Oldest case of a rare genetic condition discovered

A group of international researchers has uncovered evidence of a super rare genetic condition that gives men an extra X chromosome, reporting the oldest clinical case of Klinefelter syndrome to date.

The evidence comes from a 1,000-year-old skeleton from Portugal.

Klinefelter syndrome is a rare genetic condition where individuals are born with an extra copy of the X chromosome, occurring in approximately one in 1,000 genetic-male births.

The study coordinated by Dr. João Teixeira, an ARC DECRA Fellow at The Australian National University (ANU), brought together a multidisciplinary team that combined genetic, statistical, archaeological and anthropological information to establish a definitive diagnosis.

The team began by analyzing genetic information obtained from a skeleton found in northeastern Portugal that had been radiocarbon dated to the 11th century by researchers from the University of Coimbra in Portugal.

"We were immediately excited the first time we looked at the results," Dr. Teixeira said. "However, ancient DNA, is often degraded and of low quality and abundance, meaning we were initially cautious."

The researchers say the findings will help establish a historic record for Klinefelter syndrome, as well as enhance understanding of its prevalence throughout human history.

"Our research shows the immense potential of combining different lines of evidence to study the human past, and the frequency of different health conditions through time," Dr. Teixeira said.

Associate Professor Bastien Llamas, Head of Molecular Anthropology at the Australian Center for Ancient DNA, said, "In recent years, ancient DNA helped rewrite the history of worldwide human populations. Our study demonstrates it is now a valuable resource for biomedical research and the growing field of evolutionary medicine."

The DNA was extracted by Ph.D. student at the University of Adelaide, Xavier Roca-Rada, who said "genetic analysis was undertaken to computationally map the degraded DNA fragments of the X and Y chromosomes to the reference human genome."

Given the well preserved state of the specimen, the researchers were also able to determine physical traits in the skeleton compatible with Klinefelter syndrome.

"Given the fragile state of the DNA, we developed a new statistical method that could take into account the characteristics of ancient DNA, and our observations to confirm the diagnosis," Dr. Teixeira said.

"While the study offers compelling evidence for the genetic history of Klinefelter syndrome, no sociological implications can be drawn from this diagnostic."

The researchers suggest their new method to analyze this particular skeleton can be further improved to study different chromosomal abnormalities in other archaeological specimens, including Down syndrome.

The study is published in The Lancet.

Scientists find a new asteroid crater that may shed light on Dinosaurs' extinction

Dinosaurs went extinct 66 million years ago after an asteroid plunged into the Gulf of Mexico

Scientists have discovered a new crater that may have landed to Earth around the time dinosaurs went extinct.  (REUTERS)

A previously undiscovered asteroid crater off the coast of West Africa may hold some answers about how Dinosaurs went extinct. 

Approximately 66 million years ago, a large asteroid, whose crater is named Chicxulub, slammed into the Earth at the end of the Cretaceous period, causing the destruction of the dinosaurs. However, researchers have now found a new asteroid crater off the coast of West Africa that impacted the Earth around the same time, according to a study released Thursday by Science Advances. 

Given the name the Nadir Crater, it is located off the coast of Guinea, West Africa, and is 300m below the sea and 400km from the nearest land with a diameter of 8.5km. Although Nadir is not as large as Chicxulub, an analysis of the age of nearby fossils indicates it is a very similar age. 

The discovery was made by Dr. Uisdean Nicholson, a professor at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, UK. Originally, he was examining seismic survey data when he fell came upon evidence of the crater. 

"These surveys are kind of like an ultrasound of Earth. I've spent probably the last 20 years interpreting them, but I've never seen anything like this," Dr. Nicholson told the BBC. "Nadir's shape is diagnostic of an asteroid impact. It's got a raised rim surrounding a central uplift area, and then layers of debris that extend outwards."

Some other researchers, such as Profession Sean Gulick have suggested that Nadir may have crashed into the Earth on the same as the Chicxulub Crater, but scientists can not make that determination until further inspections of the African crater. 

"A much smaller cousin, or sister, doesn't necessarily add to what we know about the dinosaurs' extinction, but it does add to our understanding of the astronomical event that was Chicxulub," Gulick said to the BBC.

The asteroid that caused the Chicxulub crater to fall in the Gulf of Mexico is measured to be 12km long, creating a 200km-wide depression. The crash caused destructive firestorms and tsunamis that put the Earth into an ice age, causing much of the world's species to perish. 

Dinosaur tracks unearthed in Texas state park as drought dries river

Newly uncovered dinosaur tracks at Texas's Dinosaur Valley State Park date back to 113 million years ago

The tracks were uncovered in the Paluxy River as its water level receded due to the major drought that has parched parts of northern Texas this summer, the park announced last week. The park is located near Glen Rose, southwest of Dallas.

"Due to the excessive drought conditions this past summer, the river dried up completely in most locations, allowing for more tracks to be uncovered here in the park," the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department told Fox News Digital on Tuesday. "Under normal river conditions, these newer tracks are underwater and are commonly filled in with sediment, making them buried and not as visible."

Most dinosaur tracks at the park belong to two different species: a theropod called Acrocanthosaurus and a sauropod called Sauroposeidon, according to the park.

The park said that the tracks will likely get buried under sediment and water once it begins to rain. (Paul Baker | Friends of Dinosaur Valley State Park)

The newly unearthed footprints in the river belong to the Acrocanthosaurus, what officials described as a dinosaur that stood about 15 feet tall and weighed close to seven tons as an adult. Meanwhile, they said an adult Sauroposeidon stood about 60 feet tall and weighed about 44 tons.

The park shared photos online showing volunteers helping to clean out and shore up the dino tracks.

The park said the tracks belong to the Acrocanthosaurus and date back to 113 million years ago. (Paul Baker | Friends of Dinosaur Valley State Park)

However, with rain in the coming forecasts, the parks said it is likely the prehistoric tracks will soon be buried again beneath the river water.

Paul Baker | Friends of Dinosaur Valley State Park

On Monday, residents of north Texas woke up to flash flooding brought on by as much as 10 inches of rain in some areas. 

