ASIA, MYANMAR, WORLD

Spider-Like Creature With a Tail Was Just Found in 100 Million-Year-Old Amber

Spider-Like Creature With a Tail Was Just Found in 100 Million-Year-Old Amber

Amber mined for centuries in Myanmar for jewelry is a treasure trove for understanding the evolution of spiders and their other arachnid relatives.

This week, two independent teams describe four 100-million-year-old specimens encased in amber that look like a cross between a spider and a scorpion.

The discovery, “could help close major gaps in our understanding of spider evolution,” says Prashant Sharma, an evolutionary developmental biologist at the University of Wisconsin in Madison who was not involved in the work.

Arachnids are a group of eight-legged invertebrates that includes scorpions, ticks, and spiders. Spiders, which crawled into existence some 300 million years ago, are known for their spinnerets—modified “legs” that produce silk and control its extrusion from tiny pores called spigots.

Male spiders have also evolved another modified “leg” between their fangs and the back four pairs of legs that inserts sperm into the female.

All but the most primitive spiders have smooth backs, unlike the segmented abdomens of scorpions, which are believed to have diverged from an ancestral arachnid more than 430 million years ago.

But in 1989, researchers discovered a suspicious, spigot-bearing fossil that was 100 million years older than the earliest known spider.

By 2008, paleobiologists realized that this ancient silk producer was just a spider relative, perhaps a stepping stone to true spiders.

Researchers put it into the group Uraraneida, which was thought to have thrived between 400 million and 250 million years ago. That left unanswered many questions about when spinnerets and other spider traits first evolved.

Then, several years ago, amber fossil dealers independently approached two paleobiologists at the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology in China with what looked like 5-millimeter-long Uraraneida encased in amber.

One of them, Wang Bo, pulled together a team to look at his two specimens, which they eventually named Chimerachne yingi (“chimera spider” in Latin). The other paleobiologist, Huang Diying, assembled a second team that examined a different pair of these fossils.

The two groups say they didn’t know about each other until after they submitted their results to the same journal. But, despite some differences, “they draw the same conclusion—that fossil uraraneids, as this group is called, are the closest extinct relatives of spiders,” says Greg Edgecombe, a paleobiologist at the Natural History Museum in London, who was not involved with the work.

Amber preserved in exquisite detail these 100-million-year-old close relatives to spiders.

One group’s specimens give a really clear view of the top of this organism and the other, a great look at the underside, spinnerets and all, Huang and his colleagues report today in Nature Ecology and Evolution.

“The degree of preservation is exquisite, and the fossils’ anatomy is easy to interpret,” Sharma says. The presence of the spinnerets, he adds, means they must have originated “very early” in arachnid evolution. The male specimens also have the special appendages for inserting sperm into the female.

Yet they also have a segmented abdomen and a long tail, like a whip scorpion’s whip, Wang and his colleagues report today in the same journal. “These things appear to be essentially spiders with tails!” says Jason Bond, an evolutionary biologist at Auburn University in Alabama who was not involved with the work.

This means that early arachnids had a mix of all these traits, which were selectively lost in their descendants, giving rise to the array of arachnids seen today.

And what is even more amazing, says Bond, is that the amber is only 100 million years old. So these spider relatives hunted side by side with spiders for 200 million years.

ASIA, CHINA, WORLD

Archaeologists discover fossil of ancient turtle species that never grew a shell

Archaeologists discover fossil of ancient turtle species that never grew a shell

A fossil freshly discovered turtle, that lived 228 million years ago, illustrates how modern turtles have developed these traits. It had a beak, but while its body was Frisbee-shaped, its wide ribs hadn’t grown to form a shell-like we see in turtles today.

“This reptile was more than six feet long and with a curious body and a long tail and its anterior part became this strange beak,” says Olivier Rieppel, a paleontologist at Chicago’s Field Museum and one of the authors of a new paper in Nature. “It probably lived in shallow water and dug in the mud for food.”

The new species has been christened Eorhynchochelys Sinensis — a mouthful, but with a straightforward meaning.

Eorhynchochelys (“Ay-oh-rink-oh-keel-is”) means “dawn beak turtle” — essentially, the first turtle with a beak — while Sinensis, meaning “from China,” refers to the place where it was found by the study’s lead author, Li Chun of China’s Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology.

Eorhynchochelys isn’t the only kind of early turtle that scientists have discovered — there is another early turtle with a partial shell but no beak.

Until now, it’s been unclear how they all fit into the reptile family tree. “The origin of turtles has been an unsolved problem in paleontology for many decades,” says Rieppel. “Now with Eorhynchochelys, how turtles evolved has become a lot clearer.”

