AUSTRALIA, WORLD

Amber Fossil Shows Two Trapped Flies that Died while Mating 41 Million Years Ago

Amber Fossil Shows Two Trapped Flies that Died while Mating 41 Million Years Ago

One of the earliest, fossilized animals ever found are a pair of fornicating flies that were preserved in amber 41 million years ago. The frisky insects appear to have been in the very throes of passion when they got trapped in gluey tree resin and preserved — unparted, even in death.

A pair of fornicating flies that became frozen in amber 41 million years ago are among the oldest fossilized mating animals ever to be discovered. The frisky insects appear to have been in the very throes of passion when they got trapped in gluey tree resin and preserved

With time, the resin has transformed into amber and still has a twisted leg in the amorous couple. The fact that flies typically only take a few seconds to copulate makes the fossil find from Victoria, Australia even more rare and remarkable.

‘ You might conclude that the fly of these long legs was ‘ messed up ‘ 41 million years ago, ” said paper author and paleontologist Jeffrey Stilwell of the University of Monash at Melbourne, He was certain this was the scenario when the specimen was first analyzed — a fact which co-author Dan Bickel, a fly expert from the Australian Museum, then confirmed.

‘The flies could have accidentally landed on the tree resin to mate, and then got stuck forever together, literally,’ Professor Stilwell said.

‘You can imagine all of the statements by my amber student volunteers, one being “Doin’ it Gondwana style”, etc.’ Gondwana was an ancient supercontinent that eventually split into separate landmasses — including Australia.

Mating has been captured in amber unearthed from other parts of the world, but is nevertheless ‘very rare’, Professor Stilwell said. In Steven Spielberg’s 1993 film Jurassic Park, dinosaurs are reintroduced to the world by extracting their DNA from a mosquito that had been preserved in amber. Most biologists agree that such a scenario would not be possible. But many experts do believe that DNA can be preserved in amber for millions of years.

‘This is one of the greatest discoveries in paleontology for Australia,’ Professor Stilwell said. ‘Amber is considered to be the “Holy Grail” in the discipline, as organisms are preserved in a state of suspended animation in perfect 3D space, looking just like they died yesterday’

‘But, in fact, [they] are many millions of years old, providing us with an enormous amount of information on ancient terrestrial ecosystems.’

Professor Stilwell and colleagues stumbled upon the flies while trawling through almost 6,000 pieces of fossilized amber. The material was unearthed from rocks dating back from 54–40 million years ago found at two sites — one in Western Tasmania and the other in Victoria.

Among them were the two mating specimens of long-legged flies, known to the scientific community as ‘Dolichopodidae’. These bugs are commonly found across Britain and the rest of the world today.

‘This may be the first example of “frozen behaviour” in the fossil record of Australia,’ said Professor Stilwell.

‘Frozen behaviours are rarely recorded in the fossil record, but can be quite diverse, including defence, parasitism, feeding, swarms, and so on.’

Dolichopodidae comprises mainly small metallic flies. The adult males wave their legs when courting potential suitors. Other finds from the amber collection included a flake of amber containing a beautifully preserved biting midge and a larger piece with a long-legged fly and another biting midge.

Both specimens are about 41 million years old and were found in Anglesea, Victoria. The team also analyzed amber deposits unearthed by the team at other spots in southeastern Australia, Tasmania and New Zealand that dates back 230 million years. There were fossilized ants, the first Australian fossils of ‘slender springtails’, a tiny, wingless arthropod and an insect called a felt scale (Eriococcidae) — all-around 53 million years old.

There was also a cluster of juvenile spiders, biting midges (Ceratopogonidae), two liverwort and two moss species. They are the oldest known animals and plants preserved in amber from Southern Gondwana. Finding Triassic, Cretaceous and Paleogene fossils from an ancient tree resin in Australia and eastern New Zealand is a dream come true,’ said Professor Stilwell.