The park said that the layers of sediment that will once again cover the footprints will help to protect the tracks from natural weathering and erosion.

"While these newer dinosaur tracks were visible for a brief amount of time, it brought about the wonder and excitement about finding new dinosaur tracks at the park," the state parks department said.

Bulgarian Paleontologist Identifies New Panda Species that Lived Here Some 6 Mln Years Ago

A close relative of today's giant pandas lived in the Balkans some six million years ago, according to a study by paleontologist Nikolai Spassov of the National Museum of Natural History with the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. He and Qigao Jiangzuo of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology with the Chinese Academy of Sciences published an article on this discovery in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology in July.

In an interview for BTA, Prof Spassov explained that the discovery came after decades of trying to unravel the mystery of two fossilized teeth at the National Museum of Natural History. The teeth were probably brought to his predecessor at the Museum, Dr Ivan Nikolov, before the 1980s and a single handwritten label was left beside them. Only years later did Prof Spassov manage to determine that the label read "Gyuredjiya", which he later learned was the old name of Ognyanovo village (Northwestern Bulgaria). 

That led the paleontologist to coal deposits in that area, samples from which allowed him to date the teeth. He then compared them to those of extinct and present-day panda species. For his study, Prof. Spassov examined specimens in museums and institutes in China, Hungary, France, and Austria.  

The newly identified species of panda, named Agriarctos nikolovi in honor of Dr Nikolov, lived during the Miocene epoch in the Balkans' then swampy, forested areas. Prof. Spassov believes this species was the most evolved member of the independent giant panda lineage formed in Europe during the late Miocene. It is a close relative but not a direct ancestor of present-day giant pandas. Its size was similar or just slightly smaller, the paleontologist said.

While bamboo accounts for more than 99% of the diet of today's pandas, Agriarctos nikolovi is thought to have lived on other plants since its teeth were not strong enough to sustain the pressure from hard bamboo, and bamboo was rare in that epoch, Prof. Spassov's study found. The robust teeth were a good deterrent to predators.

Agriarctos nikolovi went extinct probably due to habitat loss as a result of the climate changes in Southern Europe at the end of the Miocene. During the so-called Messinian salinity crisis 5.96 to 5.33 million years ago, the waters of the Mediterranean dried up, likely depriving the pandas of their main sources of food and their humid, wooded habitats, Prof Spassov told BTA.

Prof Spassov recently told Bulgarian National Television two more fossil teeth have been found that he believes belong to Agriarctos nikolovi. Whether that is indeed the case will be determined after excavations in Western Bulgaria. 

Neanderthal vs. modern humans: Slow and steady wins the brain game

Small genetic changes separate modern humans from ancestral brain development.

Homo neanderthalensis adult male reconstruction. Artist: John Gurche. Photographer: Chip Clark. Via Wikimedia Commons.

Our closest human relatives are Neanderthals (split from modern humans at least 500,000 years ago) and their Asian relatives the Denisovans (split from modern humans around 800,000 years ago). The differences between Homo sapiens and these other groups are encoded in changes to the amino acids which are the building blocks of proteins in our cells and tissues.

About 100 amino acids changed in modern humans after these splits and spread throughout almost all of us. The biological significance of these changes, however, is largely unknown.

Researchers in Germany looked at changes to six of these amino acids occurring in three proteins. These amino acids play key roles in the distribution of chromosomes to the two daughter cells during cell division.

Since the remarkable work done in sequencing the Neanderthal genome this study furthers our understanding of the subtle differences between these ancient humans and modern humans. It may also shed some light on the evolutionary advantages that eventually saw modern humans outlive Neanderthals and Denisovans.

Authored by researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in, the results are published in Science Advances.

To investigate how these six changes impact brain development, the scientists introduced the amino acids from modern human variants into mice. Interestingly, in those six amino acid positions, mice are identical to Neanderthals. That makes mice brains perfect for testing what happens when these amino acids are changed.

Lead author of the study, Felipe Mora-Bermúdez, says the changes result in more accurate transfer of genetic data in cell division. “We found that three modern human amino acids in two of the proteins cause a longer metaphase, a phase where chromosomes are prepared for cell division, and this results in fewer errors when the chromosomes are distributed to the daughter cells of the neural stem cells, just like in modern humans.”

The team also checked to see if the opposite would be true. If they replaced the modern human amino acids with those present in Neanderthals, would they see faster and less accurate mitosis?

They introduced the ancestral amino acids in human brain organoids. Organoids are miniature organ-like structures that can be grown from human stem cells in the lab which mimic aspects of early human brain development.

Left side: microscopy image of the chromosomes (in cyan) of a modern human neural stem cell of the neocortex during cell division. Right side: same type of image, but of a cell where three amino acids in the two proteins KIF18a and KNL1, involved in chromosome separation, have been changed from the modern human to the Neanderthal variants. These “neanderthalized” cells show twice as many chromosome separation errors (red arrow). Credit: Felipe Mora-Bermúdez / MPI-CBG.

“In this case, the metaphase became shorter and we found more chromosome distribution errors.” According to Mora-Bermúdez, this shows that those three modern human amino acid changes in the proteins are responsible for the fewer chromosome distribution mistakes seen in modern humans compared to Neanderthal and chimpanzees. He adds that “having mistakes in the number of chromosomes is usually not a good idea for cells, as can be seen in disorders like trisomies and cancer.”

“Our study implies that some aspects of modern human brain evolution and function may be independent of brain size since Neanderthals and modern humans have similar-sized brains. The findings also suggest that brain function in Neanderthals may have been more affected by chromosome errors than that of modern humans,” adds co-author Wieland Huttner.

Svante Pääbo, who also co-supervised the study, adds that “future studies are needed to investigate whether the decreased error rate affects modern human traits related to brain function.”

Originally published by Cosmos as Neanderthal vs. modern humans: Slow and steady wins the brain game

Hundreds of ancient treasures seized by US Customs returned to Mexico

Mexico has recovered more than 400 archaeological treasures dating back hundreds of years after they were seized in the U.S.

