Bird Three Times Larger Than Ostrich Discovered In Crimean Cave
An artist’s conception of the giant, 1,000-pound bird that once roamed around Europe
Crimean researchers discovered a bird’s fossil remains three times larger than an oystrich, weighed nearly 450 kilograms, and roamed Europe nearly 1.5 million years ago.
The discovery was made in the Tauride Cave on the northern coast of the Black Sea and the specimen suggested the bird was bigger than the Madagascan elephant.
The researchers said the bird may have been a source of meat, feathers, bones, and eggshell for early humans in Europe.
“When I first felt the weight of the bird whose thigh bone I was holding in my hand, I thought it must be a Malagasy elephant bird fossil because no birds of this size have ever been reported from Europe.
However, the structure of the bone unexpectedly told a different story,” said Nikita Zelenkov, lead author from the Russian Academy of Sciences.
It was previously believed by experts that giant birds only existed on the islands of Madagascar, New Zealand, and Australia.
However, the latest discovery puts an end to all the theories.
While the researchers admitted they didn’t have enough data and evidence to prove the bird was closely related to ostriches, they believe it weighs around 450 kilograms.
The findings of the research have now been published in the Journal of Vertebrate Palaeontology.
It is for the first time in history that shreds of evidence of a giant bird have been found in the Northern Hemisphere.
The researchers believe the bird was flightless with a height of at least 3.5 meters.
The femur of the bird, which is long and slim, suggest it was a better runner than elephant birds couldn’t run fast because of their enormous size.
While many researchers knew about the existence of such species, no one ever calculated their size and speed.
Based on measurements from the femur bone, the researchers managed to reconstruct the body mass of the bird and also estimated its total weight.
Ancient Underground ‘City’ Investigated By Iranian Archaeologists
Archeologists in Iran Open the Door to An Ancient Underground City
There are underground cities all over the planet, there are as many as 200 underground cities in Turkey alone.
That’s finding more subterranean cities in other parts of the world doesn’t come as a surprise.
Now, it has been reported how a group of archeologists has managed to open a door to an ancient underground city in Iran.
The underground city of Saleh Abad
The exact age of the underground city remains debatable, but archeologists estimate its anywhere between 800 to 1000 years old.
Scholars say that the subterranean city of Saleh Abad was most likely built in the 12th or 13th century when the Ilkhanate dynasty ruled the area.
During the initial works, ceramic pieces from that period were recovered among other artifacts.
Ahmad Torabi, a provincial tourism official who participated in the opening of the door to the city points out that the place was not made public when it was found three years ago in order to prevent possible looting before researchers could study the site.
“Now we need more time to investigate and explore this area,” Torabi said, explaining that the underground city may even have been used in modern times during World War II when entire families used it to hide from the Soviet armies.
A team of archaeologists has commenced an extensive research on a centuries-old underground “city”, which is located in Salehabad district of Hamedan province, west-central Iran.
“At the time when Russian soldiers crossed the area [during the World War II], the men of the region concealed their families in the underground city so that no one noticed their presence,” Torabi added.
The area where the underground city was discovered, Hamadan, is one of the oldest in Iran and was part of ancient Ecbatana, which was the capital of Media and a summer residence of the Achaemenian kings who ruled Persia from 553 to 330 BC.
This ancient city is not by far the oldest one discovered in the region. Experts have previously discovered subterranean cities in Iran (Samen and Arzan-Fu) and some of them are thought to date back more than 2,500 years.
Roman Lead Sarcophagus Accidentally Found In Granada
Workers remove the sarcophagus in Granada.
When archaeologists began exploring underneath a building in Granada, in the southern Spanish region of Andalusia, they weren’t expecting to find anything of importance.
After all, they were just completing a standard prospection of the Villamena building, as required for any planned underground work in the city to rule out the existence of historic remains.
The survey was going ahead as planned. They found a few remains from the Christian era and from the days of Muslim rule, but nothing truly relevant.
But before finishing the work, they decided to explore a little deeper. And that’s when they found it: a Roman grave covered with sandstone and mud, 2.5 meters below the surface.
Lead sarcophagus after removal from the grave
For Ángel Rodríguez, the archaeologist in charge of the survey, the discovery was not a big surprise at first – not until they removed the slab and found a lead sarcophagus underneath. Now, this was certainly unexpected.