The researchers also analyzed amber deposits unearthed by the team at other spots in southeastern Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand – dating back 230 million years. There were fossilized ants, the first Australian fossils of ‘slender springtails’, a tiny, wingless arthropod and an insect called a felt scale. Pictured, an artist’s impression of ants getting stuck in resin

‘We now have our first definite glimpses of ancient subpolar greenhouse Earth ecosystems, when Australia and Antarctica were attached and situated much further south in higher latitudes.’

‘Many discoveries are the first-ever for their respective groups of animals and plants, including the first-ever ants, springtails and others, including the first recorded evidence for “frozen behaviour” in the fossil record of mating flies.’

‘There has never been a fossil ant recorded in Australia before, but we can now state for the first time that ants have been a significant part of the Australian ecosystem for over 40 million years.’ Most amber records are from the Northern Hemisphere. The study has confirmed it was abundant in the ancient supercontinents of Southern Pangea and Southern Gondwana.

‘The research furthers our understanding of prehistoric southern ecosystems in Australia and New Zealand during the Late Triassic to mid-Paleogene periods — 230 to 40 million years ago,’ added Professor Stilwell.

ANTARCTICA, WORLD

Evidence of 90-million-year-old rainforest uncovered beneath the Antarctic ice

Evidence of 90-million-year-old rainforest uncovered beneath the Antarctic ice

The well-preserved rainforest seeds, pollens and spores of 90 million year old (mid-cretaceous) rainforest plants in Western Antarctica have been discovered by an international team of paleontologists and geologists.

Reconstruction of the West Antarctic mid-Cretaceous temperate rainforest. The painting is based on paleofloral and environmental information inferred from palynological, geochemical, sedimentological and organic biomarker data obtained from cores at the site of PS104_20-2, Antarctica.

The mid-Cretaceous period (115 million to 80 million years ago) was the heyday of the dinosaurs but was also the warmest period in the past 140 million years, with temperatures in the tropics as high as 35 degrees Celsius and sea level 170 m higher than today.

However, little was known about the environment south of the Antarctic Circle at this time.

Professor Tina van of Flierdt, a professor at the Departments of Earth Science and Engineering at Imperial College London, said “The survival of this 90 million-year-old forest is remarkable but even more surprising is the world that it reveals.

“Even during months of darkness, swampy temperate rainforests were able to grow close to the South Pole, revealing an even warmer climate than we expected.”

The evidence for the Antarctic forest comes from a core of sediment drilled at the site of PS104_20-2 (73.57°S, 107.09°W; 946 m water depth) near the Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers in West Antarctica.

One section of the core, that would have originally been deposited on land, caught the scientists’ attention with its strange color.

“During the initial shipboard assessments, the unusual coloration of the sediment layer quickly caught our attention; it clearly differed from the layers above it,” said Dr. Johann Klages, a geologist at the Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research.

The team CT-scanned the section of the core and discovered an intact 3-m-long network of fossil roots, which was so well preserved that they could make out individual cell structures.

The 90-million-year-old sample also contained countless traces of pollen and spores from plants, including the first remnants of flowering plants ever found at these high Antarctic latitudes.

“The numerous plant remains indicate that 93 to 83 million years ago the coast of West Antarctica was a swampy landscape in which temperate rainforests grew — similar to the forests that can still be found, say, on New Zealand’s South Island,” said Professor Ulrich Salzmann, a paleoecologist at Northumbria University.

Example microscopic images from thin sections of 90-million-year-old fossil roots: (a) overview scan of root fragment with indicated locations of detailed microscopic images (b-e); white arrows indicate the locations of preserved parenchyma storage cells, including potential aerenchyma gas exchange cells (d). Scale bar in (d) applies to (b-e).

To reconstruct the environment of this preserved forest, the researchers assessed the climatic conditions under which the plants’ modern descendants live, as well as analyzing temperature and precipitation indicators within the sample.

They found that the annual mean air temperature was around 12 degrees Celsius. Average summer temperatures were around 19 degrees Celsius; water temperatures in the rivers and swamps reached up to 20 degrees.