The 428 artifacts include arrowheads, spear tips and knives, in addition to tools and hide scrapers dating back to between 900 A.D. and 1600 A.D. They have also recovered fossils of a 60-million-year-old marine oyster.

The treasures were handed over to Mexico's consulate in Portland, Oregon, by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Office.

One of many objects seized by Mexican authorities in an undated picture. They got by the US authorities. (/ Zenger)
INAH/Zenger

Mexico’s Nationwide Institute of Anthropology and Historical past (INAH) launched a press release from Zenger Information on Tuesday, which stated: “The INAH has preserved many items from desert cultures, comparable to projectile factors, flint knives, shell and bone artifacts, marine fossils and natural parts.

“They had been seized by america Customs and Border Safety and delivered to the Mexican consulate in Portland.”

The institute stated it obtained the articles from the Mexican Ministry of International Affairs after the ministry obtained the articles from america.

The Mexican company additionally stated: “Throughout the formalization of the cargo, which happened on the State Division’s headquarters, the efforts of the U.S. authorities, whose Customs and Border Safety Company seized the amount of things associated to historical cultures settled in northern Mexico, had been highlighted delivered them to the Mexican consulate in Portland, Oregon.”

One of many objects seized by Mexican authorities in an undated picture. Treasures recovered from america included arrowheads, scrapers created from shell and bone, and knives.
INAH/Zenger

Jaime Alejandro Bautista Valdespino, Deputy Director of the Register of Movable Archaeological Monuments at INAH, who oversaw the handover, stated that based on preliminary info, the objects transferred to Mexico by diplomatic mail “dated to the late Postclassic interval (AD 900-1600). ) and are related to human teams from the desert cultures who settled within the areas now occupied by the Northern Mexico and Southern United States entities.

Objects included arrowheads, scrapers created from shell and bone, and knives. The artefacts handed over additionally included varied marine fossils from the Exogyra Genus – an extinct genus of fossil sea oysters.

The Exogyra date again about 60 million years, to the Cretaceous Interval.

One of many objects seized by Mexican authorities in an undated picture. Authorities stated the artifacts had been confiscated by america Customs and Border Safety Company and delivered to the Mexican consulate in Portland.
INAH/Zenger

Archaeologist Alejandro Bautista stated that every of the 428 items “will likely be protected by the INAH and registered within the Establishment’s Public Register of Archaeological and Historic Monuments and Zones, with the opportunity of them changing into a part of exhibitions in museums”.

Bautista harassed the significance of sustaining cooperative relationships with overseas governments to advertise a tradition of restitution and urged individuals to chorus from looting nationwide heritage websites and unlawful commerce.

This story was supplied to Newsweek by Zenger Information.

Jurassic fossils found at 'remarkable' farm site dating back to dinosaur era

Fossils found in farmer's field off M5 in Cotswolds

Jurassic fossil found at a farm off the M5 in the Midlands near Stroud (Image: Dean Lomax)

Fossils dating back a staggering 183 million years have been unearthed from a Midland farmer's field off the M5. The archaeological treasures have been dug up from Court Farm at Cotswolds village Kings Stanley and date back to an era when dinosaurs roamed the region.

The dig site off the M5 where Jurassic fossils were found (Image: Steve Dey)

A team of palaeontologists discovered preserved fish, marine reptiles, squids and rare insects in what they believe was once a Jurassic sea that spanned near to Worcestershire. Layers of limestone have kept the fossils intact at the field belonging to Adam Knight.

Despite being hidden for thousands of years, photos of the fish fossils show that even their eyeballs, scales and fins can still be seen clearly. Among the finds was the head of a Pachycormus Jurassic fish.

Dr Dean Lomax, a palaeontologist and visiting scientist at The University of Manchester, said: “The site is quite remarkable, with numerous beautifully preserved fossils of ancient animals that once lived in a Jurassic sea that covered this part of the UK.

Beautifully preserved fish head from the period when dinosaurs roamed the region

(Image: Dean Lomax)

“Inland locations with fossils like this are rare in the UK. The fossils we have collected will surely form the basis of research projects for years to come.”

Fossil collectors Sally and Neville Hollingworth were behind the discovery. It's not the first time they have struck gold as they also uncovered remains of mammoths at Cotswold Water Park.

One of the Jurassic fossils found in the farmer's field

(Image: Dean Lomax)

Mr and Mrs Hollingworth, who were on BBC One documentary Attenborough and the Mammoth Graveyard last year, said: “These fossils come from the Early Jurassic, specifically a time called the Toarcian.

"The clay layers exposed at this site near Stroud have yielded a significant number of well-preserved marine vertebrate fossils.

"The fossils are comparable to the famous and exquisitely preserved similar fauna of the Strawberry Bank Lagerstätte from Ilminster, Somerset – a prehistoric site of exceptional fossil preservation.

"Excavations at Kings Stanley have revealed a rich source of fossil material, particularly from a rare layer of rock that has not been exposed since the late 19th Century.”

A team of eight scientists were involved in the latest dig this Summer. During that time, roughly 200kg of clay was collected and sieved in a state-of-the-art sediment processing machine to extract small teeth and bones.

Many specimens collected will be donated to Stroud's Museum in the Park to add to its palaeontology collection.

Nigel Larkin, specialist palaeontological conservator, said: “Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day. Give a palaeontologist a fossil fish and they will tell you the species, the age of the rock, the climate of the time when the fish was alive, plus the water depth and salinity and plenty of other information.

"This site - already an interesting farm in a beautiful setting - is one big outdoor classroom.”

The Paleolithic Mysteries of the Underwater 'Cosquer Cave' in France

The Cosquer Cave is located in the Calanque de Morgiou in Marseille, France, near Cap Morgiou. The entrance to the cave is located 37 m (121 ft) underwater, due to the Holocene sea level rise. The cave can now be accessed by divers through a 175 m (574 ft) long tunnel; the entrance is located 37 m (121 ft) below sea level, which has risen since the cave was inhabited. During the glacial periods of the Pleistocene, the shore of the Mediterranean was several kilometers to the south and the sea level up to 100 m (330 ft) below the entrance of the cave.

