prehistoric civilization of the Lower Danube Valley and Western coast of the Black Sea.

This prehistoric civilization from the Neolithic and Chalcolithic, which had the world’s oldest gold, Europe’s oldest town, and seemingly some of the earliest forms of pre-alphabetic writing, is referred to some scholars as “Old Europe”. It predates the famous civilizations of Minoan Crete, Mycenaean Greece, Ancient Egypt and Ancient Mesopotamia by thousands of years.

EUROPE, SPAIN, WORLD

A selfie set in stone: hidden portrait by cheeky mason found in Spain 900 years on

A selfie set in stone: hidden portrait by cheeky mason found in Spain 900 years on

The Guardian reports that art historian Jennifer Alexander of the University of Warwick found a male figure at the top of a pillar in Santiago de Compostela, a twelfth-century cathedral located in northwest Spain while conducting a stone-by-stone survey of the structure. 

Millions of devotees who made the long pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, northwest of Spain, over the years have been unaware of the figure.  He has looked down on them from the top of one of the many pillars that soar upwards, each decorated with carved foliage, among which he is concealed.

The figure was discovered today by a British art scholar who says that he was never supposed to be seen since he is a self-portrait of a stonemason who in the 12th century served in the cathedral.

The 12th-century Santiago de Compostela cathedral in Galicia attracts hundreds of thousands of pilgrims a year.

“You find this in medieval buildings,” Dr Jennifer Alexander told the Observer. “They’re usually in dark corners where only another stonemason would find them.

This one is in a bit of the building where you’d have to be a stonemason to be up there to see it. It’s tucked away in among a whole set of capitals [the top of a column] that are otherwise plain.

A selfie set in stone: hidden portrait by cheeky mason found in Spain 900 years on
Only the masons creating the building could see the figure.

“It’s just such a charming connection between us and the person that carved it. It’s almost as if it was designed just for us to see it by those people working on the building. Of course, this stonemason probably had no idea that he’d have to wait so long to be spotted.”

Despite the supreme talent of such craftsmen, they were completely anonymous, their names lost to history. This is the closest the mason got to signing his work.

Alexander, a reader in art history at the University of Warwick, is a specialist in the architectural history of the great churches and cathedrals of the medieval period. She discovered the figure in conducting an intricate survey of Santiago de Compostela cathedral, a Unesco world heritage site.

Its significance lies in its association with the Camino, the pilgrimage across hundreds of miles to reach the shrine of the apostle St James, which is within the cathedral. Such is its draw that. in 2019 alone, the official number of pilgrims reaching the city was some 350,000.

The current building was begun in the late 11th-century and is a masterpiece of Romanesque architecture, with later additions.

Alexander was conducting a stone-by-stone analysis to work out its construction sequence, in a project funded by the Galician regional government. It was when she was studying the capitals, about 13 metres above the pavement, that “this little figure popped out”, she recalled.

Dr Jennifer Alexander conducted a stone-by-stone analysis in the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela.

“A lovely image of a chap hanging on to the middle of the capital as if his life depended on it. It’s in a row of identical off-the-peg capitals where they’ve been knocking them out in granite – ‘we need another 15 of that design’ – and suddenly there’s one that’s different. So we think it’s the man himself.

“He emerges out of the capital and is clinging to it. It’s almost as if it’s swallowing him up.”

The carved figure, which is about 30cm high, is depicted down to his waist. Alexander said: “He’s got a nice little smile. He’s pleased with himself. He’s splendidly carved, with a strongly characterised face.”

Medieval stonemasons learned their craft through apprenticeships that trained them in the back-breaking trade of cutting stone or using templates to create complex mouldings around doorways and other openings. The most promising masons would learn geometry so that they could design plans and manage construction sites.

Alexander said: “These masters had to have many skills since they were also responsible for engineering, the supply of materials, hiring the workforce and dealing with the patron, who might be a senior member of the clergy or the nobility.”

She added that such craftsmen have remained anonymous throughout the centuries even into more recent times: “When they were building Liverpool cathedral in the 20th century, they published lists of the craftsmen that worked on the building and they never mentioned stonemasons. So these are the unsung geniuses.”