They conclude that 90 million years ago the Antarctic continent was covered with dense vegetation, there were no land-ice masses on the scale of an ice sheet in the South Pole region, and the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere was far higher than previously assumed for the mid-Cretaceous period.

“Before our study, the general assumption was that the global carbon dioxide concentration in the Cretaceous was roughly 1,000 ppm,” Dr. Klages said.

“But in our model-based experiments, it took concentration levels of 1,120 to 1,680 ppm to reach the average temperatures back then in the Antarctic.”

ASIA, CAMBODIA, WORLD

Statue Fragments Found Near Cambodia’s Bayon Temple

Statue Fragments Found Near Cambodia’s Bayon Temple

SIEM REAP, CAMBODIA— The large statue fragments have been recovered from a canal near the Gate of the Dead at Angkor Thom by members of Cambodia’s Department of Monuments and Preventive Archaeology, the heritage police, and agents from the Apsara Authority.

Two sandstone heads of tug-of-war statues have been spotted near the Gate of the Dead

“The god statue found by the working team has four pieces, while another giant statue has only the back part without a face,” said Chhouk Somala of the Department of Monuments and Preventive Archaeology.

Two sandstone heads of tug-of-war statues have been spotted and brought out from a canal near the Gate of the Dead. This was found today on the eastern side of Siem Reap province’s Bayon temple.

Chhouk Somala, an officer in charge of archaeological registration at the Department of Monuments and Preventive Archaeology said, two heads of statues including one god and a giant of the tug-of-war statue at the Gate of the Dead, have been found by the department’s working team, heritage police, and Apsara Authority’s travel agents.

He added, “The god statue found by the working team has four pieces, while another giant statue has only the back part without a face.”

The finding of the two statues was not accidental because the general structures of the tug-of-war statue have been damaged due to the age of the structure, natural forces, and war which made some of those statues fall into the water and get buried in the ground.

Long Kosal, Apsara Authority spokesman, said archaeologists in the past have also discovered the sandstone statues at some sites in the Angkor Archaeological Park, and have been brought to the Preah Norodom Sihanouk-Angkor Museum for study and preservation.

“After taking these two statues out of the water, our working team has brought it to the Department of Monuments and Preventive Archaeology to register them as art objects, repair and conduct further studies before handing them over to be artifacts in the museum,” he said.

MEXICO, NORTH AMERICA, WORLD

Underwater Artifacts Returned to Mexico’s Lake of the Moon

Underwater Artifacts Returned to Mexico’s Lake of the Moon

A collection of objects preserved in a special container at the bottom of Lake of The Moon at high altitudes in the Nevado de Toluca Volcano in Central Mexico was deposited by Mexico’s National Institute for Anthropology and History (INAH).

Underwater archaeologist Roberto Junco deposits the archive on the bottom of the Lake of the Moon.

The artifacts were found in the lake in 2007 and kept in the last 13 years during the research under similar underwater environments.

52 pre-Hispanic ritual items returned to their site by underwater archaeologists where they were found, the bed of one of the two crater lakes of the Nevado de Toluca volcano.

Members of the underwater archaeology team at the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) deposited the mostly spherical and conical resin objects on the bed of the Lake of the Moon earlier this month.

The objects, believed to have been made by the Matlatzinca people between the 13th and 15th centuries and placed in the lake by pre-Hispanic priests, are stored in a specially-made container that allows water and sediment to flow over them. As a result, they are protected from deterioration.

The trove of objects is the first in situ underwater archaeological archive in Mexico, according to an INAH statement.

The decision to preserve the objects in their place of origin complies with recommendations in the 2001 UNESCO Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage.

The objects were found at the Nevado de Toluca crater lake in 2007 and have been studied and analyzed for the past 13 years.

Enna Llabrés and Roberto Junco prepare the collection of artifacts for a deposit on the lake bottom.