It was regularly visited for several thousand years, over a period ranging from 27,000 to 14,000 BC. However, it was first authenticated by an expert on the Neolithic called Jean Courtin, as it proved impossible to find an archaeologist specialising in the Palaeolithic capable of diving to a depth of 37 metres and swimming along a dark, relatively narrow passageway.

The cave contains various prehistoric rock art engravings. Its submarine entrance was discovered in 1985 by Henri Cosquer, a professional diver. The underwater passage leading to the cave was progressively explored till 1990 by cave divers without the divers being aware of the archaeological character of the cave. It is only in the last period (1990-1991) of the progressive underwater explorations that the cave divers emerged in the non-submerged part of the cave.

The prehistoric paintings were not immediately discovered by the divers to first emerge from the other side of the sump. The cave was named after Henri Cosquer, when its existence was made public in 1991, after that three divers became lost in the cave and died.

Prehistoric artists drew and painted animals but never humans, apart from their hands. From this point of view, the Cosquer cave is no exception.

Four fifths of the cave, including any cave wall art, were permanently or periodically submerged and destroyed by sea water. 150 instances of cave art remain, including several dozen paintings and carvings dating back to the Upper Paleolithic, corresponding to two different phases of occupation of the cave:

• Older art consisting of 65 hand stencils and other related motifs, dating to 27,000 years BP (the Gravettian Era).

• Newer art of signs and 177 animals dating to 19,000 years BP (the Solutrean Era), representing both "classical" animals such as bison, ibex, and horses, but also marine animals such as auks and a man with a seal's head.

In the cave, marine animals make up a significant proportion of the figures. Auks, seals, fish and various markings that may represent jellyfish were painted or engraved on the walls. An auk can also be seen on the “ceiling”. This is probably a great auk, which was still widespread in the North Atlantic in the nineteenth century.

Cosquer isn't the only site that features hand stencils. In fact, this appears to be a pattern that is specific to the Gravettian culture in Europe. The hands may have been mutilated or injured, but the most plausible hypothesis is that they represented a kind of code, a language of communication between hunter-gatherers, like that used not so long ago by the indigenous peoples of North America. But the meaning of these signs or codes is no longer accessible to us today.

The men, women and children whose handprints have been found in the cave were Homo sapiens sapiens, in other words, they were identical to modern humans in every way. It should be borne in mind that people in the prehistory never lived deep inside caves but rather near the cave mouth, under shelter, or in the open air.

Ancient Forest Found Inside A Giant Sinkhole In China

The residents of Leye County in South China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region are no strangers to sinkholes. The area's 29 majestic sinkholes and underground caves have earned themselves a UNESCO World Heritage Site designation. But the one explored by scientists in early May 2022 harbored an extraordinary secret — a pristinely-preserved ancient forest.

Lixin Chen, founder of the Guangxi 702 Cave Expedition Club, and his team first descended inside the massive chasm on May 6, 2022. It did not take them long to reach firm ground to walk on. But the group soon realized they were nowhere close to the bottom of the 630-foot-deep sinkhole. They had to traverse through a dense undergrowth of lush green vines and trees as high as 130 feet for a few hours to get there.

Chen and his team had to trek the dense forest to reach the sinkhole's lowest point. (Credit: Hanshun Gong/Atlas Obscura)

Chen told Atlas Obscura that the environment reminded him of a scene from the movie Avatar. "The tree vines were entangling us like spider webs, and you have no idea how deep your next step was going to be," he says. "The plants were so brittle that you could pull them down with your hands, but they'd recover just as quick. When we came back [up], the path was hidden again."

The scientists have since returned to the sinkhole which they named "The Eagle" several times. They have found three collapsed caves, evidence of an ancient underground river, and a small underground lake. Chen says, "I wouldn't be surprised to know that there are species found in these caves that have never been reported or described by science until now."

An underground lake inside The Eagle (Credit: Lixin Chen/Atlas Obscura)

Tiankeng, or "heavenly pit," the Mandarin name for these enormous sinkholes, is a common feature of karst terrain. The natural landscapes primarily comprise carbonate rocks like limestone and dolomite. When rainwater falls on the rocks, a chemical reaction causes small cracks and tunnels to start forming in the rock structure. Over time, these cracks widen due to erosion and eventually collapse in on themselves, opening up giant sinkholes or caves.

The sinkholes, left undisturbed by human activity, can be an oasis for life, especially for previously unknown species. The massive chasms are also a conduit to underground water reservoirs, or aquifers. Karst aquifers are the primary water source for over 700 million people worldwide.

8 million-year-old hipparion fossils found in Xinjiang

Fossils of Hipparion fauna have been found in Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region.

Fossils of Hipparion fauna are found in Wenquan county, Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region. [Photo/Chinanews.com]

Archaeologists with the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) recently discovered these fossils which could date back to 8 million years ago at a hillside in a pasture in Wenquan county.

The fossil beds are concentrated and dense, and some fossils are interrelated. After preliminary analysis and identification, the fossil group is left by Hipparion and common members of Hipparion fauna such as antelope, Palaeotragus and Tetralophodont which existed at the same time, according to Wang Shiqi with IVPP.

Hipparion fauna was widely distributed in the mid-latitude region of Eurasia 8 million to 5 million years ago, and their fossils were found in many provinces in northern China, Greece and Turkey.

In Xinjiang, Hipparion fauna only appeared in Wenquan county, making it a key location to link the distribution of Hipparion fauna at the east and west ends of Eurasia, which is of great significance for the study of paleoecological evolution during this period.

This fossil discovery site has high scientific research value, and will be excavated in a planned way in the future, Wang said.

Wenquan county is located in the west of the Mongolian autonomous prefecture of Bortala in Xinjiang. Mammalian fossils were reported to have been discovered here as early as the 1960s.

These are 12,000 year-old footprints left by humans during the Ice Age

Archaeologists have found an incredible array of ancient human footprints at an Air Force test and training range in Utah.

In the last month, US archaeologists working with the country’s Air Force have found 88 human footprints thought to date back at least 12,000 years.

The prints were found at a site called Trackway, just half a mile from the equally impressive Wishbone Site. In 2016 archeologists discovered a likely 12,300 year-old fire pit, charcoal, charred bird bones, projectile points, stone tool and even tobacco at Wishbone.