Rodríguez believes the sarcophagus dates back to the 2nd or 3rd century AD, a time when lead sarcophagi were not at all common.
In Andalusia, they were expensive as well as difficult to obtain, because the industry only existed in Córdoba, over 200 kilometers away. “Córdoba is the only place where they made lead sarcophagi,” Rodríguez explains.
According to this expert, the sarcophagus “probably belonged to a wealthy family, but that doesn’t mean that we are going to find great jewels inside.” The items buried inside may not be that valuable, given that precious goods were left “for the living,” says the archaeologist.
The main interest in this type of sarcophagus comes from the fact that lead conserves remains very well. This means that, if all goes as the archaeologist’s hope, inside there will be a body, personal valuables, and textiles in good condition, which will allow the team to “learn a lot about the burial ritual,” says Rodríguez.
The sarcophagus was moved last week to the Archaeological and Ethnological Museum of Granada. It will remain there until researchers decide on how to proceed with the opening.
Sarcophagus loaded on the back of a truck for transport to the museum
A multidisciplinary team of physical anthropologists, restorers and archaeologists will be present for the exciting reveal. Once opened, the body will go to the forensic anthropology laboratory at Granada University, while the sarcophagus and goods inside will remain in the museum to be studied, explains Rodríguez.
In Roman times, the historic center of Granada was actually a rural area on the outskirts of the city, and the real epicenter was the Albaicín district.
But there was something interesting about the area: the Darro river ran through it. The river stopped flowing overground more than a century ago in this part of the city when it was buried underground.
This was where the sarcophagus was found. Rodríguez explains that this area, on the banks of the Darro, was used to grow crops, “it was not a cemetery, but perhaps because of the Darro river, it had a special meaning as a funeral area.”
According to the archaeologist, a similar lead sarcophagus was discovered in 1902, but it was plundered by the workers who found it before it reached researchers, who only found “some bones.”
The lead sarcophagus found under the Villamena building, next to Granada Cathedral, weighs between 300 and 350 kilograms and has the same dimensions of a classic coffin: 1.97 meters long and 40 centimeters high. It is slightly wider at the head (56 centimeters) than at the foot (36 centimeters).
On the first inspection, Rodríguez says there is no sign of an inscription but adds that “it still has a lot of clay and sand,” and “we’ll see when we clean it.”
The outside of the sarcophagus has already given researchers many insights, and the inside is expected to give many more when it is opened in a few weeks.
During the refurbishment job of the Bateswar temple close Rushikulya rookery in Ganjam District of Odisha, on the east shore of India, buried artifacts of the 8th century are emerging.
The temple is located on the coastal sand dunes around eight km from the Kolkata-Chennai Highway near Humma.
According to Odisha State Archaeology department superintendent Sanghamitra Satpathy, with the financial support of the World Bank, Rs.1.64-crore renovation work was taken up at the Bateswar temple under the Integrated Coastal Zone Management Project (ICZMP).
During the renovation, remnants of a Parvati temple were discovered from under the sand on the periphery of the Bateswar temple.
According to the priest of the Bateswar temple, some idols were also discovered from this newly-discovered small temple.
Steps to preserve the temple
Meanwhile, the State Archaeology department has decided to take necessary steps to preserve the newly-discovered temple.
Senior historian and retired head of history department of Berhampur University, Ashok Kumar Rath, who has researched on the archaeological remains of this region said the Bateswar temple as well as the newly-discovered temple on its premises belonged to the 8th Century.
“The two-chambered Bateswar temple has archaeological resemblance with Laxmaneswar, Bharateswar and Shatrughneswar temples of Bhubaneswar, which were also built in the 7th or 8th Century AD,” said Prof. Rath.
The recently-discovered 8th-century temple in Ganjam district of Odisha
According to him, this ancient temple was built during the Shilodvhav period of the Odisha history and was linked with the maritime history of this region.
The Bateswar temple also has some stone inscriptions in ‘Devanagari’ and ‘Kutila’ scripts that have become dull with time.
But as per the historians, these inscriptions are of later period, may be of 10th Century during the reign of Ganga dynasty.
During ancient times, ports existed at Palur and Ganjam near the Rushikulya rookery.
It is felt that based on the maritime activity in the region, an urban civilization may have existed in the area and Bateswar temple was part of it.