Enna Llabrés Torres, a researcher with the INAH underwater archaeology department who made the container in which the resin relics are stored, said that the objects could be removed for further study in the future as new technologies and methods of analysis emerge.

She explained that while the objects were studied over the past 13 years, they were stored underwater in conditions similar to those found at the Lake of the Moon, which is located more than 4,000 meters above sea level and has an average temperature of 3 C.

The conical objects measure 20-30 centimeters while the spherical ones are roughly the size of a baseball. INAH archaeologist Iris Hernández said that the Nevado de Toluca volcano has been considered a sacred site since pre-Hispanic times and for that reason, relics used in rituals and ceremonies have been found there.

She said that the conical objects – made out of resin of the copal tree – may have been specifically made to resemble the form of the volcano, located in modern-day México state.

According to carbon dating tests conducted by experts at the National Autonomous University Institute of Physics, the ritual objects date back to between 1216 and 1445 AD.

The time period corresponds to the rule of the Matlatzinca people in the Valley of Toluca prior to their domination by the Mexicas.

ENGLAND, EUROPE, WORLD

Rare Roman Cavalry Swords And Toys Unearthed Along Hadrian’s Wall

Rare Roman Cavalry Swords And Toys Unearthed Along Hadrian’s Wall

Swords, arrowheads and ballista bolts amongst a cache of artifacts discovered during cavalry barrack excavations at Roman Vindolanda. Archaeologists at the Roman fort of Vindolanda have made one remarkable discovery after another in what has been an exceptional year for the research excavations.

Aerial view of remains of 4th century stone fort at Vindolanda

Test pit excavations, below the stone foundations of the last stone fortress, revealed a layer of black, sweet-smelling and perfectly preserved anaerobic, oxygen-free, soils in an area where they were completely unexpected.

Hidden in this soil were the timber walls and floors, fences, pottery and animal bones, from the abandonment of a Roman cavalry barrack. The excavated rooms included stables for horses, living accommodation, ovens and fireplaces.

While excavating the material from the corner of one of the living rooms a volunteer excavator made an outstanding discovery.

The earth surrounding the object was slowly pulled back under careful supervision to reveal the tip of a thin and sharp iron blade, resting in its wooden scabbard.

As the archaeologists excavated further the shape of a hilt and handle slowly emerged from the black soil and it became immediately clear that the Romans had left behind a complete sword with a bent tip. It was the ancient equivalent of a modern soldier abandoning a malfunctioning rifle.

Dr Andrew Birley recalled the moment as “quite emotional” and went on to say, “you can work as an archaeologist your entire life on Roman military sites and, even at Vindolanda, we never expect or imagine to see such a rare and special object as this.

It felt like the team had won a form of an archaeological lottery.” Rupert Bainbridge, the volunteer who made the initial discovery described the moment as overwhelming, commenting, “I was so excited to excavate such an extraordinary artefact, especially something that resonated so much with the fort setting that we were digging in.”

A few weeks later, Vindolanda archaeologists accompanied by a new team of volunteers were finishing working on a room adjacent to the one in which the sword was discovered.

Here they remarkably discovered a second sword, this time without a wooden handle, pommel or scabbard, but with the blade and tang still complete and sitting on the floor exactly where it had been left thousands of years before.

Cavalry sword unearthed at Vindolanda

Dr. Birley commented, “You don’t expect to have this kind of experience twice in one month so this was both a delightful moment and a historical puzzle. You can imagine the circumstances where you could conceive leaving one sword behind rare as it is…. but two?” Both blades came from separate rooms, and are likely to have belonged to different people. One theory is that the garrison was forced to leave in a hurry, and in their haste, they left not only the swords but also a great number of other perfectly serviceable items that would have had great value in their time.

The swords are truly remarkable, but they form only part of an outstanding collection of artefacts left behind in those cavalry barrack buildings. In another room were two small wooden toy swords, almost exactly the same as those that can be purchased by tourists visiting the Roman Wall today.