In fact, this was the earliest evidence for human use of the substance.

We might not think much of the footprints we leave behind, but they give archaeologists all kinds of information from the types of animals living in an area to the way they walked, jumped and ran.

Footprints discovered on an archaeological site are marked with a pin flag on the Utah Test and Training Range (Credits: US Air Force photo by R. Nial Bradshaw)

Although the Utah testing range is now largely arid, it was once a wetland home to a wide range of animals, including megafauna like giant ground sloths. And it was also home to humans.

‘Based on excavations of several prints, we’ve found evidence of adults with children from about 5 to 12 years of age that were leaving bare footprints,’ said Dr Daron Duke, a principal investigator with the Far Western Anthropological Research Group.

‘People appear to have been walking in shallow water, the sand rapidly infilling their print behind them — much as you might experience on a beach — but under the sand was a layer of mud that kept the print intact after infilling,’ he said.

‘We found so much more than we bargained for,’ added Anya Kitterman, Hill Air Force Base’s Cultural Resource Manager.

A footprint discovered at ‘Trackway’ is marked with a pin flag on the Utah Test and Training Range, July 18, 2022 ( Credits: US Air Force photo by R. Nial Bradshaw)

Although the team hasn’t yet had its research peer-reviewed and published, Duke says archaeologists can estimate the age of the footprints by considering how the landscape itself has changed over time.

There haven’t been the kind of wetland conditions needed to produce tracks like this for at least 10,000 years, he said.

‘Our long-term work on the geochronology of this area suggests these prints are likely more than 12,000 years old,’ he added.

There’s plenty more work to be done to understand the people who left these footprints behind. The team have collected the infill of the prints to look for organic materials that can be radiocarbon dated, for example.

Members of local Native American tribes are being consulted on the footprints, as well as taken to visit the excavation site. The team say it’s vitally important to have indigenous group’s perspectives, as the footprints will have been left by their ancestors.

‘There is an immediate human connection to seeing human footprints,’ Duke said. ‘To see them from a distant past, especially so much different than it looks today, can be impactful. They were very happy to see this, and it was personally rewarding for me to be able to show it to them. We will continue to talk to them about it.’

More footprints…

Meanwhile, British archaeologists have also made impressive footprint finds at White Sands National Park in New Mexico, New Scientist reports.

An astonishing archaeological area, the park is home to the oldest footprints ever found in North America. Tought to date back some 23,000 years, their discovery was announced last year in the journal Science.

The oldest footprints in North America were found in White Sands National Park in New Mexico (Credits: Bournemouth University)

Bournemouth University’s Matthew Bennett and colleagues have found footprint evidence of ancient children playing in the muddy remants of a giant ground sloth’s trackway.

Bennett has been working at the site for years, and was first author on last year’s Science study describing 23,000-year old human prints.

He and his team found large, 40cm-long footprints they believe a sloth that stood up to 3m tall left behind as it lumbered through the wetlands.

Around these prints — and around one in particular — are a mess of children’s footprints that deformed what was likely still wet depressions.

Bennett and colleagues’ best explanation is that, 11,500 years ago, relatively fresh sloth prints filled up with water, creating at least one puddle around which three to five children frolicked.

The research has not yet been published, so it hasn’t yet been reviewed by other academics.

Ice age children frolicked in 'giant sloth puddles' 11,000 years ago, footprints reveal

"All kids like to play with muddy puddles."

An illustration of children from the last ice age splashing in puddles on a ground sloth trackway in what is now New Mexico. (Image credit: Karen Carr/National Park Service)

More than 11,000 years ago, young children trekking with their families through what is now White Sands National Park in New Mexico discovered the stuff of childhood dreams: muddy puddles made from the footprints of a giant ground sloth.

Few things are more enticing to a youngster than a muddy puddle. The children — likely four in all — raced and splashed through the soppy sloth trackway, leaving their own footprints stamped in the playa — a dried up lake bed. Those footprints were preserved over millennia, leaving evidence of this prehistoric caper, new research finds.

The finding shows that children living in North America during the Pleistocene epoch (2.6 million to 11,700 years ago) liked a good splash. "All kids like to play with muddy puddles, which is essentially what it is," Matthew Bennett, a professor of environmental and geographical sciences at Bournemouth University in the U.K. who is studying the trackway, told Live Science.

Bennett has traveled to White Sands more than a dozen times in the past five years, locating and analyzing footprints left by ice age humans and megafauna (animals heavier than 99 pounds, or 45 kilograms). He and his colleagues have already made a number of remarkable finds, including human footprints dating to between 21,000 and 23,000 years ago, which are the earliest 'unequivocal evidence' of people in the Americas.

The discovery of the children's and sloth's muddy prints haven't been published in a peer-reviewed journal, but Bennett plans to write about them in the coming months as a methods paper, to help scientists who are studying similar trackways determine how many people were present and how old those individuals were when they created the tracks. For instance, the tracks that Bennett analyzed aren't an accurate representation of the children's feet, as the squishy mud distorted each print, but Bennett was able to compare the preserved, smeary footprints with modern growth data to deduce the children's ages.

He found that there were more than 30 footprints crisscrossing the sloth trackway, likely from children between the ages of 5 and 8 years old, Bennett said.

A digitally created image showing a section of the trackway left by the ground sloth. The ground sloth's print likely filled with water and soon became trampled by ice age children, who left their own footprints at the site. (Image credit: David Bustos;Matthew Bennett)

The now-extinct giant ground sloth, possibly Nothrotheriops, left its trackway after walking through the area on all fours. Each sloth print is actually a double print, Bennet said. "As it puts its forepaws down, the rear paw comes and steps on it," he explained. This combination of front and back paw gives the prints a kidney shape.

Each of the giant ground sloth footprints measures nearly 16 inches (40 centimeters) long, and the beast would have been anywhere from the size of a cow to as big as a bear, Bennet said. The footprints are shallow, about 1.2 inches (3 cm) deep, but it seems that was deep enough for them to fill with water and intrigue the children.