The fact that Eorhynchochelys developed a beak before other early turtles but didn’t have a shell is evidence of mosaic evolution — the idea that traits can evolve independently from each other and at a different rate, and that not every ancestral species has the same combination of these traits.

Modern turtles have both shells and beaks, but the path evolution took to get there wasn’t a straight line. Instead, some turtle relatives got partial shells while others got beaks, and eventually, the genetic mutations that create these traits occurred in the same animal.

“This impressively large fossil is a very exciting discovery giving us another piece in the puzzle of turtle evolution,” says Nick Fraser, an author of the study from National Museums Scotland.

“It shows that early turtle evolution was not a straightforward, step-by-step accumulation of unique traits but was a much more complex series of events that we are only just beginning to unravel.”

Fine details in the skull of Eorhynchochelys solved another turtle evolution mystery.

For years, scientists weren’t sure if turtle ancestors were part of the same reptile group as modern lizards and snakes — diapsids, which early in their evolution had two holes on the sides of their skulls — or if they were anapsids that lack these openings. Eorhynchochelys’s skull shows signs that it was a diapsid.

“With Eorhynchochelys’s diapsid skull, we know that turtles are not related to the early anapsid reptiles, but are instead related to evolutionarily more advanced diapsid reptiles. This is cemented, the debate is over,” says Rieppel.

The study’s authors say that their findings, both about how and when turtles developed shells and their status as diapsids, will change how scientists think about this branch of animals.

“I was surprised myself,” says Rieppel. “Eorhynchochelys makes the turtle family tree make sense. Until I saw this fossil, I didn’t buy some of its relatives as turtles. Now, I do.”

This study was contributed to by the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, the CAS Center for Excellence in Life and Paleoenvironment, National Museums Scotland, the Field Museum, and the Canadian Museum of Nature.

ENGLAND, EUROPE, WORLD

Archaeologists discover a crude ancient weapon that could kill a man with a single blow

Archaeologists discover a crude ancient weapon that could kill a man with a single blow

When many months ago, in England, an old wooden club was yanked from its watery grave in the River Thames in England, archaeologists didn’t quite know what to make of it.

The blunt tool, which is supposed to happen between 3530 and 3340 BC, does not look so good, it doesn’t really look all that impressive, but those studying it still wanted to get an idea of how it might have been used.

After making a full-sized replica for testing, it’s been determined that the unassuming tool could actually dispatch a human in short order and perhaps even with a single strike.

In a new research paper published in the journal Antiquity, scientists investigating the weapon and its origins took the extraordinary step of carving a replica for testing.

The original, which has begun to fall apart over its several thousands of years of life, is being preserved, but its stand-in demonstrated just how devastating it might have been.

The “Thames Beater,” as the weapon has been nicknamed, is modest in appearance. It consists of a thick wooden “blade” tapers down to a narrow handle with a hefty pommel on the very end. But its simple construction believes how much trauma it could cause.

Using the replica, the researchers asked a 30-year-old male volunteer to wield it in order to test its effectiveness in combat. The man was asked to bash a test dummy built of a realistic military ballistic material, complete with a faux human skull.

The “fight” proved to the archaeologists that the club would have been capable of shattering a human skull with a single hit and that the weapon could have been used in multiple different ways.

A ranged attack, with a full swing from the end of the handle, would have been useful when the target was greater than arms’ length away, while a two-handed bash using the beefy pommel may have been used when an enemy was much closer.

After testing its effectiveness, the scientists further compared the injuries the test dummy sustained with actual human skulls found in graveyards from the same time period.

They reported finding at least one with a skull fracture that looked nearly identical.

They further concluded that it’s likely the individual died as a result of a run-in with the Thames Beater or another similar blunt weapon.

ENGLAND, EUROPE, WORLD

Fossil hunter finds 185M-year-old ‘golden snitch’ with ancient sea creature inside

Fossil hunter finds 185M-year-old ‘golden snitch’ with ancient sea creature inside

Fossils shaped like Quidditchball are only a few of the many discoveries made by amateur archeologist Aaron Smith.

On the cliffs of Whitby, Yorkshire, the medical student found various fossil items from the Jurassic period. Perhaps the most spectacular is a 185 million-year-old fossil encased by what looks like a ‘golden canon’ ball.

It is technically a rock that is coated in iron pyrite, also known as ‘fools gold’, and if you shine this material, just like Smith did, then it turns shiny and gold.