Roman ink writing tablets on wood, bath clogs, leather shoes (from men, women, and children), stylus pens, knives, combs, hairpins, brooches and a wide assortment of other weapons including cavalry lances, arrowheads, and ballista bolts were all abandoned on the barrack room floors.

Copper alloy cavalry strap junction

Quite spectacular are the copper-alloy cavalry and horse fitments for saddles, junction straps and harnesses which were also left behind. These remain in such fine condition that they still shine like gold and are almost completely free from corrosion.

The swords and other objects form a remarkable discovery of one of the most comprehensive and important collections of this type of material from a Hadrian’s Wall site.

Visitors to Vindolanda will be able to see this cache of cavalry finds displayed in the site museum this autumn, just as a major Hadrian’s Cavalry exhibition along the line of Hadrian’s Wall comes to a close another has arrived!

Dr Andrew Birley with sword

Historical facts

The Garrison at Vindolanda at this time (cAD120) was made up of a combination of peoples including the 1st Cohort of Tungrians who heralded from modern day Belgium.

They were joined by a detachment of Vardulli Cavalrymen from northern Spain. It is likely that the base held more than 1000 soldiers and probably many thousands more dependants including slaves and freedmen, representing one of the most multicultural and dynamic communities on the Frontier of the Roman Empire at the time.

The new finds give an intimate insight into the lives of people living on the edge of the Roman Empire at a time of rebellion and war before the construction of Hadrian’s Wall in AD122.

EUROPE, SLOVAKIA, WORLD

Coin Cache Discovered Under Church Floor in Slovakia

Coin Cache Discovered Under Church Floor in Slovakia

Under the floor of a church in the town of Obišovce, near Košice, eastern Slovakia, a cache of 500 early 18th century coins has been uncovered. The trove of coins had been stashed in a ceramic mug covered with a slab or stone.

It was found in the foundations of the Renaissance church which was demolished in the 19th century and the current church built over it.

When the floor of the church was demolished, the foundations were built. Archeologists explored the structural remains and came across the hoard that had been stashed under the original stone floor near the western entrance.

The coins in what was then Upper Hungary are mostly salary plates issued by the many mines. Copper, iron, silver, and gems had been mined in the east Slovakian fields since the 9th-century arrival of the Hungarian tribes. In the 15th century, the five main mining towns including Košice had united to promote their interests.

They had mints that produced coinage and salary plates with which the miners were paid. The hoard also includes silver coins, believed to have been wrapped separately in a linen textile, and a few Polish coins. From the dates on the coins, the earliest the hoard could have been buried was 1702.

When the coins were cached, Slovakia was part of the Kingdom of Hungary ruled by the Catholic Habsburgs and under regular attack by the Ottoman Empire.

In the 17th century, Protestant Magyar nobles fleeing Turkish incursions moved to Upper Hungary, modern-day Slovakia, temporarily tipping the demographics of the region to majority Protestant.

They allied with Transylvanian prince István Thököly in the failed Magnate conspiracy to overthrow Leopold I in 1670, and again with his son Imre Thököly in his anti-Habsburg rebellion in 1678.

Imre, allied with the Ottoman sultan, took control of territories in eastern and central Hungary, creating the short-lived Principality of Upper Hungary which largely conforms to the boundaries of Slovakia.

By 1685 he had managed to be defeated in battle by the Habsburgs and to piss off the Turks so the putative principality was no more. The Great Turkish War between the Ottoman Empire and the Holy League ended in 1699 with the Habsburgs in control of Hungary.

Thököly’s peasant army kept fighting against the Habsburgs, however, and in 1703, Hungarian prince Francis II Rákóczi led them in an uprising against the Habsburg Holy Roman Empire, then engaged in the War of Spanish Succession. The Rákóczi rebellion lasted until their surrender in 1711.

With the region mired in so much religious and political turmoil in the late 17th and early 18th century, hoarding and hiding coins doubtless seemed prudent.