“More excavation around the Bateswar temple can reveal more information,” said Prof. Rath.
A drought revealed a palace thousands of years old submerged in an Iraq reservoir
As the waters of the Mosul dam reservoir in northern Iraq receded last fall, they revealed a stunning sight: a Bronze Age palace, many of its mud-brick walls and carefully planned rooms remarkably preserved.
The discovery of the ruins in the Mosul Dam reservoir on the banks of the Tigris River inspired a spontaneous archeological dig that will improve understanding of the Mittani Empire.
One of the least-researched empires of the Ancient Near East, the Kurdish-German team of researchers said in a press release.
The Mittani Empire is one of the least researched civilizations of the Ancient Near East.
“The find is one of the most important archaeological discoveries in the region in recent decades,” Kurdish archeologist Hasan Ahmed Qasim said in a press release.
The palace would have originally stood just 65 feet from the river on an elevated terrace. A terrace wall of mud bricks was later added to stabilize the building, adding to the imposing architecture.
Ivana Puljiz, an archeologist from the University of Tübingen’s Institute for Ancient Near Eastern Studies, describes the palace, known as Kemune, as a carefully designed building with mud-brick walls up to two meters (6.6 feet) thick.
Some of the walls are more than two meters high, and various rooms have plastered walls, she added.
The team also found wall paintings in shades of red and blue, which were probably a common feature of palaces at the time but have rarely been found preserved.
“Discovering wall paintings in Kemune is an archaeological sensation,” she said in a press release.
“Kemune is only the second site in the region where wall paintings of the Mittani period have been discovered,” Puljiz told CNN in an email.
Photos of the clay tablets found at the site have been sent to Germany for translation.
Ten clay tablets covered in cuneiform, an ancient system of writing, were also discovered. High-resolution photos of the texts have been sent to Germany for translation.
“From the texts, we hope to gain information on the inner structure of the Mittani empire, its economic organization, and the relationship of the Mittani capital with the administrative centers in the neighboring regions,” Puljiz told CNN.
Archeologists first became aware of the site in 2010 when water levels in the reservoir were low, but this is the first time they have been able to excavate.
However, the site was submerged shortly after the dig, Puljiz said, adding: “It is unclear when it will emerge again.”
Qasim also worked on another project with the University of Tübingen, uncovering a Bronze Age city in northern Iraq in 2016. The team unearthed the city, which lies beneath what is now the small village of Bassetki in the autonomous region of Kurdistan, close to territory that was held by ISIS.
Days after the dig was completed, Iraqi security forces began their push to take Mosul back from ISIS.
Measuring a kilometer in length and 500 meters across (about 1,000 yards by roughly 550 yards), the ancient urban area features grand houses, a palace, an extensive road network, and a cemetery.
An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated where and how the text on the clay tablets would be analyzed.
The severed head of large wolf found perfectly preserved in Siberian permafrost 40,000 years after it died
Scientists estimate that the wolf lived 40,000 years ago.
The sensational find is believed to be the world’s first full-sized Pleistocene wolf, and due to the high quality of preservation, provides new insight into the extinct species.
You never know what you might encounter during a casual stroll in Siberia. Local resident, Pavel Efimov, was walking along the Tirekhtyakh River in the Russian Republic of Sakha when he came across something bizarre: a severed wolf head.
But upon closer examination by experts, they found that it wasn’t just the head of any kind of wolf, but that of a prehistoric predator which lived 40,000 years ago during the Ice Age.
“This is a unique discovery of the first-ever remains of a fully grown Pleistocene wolf with its tissue preserved,” paleontologist Albert Protopopov from the Republic of Sakha Academy of Sciences told The Siberian Times.
The head, which measures 16 inches in length and is larger than half the body length of a modern-day wolf, is astonishingly well-preserved with its fangs, thick fur, soft tissue, and brain intact.
Although this is not the first such discovery of an ancient wolf in the Siberian territory, other discoveries have typically been skull specimens or the remains of pups. This head is believed to be from an adult wolf aged between two to four years old when it died.
The incredible discovery was announced in a joint exhibition organized by Yakutian and Japanese scientists in Tokyo, Japan. Further analysis of the wolf’s DNA will be done by an international team of scientists at the Swedish Museum of Natural History.
By examining the wolf’s ancient DNA, researchers hope to learn more about the evolution of ancient wolves to their modern iterations.