The phenomenal piece of history is thought to be 185 million-years-old and was found on Sandsend Beach. Mr. Smith, 23, is a seasoned fossil collector and continues to go and explore the seaside in hope of finding similar treasures.

He said: “In order to find fossils, pretty much anywhere in the world, you just need to put in a lot of dedication!

Smith cut the sphere open to reveal the prehistoric insides
The fossils inside are of cleviceras

“The majority of the time there is nothing really to be found but every now and again, if you’re lucky enough, and something has appeared due to a storm, for example, then you might find a rock with a fossil inside it.

“When you find a fossil, then the long intricate process begins of carefully removing the stone to expose the fossil, this can take hundreds of hours in many cases.

“It’s very exciting discovering the fossils. It makes it all worthwhile after spending months of searching.”

Aaron Smith enjoys fossil hunting in his free time

When the medical student opened up one of his freshly shined pieces of iron pyrite he found spiral-shaped cleviceras fossils. Cleviceras is an extinct type of cephalopod creature. The best-known cephalopods today are probably squids and octopuses.

The golden-snitch-like spheres with a limestone core are actually common along the Yorkshire coastline and can be found amongst the stones and shales.

Mr. Smith has previously posted a video of the golden-snitch fossil online and captioned it: “Here’s a video of us opening one of our huge Cannon Ball fossils.

“The limestone nodule is coated in Iron Pyrite, meaning we can polish it to become Golden, seen in our previous videos.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=465xFGK1QN8

“It still impresses me that these 185 Million-Year-Old fossils are along our beautiful Yorkshire Coastline waiting to be found.”

AFRICA, EGYPT, WORLD

Ancient Cave Filled With 10,000-Year-Old Cave Paintings Accidentally Discovered By Egyptologists In Sinai

Art Before the Pharaohs: 10,000 BC Paintings Found in Egypt

A newly discovered cave in Sinai, Egypt, is the first of its kind in the region to be found decorated from floor to ceiling with colorful ancient paintings – and it was all by chance. It is estimated that some of the images could be 12,000 years old. The find is providing insights into the prehistoric past of the region.

The inscriptions were found by a person who was exploring some caves in the deserts of South Sinai and who notified the relevant authorities.

Egypt Today states that the site is “about 40 miles southeast of Sarabit El Khadem and about 30 kilometers north of St. Catherine.” The Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities sent a team to document the discoveries.

The inscriptions were found, according to Mostafa al-Waziri, Secretary-General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, in a cavern “located in a difficult region called al-Zaranij” reports Egypt Independent.

They were found in a large sandstone rock shelter that is 10 feet (3 meters) high and 20 feet (6 meters) wide. It appears that the cave was at one time used by nomadic Bedouin as shelter.

The cavern where the rock art was found had been used as a shelter.

A large number of images were found in the cave. Some of them were engraved onto the roof of the cave. Others were found on blocks of stone that had fallen onto the floor of the cavern.

Hisham Hussein, head of the archaeological mission, is quoted by Egypt Today as saying that the “discovered inscriptions depict many different scenes dating back to different eras”.

The inscriptions and images were inscribed onto the rock and then painted. They are all a dark reddish color but many have faded and are quite hard to make out. The experts have divided the rock art into three broad categories based on the images that they represent and their styles.

All of the rock art was a dark red color but had faded.

The first type of rock art is the oldest and date back some 7,000 to 12,000 years ago and was made thousands of years before the pyramids were built.

They are primarily found on the ceiling of the cavern. These are “mainly of animals such as donkeys and mules” reports Egypt Today. These are drawn in a realistic way and they are in proportion.

The first type of rock art in the caverns was of animals.

Their handprints also to be found all over the cave from the same era. Somewhat similar handprints have also been found in the Western Desert of Egypt.

However, Newsweek quotes Professor John Darnell of Yale University, “the hands from the Sinai site appear to be of a different style, and possibly later in date” than these examples.

Rock art of handprints was all over the cave.

The second category of rock art probably comes from the Chalcolithic or Copper Age 3,500 to 2,300 BC. These are mostly stick-like red images of females and animals.

Professor Darnell told Newsweek, the “red-painted imagery is not as commonly found as incised images and text”. They were not made in a naturalistic way and the proportions of their bodies are not in harmony.

The third type of rock carvings is different from the previous two. They show people on a howdah. This is a type of bed or carriage that is carried by a camel and was used to transport members of the elite in the Middle East, until relatively recently. These images probably are no older than the first millennium BC.

Egypt has a long history of rock art. Professor Darnell stated that they often reveal the “complex tradition of human interactions with the landscape” according to Newsweek.

The different types of images and inscriptions can help researchers to better understand the history of the Sinai.