ENGLAND, EUROPE, WORLD

48,000-Year-Old Neanderthal Baby Teeth Analyzed

48,000-Year-Old Neanderthal Baby Teeth Analyzed

A big landmark in human evolution is the moment a baby weans from milk to eating solid foods, and now a recent study shows that ancient Neanderthal babies might have taken a similar path.

The new discovery gives groundbreaking insights into how these ancient humans lived, based on chemical analysis of Neanderthal baby teeth. And historically holding theories on how the species died out might even turn around, too.

The lives of young Neanderthals are still poorly understood by anthropologists, partly because the fossil record for these young hominids is so sparse. As a result, researchers have often flip-flopped on what they think early life looked like for these babies, and what set Homo sapiens apart.

The report, published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, explains how Neanderthals’ milk teeth were studied by researchers. By comparing their results to humans who lived during the same period, the researchers have uncovered some striking similarities between our species.

Baby teeth are by their very nature temporary, but they’re actually an incredibly important indicator of an animal’s energy requirements, maternal lifestyle, and overall species longevity — ancient hominins included.

Alessia Nava is co-first author of the paper and a post-doctoral anthropology researcher at the University of Kent. She explains that the similarities discovered between ancient humans and Neanderthals are not just an indicator of cultural practices, but evidence of similar physiological needs.

“In modern humans, in fact, the first introduction of solid food occurs at around 6 months of age when the child needs a more energetic food supply, and it is shared by very different cultures and societies,” Nava said in a statement. “[With our study], we know that also Neanderthals started to wean their children when modern humans do”.

Essentially, both our species weaned their babies and introduced foods at about the same time in their development, the results suggest.

Like looking at rings on a tree stump, scientists read the history of Neanderthal babies in the growth rings of their teeth.

DENTAL DISCOVERIES 

The researchers looked at three ancient Neanderthal milk teeth, found in a region of Italy. The teeth belonged to Neanderthal infants living between 45,000 and 70,000 years ago. They also analyzed the baby teeth of a single human child, who lived during the Upper Paleolithic era, which began about 40,000 years ago.

To read the histories hidden in these baby teeth, the scientists studied the tissues making up each tooth and performed chemical analysis. This allowed them to read the tree ring-like growth record left behind in the enamel of these teeth. This biological record also captures the moment the infant switched to eating solid food.

The researchers found that both the Neanderthal babies and the Upper Paleolithic human baby transitioned to eating solid foods at around the same age — between their fifth and sixth months of life.

ANCIENT FAMILY LIFE 

The discovery tells researchers a lot more than just the feeding habits of these ancient babies, the study’s lead author and professor of physical anthropology at the University of Bologna, Stefano Benazzi, said in a statement.

This is a 3D reconstruction of the three Neanderthal milk teeth analyzed in the study. Shown are (from left) the tooth found in the Fumane Cave; the one found in the Broion Cave; and the tooth found in the De Nadale Cave.
This is a 3D reconstruction of the three Neanderthal milk teeth analyzed in the study. Shown are (from left) the tooth found in the Fumane Cave; the one found in the Broion Cave, and the tooth found in the De Nadale Cave.

These teeth hold important clues to the physiology and maternal experience of Neanderthals, too.

“This work’s results imply similar energy demands during early infancy and a close pace of growth between Homo sapiens and Neanderthals,” Benazzi said. “Taken together, these factors possibly suggest that Neanderthal newborns were of similar weight to modern human neonates, pointing to a likely similar gestational history and early-life ontogeny, and potentially shorter inter-birth interval”.

The researchers also gleaned more information about the Neanderthal family’s lifestyle — including that Neanderthal mothers may have tended to stay at home with their infants.

The findings also tell us more about how our ancient relatives died. This study overturns the consensus that weaning age — and its relationship with maternal fertility — somehow contributed to the Neanderthals’ eventual demise as a species. The idea here was that because Neanderthals weaned their children on a different timeline to humans, that could have affected their fertility rate.