The researchers have time-stamped the impressive specimen to 40,000 years ago during the Pleistocene era.
Analyzing the specimen’s ancient DNA will allow scientists to learn more about the evolution of modern wolves.
In addition to some genetic analysis, the ancient wolf’s features will be reconstructed using a non-invasive x-ray with which the inside of the skull can be examined without destroying the head.
The Siberian permafrost, which includes areas in northern Canada, Alaska, and Greenland, has been host to other incredible archaeological finds in the past.
In fact, the team responsible for the recovery of this wolf head struck big in 2015 and 2017 with the discovery of several ancient cave lion cubs.
In 2017, one ancient cave lion cub was discovered around the same place by the Tirekhtyakh River in the Siberian permafrost territory.
Before then, researchers had already uncovered two other cubs — which scientists named Uyan and Dina — in 2015. The two cubs were unearthed on the banks of a different river still in the permafrost region.
“Everyone was amazed then and did not believe that such a thing is possible, and now, two years later, another cave lion has been found in the Abyiski district,” Protopopov said then.
Researchers dated all three cub specimens between 20,000 to 50,000 years ago, around the same time the ancient cave lion population became extinct.
CT scan of the wolf’s skull.
Like the wolf’s head, the lion cubs were incredibly well-preserved. The Cubs had all their limbs intact and showed no external injuries. The prehistoric animals were so perfect that they sparked a sudden interest among some scientists to clone the little beasts.
Just this past year, a 40,000-year-old extinct horse and 50,000-year-old wolf pup were also uncovered in the permafrost.
The ancient cave lion cubs were placed side-by-side with the new wolf specimen during the recent announcement by the researchers. The ancient wolf head has yet to ignite the same cloning discussion, but that doesn’t mean that it won’t in the future.
Cooking Gear Found In Graves Of Viking Men And Women
Scientists often imagine that men’s and women’s roles during the Viking Age were clearly differentiated, archaeologist Marianne Moen says. “The illustrations show women making food and holding children, while men were active, in battle,” she says. But maybe this wasn’t the way things were. The illustration is from “Vikinger i vest” (Vikings in the West), published in 2009.
“I think we need to move away from distinguishing between men’s and women’s roles during the Viking times,” she said. Moen has completed her Ph.D. on Viking Age gender roles at the University of Oslo. Her research shows that upper-class men and women generally were buried with the same types of items — including cooking gear.
She examined the contents of 218 Viking graves in Vestfold, a county on the southwest side of Oslo Fjord, and sorted the artifacts she found according to type. Many of the graves were richly equipped with everything from cups and plates to horses and other livestock.
In fact, these ancient Viking women were not only housewives.
Not just housewives
Archaeologists often assume that Viking women were responsible for the house and home, while men were merchants and warriors. However, tools and items associated with housekeeping were fairly equally distributed between men and women in the Vestfold graves.
“The key is a good example. It is often considered to be the symbol of a housewife,” Moen said. Nonetheless, almost as many men’s graves had keys as women’s graves.
“It might be time to change the story a bit,” she said.
Men were just as likely to be buried with cooking equipment as women. Ten graves containing cookware were men’s graves, while eight were women’s. Moen likes that fact. It means that men also made food, she thinks. “My interpretation is that cooking equipment indicates hospitality. This was very important during Viking times,” she said, although others interpret it differently.
Cookware doesn’t mean that men cooked
The Gokstad Ship, the large ship displayed at the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo, was part of a man’s grave and also contained a large array of cooking equipment. “These finds were often excused as being because men needed to make their own food on long voyages,” Moen says.
Not everyone agrees with Moen’s interpretation. Just because men chose to bring cookware into the afterlife doesn’t necessarily mean that they did the cooking in their own home, says archaeologist Frans-Arne Stylegar.
Stylegar was previously the county conservator for Vest-Agder, the southernmost county in Norway. He currently works with cultural preservation and urban planning at the consulting firm Multiconsult.
“It is difficult to translate the persona who is idealized in burial customs into actual historical reality. It’s almost a philosophical question,” he says. Moen also thinks there is a stark difference between life and death when it comes to gender roles. But she also thinks that the items that people were buried with have some relation to what real life was like during those times.
A soapstone vessel from the Viking Age, found at Kaupang in Vestfold. Soapstone was used to make cookware, among other items.