"We see children's tracks very frequently at White Sands," most likely because, just like today's children, these youngsters raced around, leaving hundreds of footprints a day, Bennett said. 

The children and adults in the group were "almost certainly" foragers who stuck together while searching for food, he added. "In the past, you would have just taken your kid to work. And if work was walking across the former lake bed in order to track an animal, you would have taken your child with you."

It's challenging to date footprints without a detailed stratigraphy — or studying the rock layers — of the site and without finding any organic matter, which can be radiocarbon dated. But based on the discovery of the 23,000-year-old prints and the fact that ground sloths went extinct around 11,000 years ago, these once-splashy children’s prints were likely made between 23,000 and 11,000 years ago, Bennet said. 

Originally published on Live Science.

1.2 billion-year-old groundwater is some of the oldest on Earth

The abundance of hydrogen and helium make it a possible energy source.

Groundwater that was recently discovered deep underground in a mine in South Africa is estimated to be 1.2 billion years old. Researchers suspect that the  groundwater is some of the oldest on the planet, and its chemical interactions with the surrounding rock could offer new insights about energy production and storage in Earth's crust.

In fact, Oliver Warr, a research associate in the department of Earth sciences at the University of Toronto in Canada and lead author of a new study about the groundwater discovery, described the location in a statement as a "Pandora's box of helium-and-hydrogen-producing power." 

The South African groundwater was also enriched in the highest concentration of radiogenic products — elements produced by radioactivity — yet discovered in fluids, according to the study, demonstrating that ancient groundwater sites may one day potentially serve as energy sources.

The gold and uranium mine, known as Moab Khotsong, sits about 100 miles (161 kilometers) southwest of Johannesburg and is home to one of the world's deepest mine shafts, plunging to depths of 1.86 miles (3 km) below the surface at its deepest, according to the mine(opens in new tab).  

The new find follows the prior discovery of approximately 1.8 billion-year-old groundwater made during a 2013 research expedition (also led by Warr). That finding occurred at Kidd Creek Mine in Ontario, which lies beneath the Canadian Shield, a geologic structure comprised of igneous and metamorphic rock dating to the precambrian supereon (4.5 billion to 541 million years ago). The Canadian Shield spans 3 million square miles (nearly 8 million square km), and Warr referred to it as a "hidden hydrogeosphere" — an abundance of hydrogen — in a blog post(opens in new tab) published July 5. 

"One of the most exciting parts about this new discovery is that at first we thought the groundwater at Kidd Creek was an outlier," Warr told Live Science. "But now we have this brand-new site located somewhere different with a completely different geologic history that also preserves fluid on a billion-year timescale. It looks like this is a feature of these environments, which represent about 72% of the total continental crust by surface area."

Until now, "We only had one data point, and it's pretty hard to say that, yes, this is applicable to the entire world," Warr said. "But this new site reaffirmed what we considered to be true: that these systems trap water over extremely long time spans." 

Warr described the way that rocks release this billion-year-old groundwater as similar to the way that liquid escapes from a water balloon. 

"These deep mines are the perfect location for what we do, since, as researchers, we don't have the time or the money to put a hole in the ground, but that's what a mine does. When they drill bore holes, the water that has been trapped inside the rock starts gushing out — it's like piercing a water balloon — and we're able to capture it."

After collecting the samples at Moab Khotsong, Warr and his team of international researchers examined their contents and found that the water contained properties that resembled those of water at Kidd Creek.

"In these deep settings, water is held in cracks in the rock and, over time, they interact, resulting in uranium, which then decays over millions, and even billions, of years, creating noble gases," Warr said. As these noble gases accumulate in the water, researchers can measure their concentrations and how long they were present within the rock.

Warr explained that the samples collected contained high salt content — about eight times more than that of seawater — as well as concentrations of uranium, radiogenic helium, neon, argon, xenon and krypton. They also found the presence of hydrogen and helium, both of which are important energy sources. This finding offers a previously unseen glimpse of helium diffusion from deep within the planet, an important process to consider as we face an ongoing helium shortage, and could hint at energy production under the surface of other planets, too, according to the study.

"As long as there is water and rock, you'll see the production of helium and hydrogen — and that doesn't necessarily mean this has to be taking place only on Earth," Warr said. "If there is water on the subsurface of Mars or any other rocky planet, helium and hydrogen could be generated there too, leading to yet another energy source."

The findings were published June 30 in the journal Nature Communications

Originally published on Live Science.

Limestone Wall In Bolivia Has Over 5000 Dinosaur Footprints Belonging To 10 Different Species

A wall in Bolivia is covered in thousands of dinosaur footprints, and it's becoming a major tourist attraction

Photograph by Yatlik.com

Cal Orcko, located 3 miles south of downtown Sucre in Bolivia, is home to the world's largest and most diverse collection of dinosaur footprints from the Cretaceous Period.

The limestone cliff hosts about 5,000 dinosaur footprints, with many dating back 68 million years.

Discovered on the grounds of the local cement company Fancesa in 1985, the cliff was closed off to tourists after mining conditions and erosion began damaging the area.

After eight years of closures, tours started last year to allow visitors the opportunity to marvel at these footprints.

From the Parque Cretacico, which hosts a museum and dinosaur models, fossils, and paleontological information, you can take a one-hour guided tour to select areas of the wondrous paleontological site.

Flickr/Médéric

You'll also get to peak at "under footprints," the oldest layer of prints, which date back 70 million years.

The site contains the footprints of at least eight different species and stands as an ever-changing record of history in the Cretaceous era.

Flickr/Jenny Mealing

As parts become eroded, new prints are continuously being found in the area, which is why the park has submitted Cal Orcko to the Unesco World Heritage list in an effort to continue preserving the footprints.

Photograph by Carsten Drossel

Photograph by Gerardo Diego Ontiveros

Mesolithic Skeleton known as 'Cheddar Man' shares the same DNA with English Teacher of History!

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BY THE ARCHAEOLOGIST EDITOR GROUP

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Separated by 10,000 years but linked by DNA! A 9,000-year-old skeleton's DNA was tested, and it was concluded that a living relative was teaching history about a half mile away, tracing back nearly 300 generations!