But because Neanderthal babies appear to have similar energy requirements and weaning habits to ancient as well as modern humans, other factors — shorter overall lifespans, juvenile mortality, and cultural behaviour — may have been more likely culprits in precipitating Neanderthals’ extinction.

More research will be needed before we can truly piece together the complex history of these ancient hominins’ time on Earth. But the study adds to the mounting evidence that we are not so special a species as we like to think.

PERU, SOUTH AMERICA, WORLD

Two Inca Measurement Systems Calculated By Polish Architect

Two Inca Measurement Systems Calculated By Polish Architect

The Inca used two main units of measurement while constructing Machu Picchu, according to a Science in Poland report. Anna Kubicka of the Wrocław University of Science and Technology analyzed measurements of buildings at the site collected during field research conducted by the staff at Machu Picchu National Archaeological Park, the 3-D Scanning and Modeling Laboratory at the Wrocław University of Science and Technology, and the University of Warsaw between 2010 and 2017.

Dr Kubicka said that until now research on the Inca measurement system was based mainly on 16th and 17th-century chronicles written by colonising  Spaniards, and on their dictionaries of the Quechua language used by the Inca.

These sources contain information on anthropometric measures (measures based on human body parts). But the values assigned to them were not known.

Machu Picchu. Image: Public Domain

Scientists speculated that since the average Inca person was about 1.6 meters tall, Inca ell (arms) could be between 40 and 45 cm.

Field measurements were carried out by employees of the Machu Picchu National Archaeological Park together with the 3D Scanning and Modeling Laboratory team led by Professor Jacek Kościuk from the Wrocław University of Science and Technology.

Anna Kubicka, a PhD student at the time, joined his team. Kościuk’s team started working there in cooperation with Professor Mariusz Ziółkowski from the Center for Pre-Columbian Studies of the University of Warsaw.

The researcher determined that the Incas used two modules (or quanta) to measure their buildings. The basic module was 42 cm long and corresponded to the elbow length.

The second one, measuring 54 cm, is a so far unknown measure and does not result directly from the length of any part of the human body.

Kubicka calls it the ‘royal ell’ because the unit was used to measure structures of a higher rank. The ‘royal ell’ was associated with representative and residential building complexes of the Inca elite, while the other, basic one – with complexes of farm buildings, workshops and buildings for the yanaconas (the servants of the Inca elite).

Asked whether her finding has brought anything new to the knowledge of Machu Picchu, Kubicka says the complex was built at one point, in the first half of the 15th century. Therefore, the metrological data she has obtained is not needed to determine, for example, its age.

Kubicka said: “On the other hand, the question to observe was whether there were modular differences due to different building traditions of the people who came as labour from different regions of the Inca Empire.

At Machu Picchu we have different stonework styles, also used depending on the function of the building or complex of buildings.”

But it turned out that despite the differences in the construction method, only two measurement systems were used. Kubicka believes that this is evidence that the measuring of the Machu Picchu city plan was supervised by imperial engineers who used their own system of measures.

Further research will determine whether the measurement system identified by Dr Kubicka was also used in other places in Inca Peru as so far no one has looked into it. 

But according to Kubicka, it cannot be ruled out that the units of measurement changed overtime before the advent of the Incas. Perhaps, along with the stone processing technologies borrowed from the Tiwanaku culture, one common system of measures was adopted.

For her analyses, Dr Kubicka used the cosine quantogram method developed by the British researcher Kendall in 1974 to analyse length measures in megalithic structures. Simply put, it consists of searching for an indivisible unit of measurement (quantum) in a series of measurement data, the multiple of which is the length of individual elements of architecture.

The research in Machu Picchu was financed with a grant from the National Science Centre.

EUROPE, GREECE, WORLD

Intact Amphora Recovered Off Croatia’s Coast

Intact Amphora Recovered Off Croatia’s Coast

Total Croatia News reports that a table jug for serving wine and a utensil for straining it was found in the Adriatic Sea, near Croatia’s Paklinski Islands and the entrance to the harbour city of Hvar. The pottery was exposed through the loss of seagrasses.