She reminds us that tools and equipment aren’t just something that Vikings were buried with. These items were also found in houses, although without the ability to determine who used them.
Farmers and upper-class citizens
Stylegar thinks that Moen’s Ph.D. thesis was well done and that she makes a convincing case that there wasn’t much difference between the way upper-class Viking men and women were buried. He has studied several Viking graves in Vestfold previously and isn’t very surprised by this conclusion. “I’ve gotten this impression previously, but she shows it very clearly,” he said.
However, from his own work in Vestfold, he had the impression that farmers were much more concerned with marking gender in their graves than the upper-class citizens, although he points out that this was not the focus of his research.
There are still a few clear differences between genders for the elite. Men generally have weapons in their graves, while women have jewellery and textile tools, as Moen’s work shows.
Both genders have jewellery
Viking men and women still had more similarities than differences in their graves, Moen said. More than 40 percent of the male graves contained jewellery such as brooches and beads. The men also have what seem to be toiletries in their graves, including tweezers and razors likely used for personal grooming.
Interpreting the past through a modern lens
Moen wonders where the idea that there was clear gender differentiation in the past comes from. Other researchers have pointed out that many of the items retrieved from graves in the early 1900s were interpreted based on the cultural perspectives of those times, in the same way, that Moen now sees the artifacts from her modern perspective.
She calls herself a gender archaeologist, and wants to challenge other archaeologists’ interpretations of Viking culture. But entrenched perceptions among experts can be difficult to change, she says.
“I encounter quite a bit of skepticism. There are quite a few researchers who are very set in their opinion on gender when it comes to work-related roles,” Moen said. She thinks part of the reason for this is that it is much easier to relate to a version of history that is in keeping with our modern expectations, “a version of history where men and women have specific roles in society,” she said.
“In general, in Viking Age studies, artifacts found in graves are interpreted as being connected to the person buried in the grave. This shouldn’t change for cases where artifacts don’t meet modern expectations of what a man or woman would have in their grave,” Moen said.
Mysterious 2,000-year-old Roman Era wooden arm found in English well may have been a spiritual offering
Archaeologists think the finely carved arm could have been an offering to the gods and it is considered to be of national and international importance.
A rare 2,000-year-old wooden arm has been recovered from the bottom of a Roman well.
The “finely carved” limb was found by archaeologists excavating land at the Warth Park industrial estate in Raunds, Northamptonshire.
The arm is very rare and very well preserved
This discovery is so important because of its location and how well preserved the artifact is.
Researchers working at the Warth Park industrial estate in Raunds were carrying out an excavation before more development was supposed to occur in the area.
The arm discovery came as a surprise and it is thought to have survived so well because it lay in waterlogged conditions.
The ancient well had been filled into a lack of oxygen prevented any deterioration from happening.
The arm is more likely to have been a ritual offering than a prosthetic limb
Archaeologist and wood expert Michael Bamforth examined the arm found at the bottom of the well
Wood specialist Michael Bamforth wrote in a report that he thinks the arm was “carved from a single branch, which makes use of a natural curve to form the elbow, and is very well made, as no tool marks are visible on its surface”.
It is thought that the artifact was designed to resemble the arm of a small adult or teenager, as it is quite slender and has a graceful open palm pose.
Archaeologists at Oxford Archaeology East also think that the arm was made to be a single object and not part of a larger sculpture as there is no joint evidence.
A small part of the wooden arm has been carbon dated and revealed to be from between 86 and 240 AD.
Bamforth thinks the object was probably thrown into the well as a religious offering.
Although the Romans were known to use wooden limbs for prosthetic purposes, this particular arm is thought to have been purely for ritual purposes because it has no obvious way of attaching to the human body.
Louise Moan from Oxford Archaeology East told The BBC: “It’s extremely improbable that this arm would have been used for a prosthetic.
“It would be heavy and cumbersome to have a large piece of wood like this attached to you if you did it is unlikely that you’d be able to lift it or use it in any meaningful way to aid with everyday life.
“There is also no evidence on the arm to show that it originally had attachments to connect it to anything.
It is far more likely that this is a single piece which was carved specifically to be thrown down the well as a ritual votive offering.”
Other examples of carved wooden body parts seemingly used for ritual purposes have been found across Europe but they don’t date as far back as the wooden arm in question and have never been found in Britain before.