In the rolling hills of Somerset, England, beneath the shadow of the Cheddar Gorge cliffs, a millennia-old secret lay waiting. It was here, in 1903, that Gough's Cave revealed its most enigmatic resident, the Cheddar Man. This ancient skeleton, believed to be around 10,000 years old, offers a tantalizing glimpse into the lives of Mesolithic hunter-gatherers, the earliest known population of Britain after the last Ice Age. But Cheddar Man was more than just a set of bones; he was a storyteller, and his tale would reshape our understanding of prehistoric Britain and the intricate tapestry of human evolution.

As archaeologists and anthropologists probed the skeleton, the initial insights they derived were profound. The man, who died in his twenties, belonged to a time when the landscapes of Britain were wild and untamed, and the inhabitants had to adapt swiftly to a post-glacial environment. But as insightful as these revelations were, it was the advent of ancient DNA research that would turn the Cheddar Man's story from an intriguing narrative into a groundbreaking scientific discovery.

Ancient DNA (aDNA) research has been likened to a time machine. With just a few fragments of bone or tooth, scientists can now venture back thousands of years, unraveling the genetic secrets of long-dead organisms. This revolutionary field emerged in the latter half of the 20th century, evolving rapidly with technological advancements in sequencing and bioinformatics. By the dawn of the 21st century, DNA research was poised to redraw the map of human prehistory, challenging long-held assumptions and revealing hitherto unknown migrations, interactions, and adaptations.

The Cheddar Man, with his pristine preservation, was an ideal candidate for this kind of investigation. And when his DNA was finally sequenced, the results were nothing short of astonishing. The portrait of ancient Britons began to shift. Instead of the pale-skinned, blue-eyed hunter-gatherers long imagined by scholars and artists, Cheddar Man's genetics painted a picture of dark skin with blue eyes, a combination that surprised many. This revelation not only transformed our understanding of Mesolithic Britons but also underscored the fluidity of human genetics and the profound influence of migration, interbreeding, and adaptation over millennia.

Yet, the Cheddar Man is but one chapter in the larger story of aDNA research. From the frozen tundras of Siberia to the sun-baked plains of Africa, ancient skeletons have been whispering their secrets to those who would listen. They tell tales of forgotten civilizations, lost migrations, ancient plagues, and the complex web of interactions that have shaped humanity's journey.

Four years before, when Adrian Targett, a retired history teacher from Somerset, walked into his local news agent's office, he was startled to see a familiar face staring up at him. That face, appearing on the front page of several newspapers, belonged to a distant relative of his—around 10,000 years distant, actually—known as Cheddar Man.

Four years before, when Adrian Targett, a retired history teacher from Somerset, walked into his local news agent's office, he was startled to see a familiar face staring up at him.

Ancient DNA from Cheddar Man, a Mesolithic skeleton discovered in 1903 at Gough's Cave in Cheddar Gorge, Somerset, has helped Museum scientists paint a portrait of one of the oldest modern humans in Britain. This discovery is consistent with a number of other Mesolithic human remains discovered throughout Europe. Cheddar Man is the oldest complete skeleton to be discovered in the UK and has long been hailed as the first modern Briton, who lived around 7,150 BC. His remains are kept by London's Natural History Museum in the Human Evolution gallery.

The Cheddar Man earned his name not because of his fondness for cheese, which likely wasn't cultivated until around 3,000 years later, but because he was found in Cheddar Gorge in Somerset, England (which is, incidentally, where cheddar cheese originates).

Some 25 years ago, in an amazing piece of DNA detective work, using genetic material taken from the cavity of one of Cheddar Man’s molar teeth, scientists were able to identify Mr. Targett, 62, as a direct descendant.

Analysis of his nuclear DNA indicates that he was a typical member of the Western European hunter-gatherer population at the time, with lactose intolerance, probably with light-colored eyes (most likely green but possibly blue or hazel), dark brown or black hair, and dark or dark-to-black skin, although an intermediate skin color cannot be ruled out. There are a handful of genetic variants linked to reduced pigmentation, including some that are very widespread in European populations today. However, Cheddar Man had “ancestral” versions of all these genes, strongly suggesting he would have had a “dark to black” skin tone.

Now Cheddar Man is back in the headlines because a new study of his DNA, using cutting-edge technology, has enabled researchers to create a forensic reconstruction of his facial features, skin and eye coloring, and hair texture. And the biggest surprise is the finding that this ancient Brit had ‘dark to black’ skin and bright blue eyes. (A previous reconstruction, before detailed genetic sequencing tests were available, assumed a white face, brown eyes and a ‘cartoon’ caveman appearance.)

No one had thought to tell Mr. Targett any of this or invite him to the unveiling of the new reconstruction of his ancestor at the Natural History Museum on Monday.

‘I do feel a bit more multicultural now,’ he laughs. ‘And I can definitely see that there is a family resemblance. That nose is similar to mine. And we have both got those blue eyes.’

The initial scientific analysis in 1997, carried out for a TV series on archaeological findings in Somerset, revealed Mr. Targett’s family line had persisted in the Cheddar Gorge area for around nine millennia, their genes being passed from mother to daughter through what is known as mitochondrial DNA, which is inherited from the egg.

To put it simply, Adrian Targett and Cheddar Man have a common maternal ancestor.

It is only Cheddar Man’s skin color that marks the difference across this vast space of time. It was previously assumed that human skin tones lightened some 40,000 years ago as populations migrated north out of the harsh African sunlight, where darker skin had a protective function.

At less sunny latitudes, lighter skin would have conferred an evolutionary advantage because it absorbs more sunlight, which is required to produce vitamin D, a nutrient vital for preventing disabling illnesses such as the bone disease rickets. Later, when farming crops began to replace hunter-gatherer lifestyles and communities ate less meat, offal, and oily fish—aa dietary source of vitamin D—ppaler skins would have conferred an even greater advantage and accelerated the spread of relevant genes.