As Morski writes on the 31st of October, 2020, on Saturday, an action was carried out to save an entire late antiquity-period amphora from the seabed close to the Paklinski Islands near Hvar.

In addition to the amphora, two other complete late antiquity wine vessels were found during the dive, marking yet another incredible Hvar archaeological discovery.

The amphora was found by Dr Ivan Cvitkovic and Dr Ante Zuljevic from the Institute of Oceanography and Fisheries during field research on foreign species along the seabed as part of the BENTHIC NIS project, which is otherwise funded by the Croatian Science Foundation.

The wine amphorae are dated to the period between the 3rd and 5th centuries, and the inside is coated with resin because the pottery is porous and liquid would leak through the walls of the vessel.

The action was organised by Tea Katunaric Kirjakov, an underwater archaeologist and lecturer at the Academy of Arts, University of Split, with the assistance of Kantharos d.o.o from Hvar, specialising in archaeological research, surveillance, photographic and photogrammetric documentation.

”The team from the Institute has been monitoring [the area] for many years and they noticed that there are antiquity vessels down there. With the erosion of Posidonia, the discovery of an ancient amphora came to light.

Upon examining the terrain, we found two more ancient wine vessels which were completely preserved. One is a table jug and the other is for straining wine. We also found a number of fragments of amphorae around.

Our goal was to check whether there is a complete amphora or shipwreck remains, however in this survey of the terrain, we haven’t yet been able to specify such a thing.

It will be necessary to undertake another action and look at the deeper parts of the seabed to see whether the amphorae have rolled there,” Tea Katunaric Kirjakov told Morski.

ASIA, RUSSIA, WORLD

Female warrior was buried in the ‘riding position’ as if on a horse journeying into the afterlife 2,400 years ago

Female warrior was buried in the ‘riding position’ as if on a horse journeying into the afterlife 2,400 years ago

The burial of the Amazon with a headdress made of precious metal dated back to the second half of the 4th century BC was found by the members of the Don expedition of IA RAS during the examination of the cemetery Devitsa V of Voronezh Oblast.

The plate of the head dress (stlengis). The barrow №9 of the cemetery Devitsa V.

This is the first-ever found in Middle Don river, and well preserved ceremonial headdress of a rich Scythian woman, earlier archaeologists found only fragments of such headdresses. Valerii Guliaev, the head of Don expedition, announced the first results of the examination on the 6th of December at the session of Academic Council of IA RAS.

“Such headdresses have been found a bit more than two dozen and they all were in “tzar” or not very rich barrows of the steppe zone of Scythia. We first found such headdress in the barrows of the forest-steppe zone and what is more interesting the headdress was first found in the burial of an Amazon”, says Valerii Guliaev.

Cemetery Devitsa V which was called so after the name of the local village has been known since 2000s. It consists of 19 mounds part of which is almost hidden as this region is an agricultural zone which is currently ploughed. Since 2010 the site has been studied by the specialists of the Don expedition of IA RAS.

By the time of the excavation works the barrow №9 of the cemetery Devitsa V was a small hill of 1 m height and 40 m in diameter. Under the centre of the mound, the archaeologists found the remains of the tomb where the narrow entrance-dromos from the eastern side led to. In ancient times the tomb was covered by oak blocks which were laid crisscross and rested on 11 strong oak piles. The grave pit was surrounded by the clay earthwork taken from the ground during the construction of the grave.

One was a matriarch aged between 45 and 50 who was buried wearing her decorative Scythian ceremonial headdress known as a Kalaf with amphora-shaped pendants

In the barrow four women of different age were buried: two young women of 20-29 years old and 25-35 years old, a teenage girl of 12-13 years old and a woman of 45-50 years old. The burial was made simultaneously as one of the piles supported the floor of the tomb was in the dromos and completely overlaid the entrance so that it would be absolutely impossible to overtake it during next burials.

The burial was robbed in ancient times. The robbers broke into the tomb from the north when the floor had already fallen and the sepulchre was buried i.e. in 100 or 200 years after the barrow was filled. However, only northern and eastern parts of the tomb had been robbed where there were the remains of the teenager and one of the young women.