Preservationists say it is probable that the priest from the local church and parish collected the money and hid it under the floor in times of unrest. It is probable that when he left, he omitted to say anything about the money under the floor and it was forgotten about.

The historic sources state that after the Thӧkӧly uprising was over, sometime between 1685 and 1687, a Catholic priest returned to Kysak parish. Obišovce at that time belonged to this parish.

The priest was a Pole, he was blind in one eye and sometime in the 1690s, he went blind completely. The church was under the administration of the Catholic church until 1705 when rebels plundered it and it was left as a ruin for three years. The Polish priest was expelled and he returned to Poland.

EUROPE, IRELAND, WORLD

Irish DNA originated in the Middle East and Eastern Europe

Ancient DNA Reveals Irish Are Not Celts – Irish Ancestors Came From Biblical Lands – Scientists Say

The possibility that ancient bones were found in County Antrim under an Irish pub in the mid-2000s has cast doubt over whether the Irish people are really linked to ancient Celts.

Bertie Currie clearing the land in 2006 and made a driveway on Rathlin Island off Antrim for McCuaig’s Bar, when he noticed a large, flat stone underneath the surface

Currie realized that there was a large gap underneath the stone and investigated further. 

“I shot the torch in and saw the gentleman, well, his skull and bones,” Currie told the Washington Post. 

He eventually found the remains of three humans and immediately called the police. The police arrived on the scene and discovered that this was not a crime scene but an ancient burial site. 

McCuaig’s Bar, where the bones were found.

It turned out to be a hugely significant ancient burial site as well that, with DNA analysis, could completely alter the perception that Irish people are descended from Celts. 

A number of prominent professors at esteemed universities in Ireland and Britain analyzed the bones and said that the discovery could rewrite Irish history and ancestry. 

DNA researchers found that the three skeletons found under Currie’s pub are the ancestors of modern Irish people and predate the Celts’ arrival on Irish shores by around 1,000 years. 

Essentially, Irish DNA existed in Ireland before the Celts ever set foot on the island. 

Instead, Irish ancestors may have come to Ireland from the Bible lands in the Middle East. They might have arrived in Ireland from the South Meditteranean and would have brought cattle, cereal, and ceramics with them. 

The Proceedings of the National Academy of Science said that the bones strikingly resembled those of contemporary Irish, Scottish and Welsh people. 

A retired archaeology professor at the highly-renowned University of Oxford said that the discovery could completely change the perception of Irish ancestry. 

“The DNA evidence based on those bones completely upends the traditional view,” said Barry Cunliffe, an emeritus professor of archaeology at Oxford.

Radiocarbon dating at Currie’s McCuaig’s Bar found that the ancient bones date back to at least 2,000 BC, which is hundreds of years older than the oldest known Celtic artifacts anywhere in the world. 

Dan Bradley, a genetics professor at Trinity College, said in 2016 that the discovery could challenge the popular belief that Irish people are related to Celts. 

“The genomes of the contemporary people in Ireland are older — much older — than we previously thought,” he said.

NORTH AMERICA, U.S.A, WORLD

The life and death of one of America’s most mysterious trees

The life and death of one of America’s most mysterious trees

In the Centre of Chaco Canyon in New Mexico, a towering ponderous tree, known as the “Plaza Tree,” was once built to be a symbol of life and a center of the world for an ancient pueblo town. But new research suggests it may have been just a giant log no one bothered to move for 800 years, and maybe didn’t hold significant meaning. 

The “Plaza Tree of Pueblo Bonito” was thought to be a living “world tree” for ancestral Puebloans. But researchers have found that it grew 50 miles away and was dead when it was hauled there.

“I believe the tree was dead when it had been taken into the canyon,” said Chris Guiterman, a research assistant scientist studying ancient trees at the Tucson University of Arizona.