The recently documented caves and rock art.
ASIA, CHINA, WORLD

Ancient Viruses Buried in Tibetan Glaciers for 15,000 Years Discovered by Scientists

Ancient Viruses Buried in Tibetan Glaciers for 15,000 Years Discovered by Scientists

In the Tibetan plateau of China the Earth’s oldest glacial ice is found. It is home to a group of frozen viruses for more than 15,000 years, most of them until now unknown.

Scientists have now pointed out that viruses and have warned that more and more infections could also appear as climate change continues to melt more and more ice

Two Tibetan glacier ice cores were studied by the team and unveiling the presence of 28 previously unknown virus groups. Investigating them will be key to learn which viruses have developed in different climates over time, researchers argued in their paper on server bioRxiv.

Ancient Viruses Buried in Tibetan Glaciers for 15,000 Years Discovered by Scientists

“The microbes differed significantly across the two ice cores, presumably representing the very different climate conditions at the time of deposition that is similar to findings in other cores,” the researchers wrote, claiming the experiment will help to establish a baseline for glacier viruses.

Sampling ice cores is no easy feat. You not only have to do it in the right conditions to ensure that the ice is unaffected, but you also have to ensure that no contamination is caused.

The team created a protocol for ultraclean microbial and viral sampling, applying it to two preserved ice core samples from 1992 and 2015.

These cores were not handled in a way that prevents contamination during drilling, handling, and transportation — which means that the exterior of the ice was most likely contaminated. In order to avoid this effect, researchers only analyzed the inside of the core, which was presumed to be unaffected.

The team worked in a cold room at minus 5 degrees Celsius (23 degrees Fahrenheit) to access the inner part of the cores, using a saw to cut 0.2 inches (0.5 centimeters) of ice from the outside later.

Then, the team used ethanol to wash and melt another 0.2 inches of ice and then sterile water to wash another 0.2 inches. This allowed them to access the inner layer to do their study, having in total shaved off about 0.6 inches or 1.5 centimeters of ice of the sample.

A total of 33 groups of viruses were found in the ice cores, of which 28 were completely new to science. “The microbes differed significantly across the two ice cores,” the researchers wrote, “presumably representing the very different climate conditions at the time of deposition.”

The growing temperatures of the world because of climate change is melting glaciers across the planet, so these viral archives could soon be lost, the researchers said. But that’s not the only bad news, as the ice melt could challenge our ability to stay safe from them.

“At a minimum, [ice melt] could lead to the loss of microbial and viral archives that could be diagnostic and informative of past Earth climate regimes,” they wrote. “However, in a worst-case scenario, this ice melt could release pathogens into the environment.”

ENGLAND, EUROPE, WORLD

Archaeologists re-excavate hidden Roman bath after 130 years

Archaeologists re-excavate hidden Roman bath after 130 years

The bath was first discovered and excavated 130 years ago, but was then quickly back-filled and poorly recorded.

Period 1 plunge bath, Roman Baths

Measuring 4 metres x 5 metres, it is one of eight baths known at the Roman Baths site and is beneath York Street next to the main suite of baths.

Stephen Clews, Manager of the Roman Baths, said: “The excavation of this bath is part of the most significant archaeological investigations to have taken place at the Roman Baths for more than 30 years.

It is helping us to build a picture of what was happening on the south side of the site, where it has been very difficult to gain access in the past.”

Period 1 plunge bath, Roman Baths

The excavation of the bath is part of a wider programme of investigation taking place as part of the National Lottery-funded Archway Project, which is creating a new Clore Learning Centre for the Roman Baths and a World Heritage Centre for the city.

The position of the bath means that it cannot be seen by visitors on a normal visit to the Roman Baths.

The excavation is being carried out for the Roman Baths by Cotswold Archaeology.

The Archway Project is run by Bath & North East Somerset Council, which owns and operates the Roman Baths, with the support of The National Lottery Heritage Fund, The Clore Duffield Foundation, The Roman Baths Foundation, the Garfield Weston Foundation and hundreds of other supporters and donors.

Aquae Sulis was a small town in the Roman province of Britannia that is now modern-day Bath.

The Romans had probably arrived in the area shortly after their arrival in Britain in AD 43 and there is evidence that their military road, the Fosse Way, crossed the river Avon at Bath.

Not far from the crossing point of their road, they would have been attracted by the large natural hot spring which had been a shrine of the Celtic Brythons, dedicated to their goddess Sulis.

This spring is a natural mineral spring found in the valley of the Avon River in Southwest England, it is the only spring in Britain officially designated as hot. The name is Latin for “the waters of Sulis.”