Apart from the spread remains we found in the northern part of the pit more than 30 iron arrowheads, an iron hook in the shape of a bird, fragments of horse harness, iron hooks for hanging harness, iron knives, fragments of moulded vessels, multiple animals’ bones. In filling the robbers’ passage the broken black lacquer lacythus with red-figure palmette dated back to the second –third quarter of the 4th c BC was found.

At the southern and western wall, there were two untouched skeletons laid on the wooden beds covered by grass beddings. One of them belonged to a young woman buried in a “position of a horseman”. As the researches of the anthropologists have shown to lay her in such way the tendons of her legs had been cut. Under the left shoulder of a “horsewoman”, there was a bronze mirror, on the left, there were two spears and on the left hand, there was a bracelet made of glass beads. In the legs, there were two vessels: a moulded cassolette and a black lacquer one hand cantharos which was made in the second quarter of the 4th c BC.

The 2,400-year-old female warrior was discovered at the Devitsa V ancient necropolis in Russia’s Voronezh region

The second buried was a woman of 45-50 years old. For the Scythian time, it was a respectable age as the life expectancy of a woman was 30-35 years old. She was buried in a ceremonial headdress, calathos, the plates of which were preserved decorated with the floral ornament and the rims with the pendants in the shape of amphorae.

As the researches have shown the jewellery was made from the alloy where approximately 65-70% was gold and the rest is the pollution of copper, silver and a small per cent of iron. This is quite a high percent of the gold for Scythian jewellery which was often made in the workshops of Panticapaeum from electrum, the alloy of gold and silver whereas the gold could be approximate of 30%.

Several vessels were found at the burial site including a black lacquer one-handed kanfar (left), a black lacquer ariballic lekif with red-figured palmette (centre) and a molded incense burner (right)
A giant bronze hand mirror the size of a frying pan (left) and iron spearheads (right) were also found buried at the site

“Found calathos is a unique find. This is the first headdress in the sites of Scythian epoch found on Middle Don and it was found in situ on the location on the skull. Of course, earlier similar headdresses were found in known rich barrows of Scythia. However, only a few were discovered by archaeologists.

They were more often found by the peasants, they were taken by the police, landowners and the finds had been through many hands when they came to the specialists. That is why it is not known how well they have been preserved. Here we can be certain that the find has been well preserved”, noted Valerii Guliaev.

Along with the older woman an iron knife was laid wrapped into a piece of fabrique and an iron arrowhead of quite a rare type, tanged with a forked end. These finds and also many details of the weapon and horse harness allow suggesting that the Amazons, women-warriors whose institution was in the Scythian epoch among Iranian nomadic and semi-nomadic tribes of Eastern Europe, were buried in this barrow. Such horsewomen probably were cattle, belonging and dwelling guardians while the men went to long-term warpaths.

“The Amazons are a common Scythian phenomenon and only on Middle Don during the last decade our expedition has discovered approximately 11 burials of young armed women. Separate barrows were filled for them and all burial rites which were usually made for men were done for them. However, we come across burials with four Amazons of such different age for the first time”, said Valerii Guliaev.

The burial was made in autumn at the end of the warm period. The researches done by paleozoologists of IA RAS helped to figure it out. In the grave pit, the bones of six-eight months old lamb were found which some time ago had been in a bronze cooking pot dag into the ground in the centre of the grave.

The robbers took the pot which was of great value and the bones greened from being rested in a bronze dish for a long time had been thrown away. Since the sheep usually lamb in March-April, it was concluded that the burial which the barrow had been filled for was done not later than November.

The finds in the burial have raised questions for scientists who still do not have any answers.

“We have come across an enigma: we have two women in their prime of life, one is a teenager and another is a woman quite old for the Scythian epoch. It is not clear how they could die at the same moment. They do not have any traces of bones injuries. These women’s bones have been spread. There are some marks of tuberculosis and brucellosis, but these illnesses cannot cause death simultaneously. That is why we still cannot understand what the cause of death was and why four women of different age were buried at the same time”, asks Valerii Guliaev.