For over a hundred years, people assumed the tree had meaning; it was regarded as a “tree of life”, according to one researcher, or a “world tree.” The solitary tree was once thought to represent the living “center of the world” for the people of Pueblo Bonito, the largest of Chaco Canyon’s “great houses,” which was occupied between A.D. 850 and 1150.

Some speculations placed the tree at the center of a religious cult, and an illustration of a growing “Plaza Tree of Pueblo Bonito” appears in a brochure from the National Park Service.

Guiterman and his colleagues discovered that the Plaza Tree probably didn’t grow at Chaco Canyon, but more than 50 miles (80 kilometers) away. They also found no evidence that the tree had a religious role — it might have been a pole, or a beam for a house, or firewood.

“I actually have no idea whether it did, does, or ever had religious significance,” Guiterman told Live Science in an email. “I don’t know what it was used for, or why it was located in the plaza where it was found.”

Pueblo Bonito is the largest of the adobe “great houses” in Chaco Canyon. It was occupied between 850 and 1158 AD and is considered the center of the Chaco world.

“Tree of life”

The researchers studied three aspects of the Plaza Tree: documents about the discovery of its 20 foot (6 meters) long trunk in Pueblo Bonito in 1924; the levels of isotopes of the chemical element strontium within samples of its wood, which can identify where it came from; and the width of its tree rings, which can show seasonal growth.

Ideally, the tree rings would have been compared to rings from trees of the same age, wrote the researchers in the study, published online March 13 in the journal American Antiquity — but that wasn’t possible, so they used the rings in modern trees to determine distinctive growth patterns based on the climate of particular areas.

The researchers found that the tree ring width and the strontium isotopes of the Plaza Tree didn’t match those of ponderosa pine trees that grew around Chaco Canyon — instead, they closely matched trees that grew in the Chuska Mountains, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) west.

The Chuska Mountains region “also happens to be the primary source for architectural wood used to construct Pueblo Bonito and other Chaco great houses,” Guiterman said.

The researchers determined that archaeologist Neil Judd of the Smithsonian Institution, who excavated Pueblo Bonito in the 1920s, failed to find any sign of deep roots from the tree in the plaza where it was found, and initially dismissed the idea that it had been growing there.

But Judd’s dismissal seems to have been overlooked in his following interpretation in the 1950s when he described the Plaza Tree as the last living remnant of an ancient forest that once existed at Chaco Canyon.

The researchers studied the width of the ancient tree rings and their levels of isotopes of strontium in the wood of the Plaza Tree to determine how old it was and where it came from.

Ancient pueblos

Recent research has shown that logs were often hauled for dozens of miles to build the pueblos at Chaco Canyon, Guiterman said: “hundreds of thousands of timbers were used in the construction of [the] great house structures.”

The Plaza Tree is one of only two logs found in an ancestral Puebloan structure that were not parts of buildings. The other is a 32 foot (10 m) long log of white fir at the Kiet Siel cliff dwelling in Arizona, discovered in the 1890s. That unexpected find may have prompted Judd’s more elaborate interpretation of the Plaza Tree, Guiterman said.

“It was a puzzling discovery — one of a kind, really,” he said. “It served as evidence for an early idea that Chaco Canyon was heavily forested before the great houses were constructed, and that the hundreds of thousands of beams came from that local forest.”

The researchers looked again at several theories surrounding the Plaza Tree, including that it served as a gnomon — the upright that casts a shadow — of an ancient sundial. “Although we cannot confirm that [the Plaza Tree] was actually long enough to be a gnomon, it is certainly possible,” they wrote.

The tree may also have served as an upright pole in ceremonies and festivals, such as the pole-climbing that features in some Native American festivals and which may have originated in ancient Mesoamerica, the researchers wrote. The branches and logs of pine trees are used in some Puebloan ceremonies today. 

But the Plaza Tree also could have had a much more mundane use. “It might have been a log staged for construction of a new room, or to replace a damaged beam in an existing room,” they wrote. “It could have been a bench, or intended for fuelwood [firewood].”

All In One Magazine