The Romans identified the goddess with their goddess Minerva and encouraged her worship that helped the native populations adapt to Roman culture.

The spring was built up into a major Roman Baths complex associated with an adjoining temple. About 130 messages to Sulis scratched onto lead curse tablets (defixiones) have so far been recovered from the Sacred Spring by archaeologists.

EUROPE, TURKEY, WORLD

Earliest Mosaic in the World Found in Turkey

World’s Oldest Mosaic Unearthed in Turkey

The earliest known mosaic in the world, Anacleto D’Agostino from Pisa University records, is a primitive tiled floor laid in a geometric design that is discovered in a pre-classic Hittite city in central Turkey. Moreover, he adds, the settlement where the mosaic was found maybe the lost Hittite city of Zippalanda.

Discovered during the excavation of prehistoric Usakli Hoyuk, the multichromatic patterned surface is in the courtyard of a public building – which archaeologists interpret to be a temple to the Storm God, D’Agostino writes in Antiquity, published by the Cambridge University Press. Made of stones of varying size and shape, the Late Bronze Age floor is also the earliest-known rendition in the rock of geometric patterns.

Since 2008, the Anatolian Archaeological Project in Central Anatolia has been revealing the ancient town’s long history. They have found fragments of cuneiform tablets indicating that it was once a major Hittite center. 

Dr. Anacleto D’Agostini of Pisa University, who took part in the mission, wrote that the site may be the “lost Hittite city of Zippalanda,” according to Haaretz.

The stone Bronze Age mosaic floor is in the foreground.

During work on the site, a large building on a terrace, which dated to the Late Bronze Age, was found. This had the characteristics of a building that was constructed during the Hittite period. It was believed to be a temple that was possibly dedicated to the Storm God, a very important deity for the Hittites and other populations. 

Near this possible temple, a courtyard was located, and it was here that archaeologists made the remarkable discovery of a mosaic.  The experts found a paved floor that measured about 20 ft by 9 ft (7m by 3m), which was poorly preserved.

The floor was paved with some 3000 pieces of stone, that appeared to have been roughly shaped and cut. Haaretz quotes D’Agostini as saying that “the mosaic was framed with perpendicularly positioned stones in white, black-blue and white again”. 

Closeup of the Bronze Age mosaic at Usa̧klı Höyük.

Unlike later mosaics, it was not made out of smooth and small stones.  All the stones that were found were cut in irregular shapes and the floor would not have had a smooth finish.

According to Haaretz “one wonders how comfortable it was to walk on and one envisions a lot of twisted ankles.” However, the mosaic was possibly deliberately made to be uneven so that slippery mud would not form on its surface.

The stones have been clearly set to produce geometric patterns using divergent colors reports Antiquity.

The mosaic is divided into three distinct areas, and each one contains a number of triangles. It is discerned to have been created at the same time as the Hittite temple because it is closely aligned with its eastern wall.

D’Agostino is quoted by Haaretz as saying that the “building and mosaic are characterized by ‘high-status architecture’” and this lends credence to the theory that indeed the unearthed structure was the Temple of the Storm God.

The discovery of this Bronze Age mosaic at a Hittite site is astonishing. Flagstone and cobblestone, often painted, have been found at sites associated with this Bronze Age culture.  They have been found in temples and even private rooms. However, no decorative mosaics have been found ever, until this one at Uşaklı Höyük.

“The technique of making mosaic floors using different colored pebbles is well known during the Iron Age,” according to the report in Antiquity. 

There are many examples of checkerboard mosaic floors from the Iron Age. But until the discovery at Uşaklı Höyük, the earliest known mosaic had been found in southern Anatolia at the 9 th century BC Phrygian Gordion citadel.

Aerial shot of the excavation area shown, including the Storm God Temple and the Bronze Age mosaic are (highlighted in yellow).

However, the discovery of a Bronze Age mosaic floor at Uşaklı Höyük is considerably older than anything yet found. Moreover, the design of the mosaic was much more complex than anything found from the time. Antiquity reports that the find “provides the first evidence of a polychromatic mosaic floor with clear patterning.”

It is possible that the mosaic may represent an older tradition from Anatolia. Antiquity reports that the pavement “could represent a Late Bronze Age Anatolian forerunner for later polychromatic mosaic floors.”

The discovery may indicate that the art of mosaic making developed much earlier than widely believed and this could provide new clues into its stylistic development. The find may result in the experts re-writing the history of images made out of polychromatic stones, an art-from that reached its zenith in the Classical Period in the Mediterranean. 

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