Provided by Institute of Archaeology of Russian Academy of Sciences

NORTH AMERICA, U.S.A, WORLD

This tiny skull has big implications for the largest dinosaurs

Fossil of young long-necked dinosaur found—and nicknamed Andrew

In what is now Montana, some 150 million years ago, a young dinosaur roamed through a land before (modern) time. Not yet five years old, the long-necked creature somehow ended up buried in a violent, muddy flood, forever freezing it in adolescence.

The fossil skull of the young diplodocus (CMC VP14128), nicknamed “Andrew” and held by palaeontologist D. Cary Woodruff. (John P. Wilson)

Now, researchers have freed this potentially record-setting dinosaur from its stony slumber. After uncovering the remains, the scientists published a study in Scientific Reports, in which they argue that the skull is the smallest yet found from a group of long-necked dinosaurs called diplodocids.

The little fellow even has a nickname: Andrew, after the steel baron and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, who funded palaeontology research and has a diplodocid species named after him

With its skull just 10 inches across, researchers’ best guess is that Andrew was a juvenile Diplodocus—an especially rare find. While more than a hundred Diplodocus specimens have been discovered, their skulls are much rarer. Fewer than a dozen have been dug up to date. If the researchers’ reconstruction is correct, Andrew’s skull could be the smallest and least mature Diplodocus skull ever found, potentially providing insights into the dinosaur’s development.

“The smallest Diplodocus skull could tell us a lot about how Diplodocus grew up,” says palaeontologist D. Cary Woodruff, a PhD student at the University of Toronto and the study’s lead author.

‘Free rein at the salad bar’

Andrew hails from Montana’s Mother’s Day Quarry, a bone bed that contains at least sixteen juvenile dinosaurs, their bones are strewn about like a game of pick-up-sticks.

The remains are buried in pebble-flecked mud, suggesting that a flood may have overwhelmed a herd of young diplodocids. Due to the angles at which the bones were stuck in the muck, researchers think that other dinosaurs later trampled the bodies.

Andrew emerged from these rocks in 2010 during an excavation led by study coauthor and Cincinnati Museum Center palaeontologist Glenn Storrs. Storrs then reached out to Woodruff to give the fossil a closer look.

To Woodruff, the skull seemed to belong to a Diplodocus, though its features differed greatly from those of mature individuals. For one, Andrew had 13 teeth in its lower jaw, some of which had spoon-like edges to slice through rough vegetation. In contrast, only 11 peg-like teeth, good for nabbing softer vegetation, occupied the lower jaws of Diplodocus adults. Second, Andrew’s snout was narrow like a deer’s, whereas Diplodocus adults had broader snouts, more like a cow’s.

Woodruff thinks these differences tell the story of a shifting diet as the dinosaurs matured, echoing a 2010 study of a different Diplodocus juvenile skull.

Adult Diplodocus were lawnmowers, gobbling ferns and other soft plants in bulk. But young Diplodocus may have been more selective eaters, using their dental variation to nibble on the choicest parts of many different kinds of plants.

“Because they’ve got these different tooth types, it’s kind of like of a Swiss army knife in their mouth, right? They can pick and eat every plant they want to,” says Woodruff. “[They had] free rein at the salad bar.”

A puzzle with missing pieces

Kristi Curry Rogers, a palaeontologist at Macalester College in Minnesota, welcomes the new paper, but she doesn’t fully agree with its findings because of the fossil’s poor preservation. Andrew’s skull is missing parts of the cheek, palate, and lower jaw, plus the fossils are slightly squished. These hiccups make it hard to reconstruct the skull, let alone infer the dinosaur’s behaviour from it.

Mom's Phone Call Helps Uncover Oldest Long-Necked Dinosaur on Record
An illustration of the young diplodocus “Andrew” in its environment. (Andrey Atuchin) (Andrey Atuchin./Andrey Atuchin)

“The authors don’t address the deformation of the skull or the missing components of the face in any great detail, the inclusion of which could easily, and dramatically, change the interpretations,” she said in an email.

The uncertainty also muddies Andrew’s status as a member of the Diplodocus genus. When researchers tried to calculate Andrew’s place on the diplodocid family tree, its position depended on which of the dinosaur’s traits the researchers looked at.

“This is actually the part of the paper that I found the most interesting and important,” said palaeontologist Kimberley Chapelle, a PhD student at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, in an email. The confusion may simply stem from growing pains; young and old Diplodocus could have looked very different, leading to challenges in categorization.

For now, Woodruff says that Diplodocus is his best guess for Andrew’s identity, but he says that it could also be an unknown species. To help settle the debate, Andrew’s skull is currently being 3-D scanned for future research.

“[At] the end of the day, that’s science: one object, two interpretations, multiple testable hypotheses,” said Woodruff in an email. “And if we’re later proven wrong about the identity, that’s fine. Andrew still contributes to our understanding … regardless of whatever the heck it is.”

EUROPE, ITALY, WORLD

Pre-Roman Prince’s Tomb Packed With Treasures Found in Italy

Pre-Roman Prince’s Tomb Packed With Treasures Found in Italy

In a recently uncovered Iron Age cemetery in central Italy, archaeologists have found the remnants of an entire iron-wheeled war chariot, a recent study finds. The lavish tomb is also brimming with other riches, including a stash of weapons, a bronze helmet and vessels made of bronze and clay.

An archaeologist cleans the bronze helmet found in the Iron Age burial.

The body of the chariot’s owner, however, is long gone. 

The person, possibly a man, based on the war-related grave goods — was likely buried under a large mound of dirt that rose above the ground like a giant gumdrop, at the time of burial.

Pre-Roman Prince’s Tomb Packed With Treasures Found in Italy
The rich assemblage of grave goods indicates that the person buried here held a high status.

If his body was placed near the surface, “it would have had little chance of surviving the centuries of subsequent ploughing that have removed all traces of any above-ground mound,” study researcher Federica Boschi, a senior assistant professor of methods of archaeological research at the University of Bologna in Italy, wrote in the study.

But even though the body is missing, the treasures in this 2,600-year-old grave reveal much about this mystery man, Boschi said.

The “extraordinary collection of cultural material” is “unequivocal testimony to the aristocratic status of the tomb’s owner,” Boschi told Live Science in an email. 

The burial goods are so swanky, she began referring to the site as the “princely tomb,” Boschi said.

The maps (top left) show where the burial was discovered. An aerial survey (top right) shows the crop marks that clued archaeologists into the discovery. Finally, the bottom map shows the crop circles in red.

Digging deep

Archaeologists found the burial while surveying the land prior to the construction of a new sports complex in the Nevola River Valley. An aerial survey over the town of Corinaldo revealed evidence of the grave. 

Researchers excavate the Iron Age site at Corinaldo, Italy.

This bird’s-eye view showed the remains of large, circular ditches. This seemed peculiar, so Boschi and her colleagues began doing the groundwork.

At first, they used electrical resistance, which puts electrical currents into the ground and monitors for anomalies in how current flows through the soil. The team also used magnetic surveys to detect if any metal artefacts were lurking underground. 

These surveys hinted that something was buried under the ditches. Soon after the archaeologists began digging, they found the tomb and its treasures, Boschi said.

She noted that the grave is surrounded by a 98-foot-wide (30 meters) circular moat, which may have had that gumdrop-like mound over it at the time of the burial. The tomb itself is smaller, measuring 10.5 by 9 feet (3.2 by 2.8 m). 

The tomb dates to the seventh century B.C., so it likely belonged to the Piceni culture, a group of Iron Age people who lived along the Adriatic coast of Italy.

Evidence, including the artefacts from this burial, indicate that the Piceni were warlike, according to Encyclopedia Britannica. In 268 B.C., Rome annexed their land. 

A bronze bucket (known as a situla), a bundle of iron skewers and pieces of the chariot wheels.

It’s a “rare event” to find such an opulent grave from the Iron Age, Boschi said. Its grave goods, size and the fact that it was once likely covered with an earthen mound “speak to us about a Piceni leader, a person which gathered political, military and economic power,” she said. 

Going forward, archaeologists plan to study the hundreds of objects within the burial.

All In One Magazine