Earlier research suggested Cheddar Man looked like the impression, right, but now scientists are convinced he was dark skinned and had blue eyes and dark hair 

However, Cheddar Man’s complexion chimes with more recent research suggesting genes linked to lighter skin only began to spread about 8,500 years ago, according to population geneticists at Harvard University. They report that over a period of 3,000 years, dark-skinned hunter-gatherers such as Mr. Targett’s ancestors interbred with early farmers who migrated from the Middle East and who carried two genes for light skin (known as SLC24A5 and SLC45A2).

It is no surprise that Cheddar Gorge remains Britain’s prime site for Palaeolithic human remains. Cheddar Man was buried alone in a chamber near a cave mouth. But it’s not just Adrian Targett who has links with him. Indeed, for many modern Britons, Cheddar Man’s true face offers a uniquely close DNA encounter with their past. Modern Britons draw about 10 percent of their genetic ancestry from the West European hunter-gatherer population from which Cheddar Man sprang.

As we delve deeper into this narrative, it becomes evident that our past is far more intricate than textbooks might suggest. The Mesolithic skeletons and the vast array of ancient remains studied through the lens of genetics have unveiled a world where cultures blended, societies clashed, and humans constantly evolved in response to a changing world. The legacy of the Cheddar Man and others like him serves as a potent reminder: our history is written not just in books and artifacts but in the very fabric of our being—our DNA.

Brazil: Fossilised Eggs Dating 60-80 Mn Yrs Ago Belongs To Dinosaurs, Confirms Scientists

The eggs have a thick shell and were too large to be that of crocodiles and thus belong to carnivorous dinosaurs, said lead researcher William Roberto Nava.

Written By Harsh Vardhan

Palaeontologists, who discovered a nest of five eggs that got buried in loose sediment some 60 to 80 million years ago, have finally confirmed the origins of the fossils. Discovered by a research team in Brazil last year, the fossilized eggs were initially believed to have belonged to crocodiles, however, a deeper study has shed a different light. According to lead researcher William Roberto Nava, the eggs have a thick shell and were too large to be that of crocodiles and confirmed that the eggs belong to carnivorous dinosaurs.

The expert from the Paleontological Museum in Marilia also revealed that the eggs of dinosaurs and crocodiles also differ in size as the former measure four to five inches long and two to three inches wide whereas the latter measure no longer than three inches. Moreover, he said that a porous or smooth texture is a characteristic associated with the eggs of prehistoric crocodiles also called 'crocodylomorph' whereas the egg-shells of dinosaurs have a 'ripple-shaped' texture.

"The eggs are a little bigger than those of crocodylomorph. So we're associating these larger eggs, which are five, with some kind of theropod dinosaur, that is, a carnivorous dinosaur that lived at this point and used it millions of years ago to lay these eggs", Nava said in an interview with g1.

How were the eggs preserved for so long?

Unearthed in Presidente Prudente city of Brazil's São Paulo, the transformation of soil into sandstone over time had a big role in preserving the eggs. Over a course of millions of years, the eggs got covered with layers of sand which turned into sandstone allowing the egg to withstand the test of time." Who knows if in one of these [five] eggs we have a fossilized embryo. It would be super cool, it would be something new for Brazil", Nava was quoted as saying by g1.

2021’s Coolest Archaeology and Palaeontology Discoveries in China

Kevin McSpadden

Scientists might have found a new ancestor to humans (left), and the Sanxingdui archaeology site has produced unbelievable artefacts (right). Photo: Handout

The past 12 months have been a banner year in Chinese archaeology and palaeontology.

From finding a potential ancient human relative to an “alien civilisation”, some of the most exciting scientific breakthroughs in 2021 involved China.

They helped us learn more about our world long before humans roamed the Earth and told us fascinating stories about where we came from.

Here are eight of the most interesting Chinese archaeology and palaeontology finds for 2021.

The wonderful ruins of Sanxingdui

One of the most remarkable archaeological sites worldwide is the Sanxingdui ruins in central China’s Sichuan province.

Before this year, the site had already revealed incredible artefacts from what experts believe was the Shu civilisation. These bronze-age people had been a myth before the discovery of Sanxingdui.

The gold masks found in Sanxingdui are believed to be about 3,000 years old. Photo: Xinhua

This year, the world was awed when archaeologists revealed a stunning golden mask that had many people buzzing that it once belonged to aliens, which scientists were quick to dismiss.

Six months later, a better-preserved mask of similar style was revealed to the public, along with a treasure trove of other artefacts.

Finding the ‘Dragon Man’

Technically, the skull that would be nicknamed “Dragon Man” was discovered in 1933, but the person who found it did not think it was overly special, and the skull was reburied for 85 years.

This year, using the same skull, archaeologists announced what they believe is a new species of an archaic human called Homo longi.

Scientists think the species’ brain would have been the same size as Homo sapiens, but the skull has larger eye sockets, a thick mouth and overgrown teeth.

This skull belongs to what may be an newly discovered species of prehistoric human. Photo: AFP

The announcement is not without debate, as many scientists think it might be a Denisova hominins, a previously identified extinct species of human.

Regardless, the skull does provide a lot of evidence that the development of modern humans was not a simple linear evolutionary path but likely involved significant crossbreeding between the species.

Descendants of a primitive Asian population

New research suggests the 4,000-year-old naturally embalmed mummies found in Xinjiang in northwest China were direct descendants of Ancient North Eurasians, an ancient people that had a large footprint in the region.

The paper dispelled theories that they had migrated from Afghanistan, Siberia and central Asian mountains. The mummies were excavated between 1979 and 2017.

These people probably died naturally and were preserved by the arid climate in Xinjiang, allowing scientists to use DNA analysis to pinpoint their ancestors.

Will we find dinosaur DNA soon?

A team of scientists found well-preserved cartilage cells that included an image of a nucleus in a birdlike dinosaur called Caudipteryx.

The nucleus contained “fossilised threads of chromatin”, raising the tantalising possibility that palaeontologists could one day find the remains of dinosaur DNA.

A 3D rendering of the Caudipteryx. Photo: Shutterstock

Before this study, palaeontologists had believed that it would be improbable to find fossilised dinosaur DNA because it is too fragile to survive for hundreds of millions of years.

Finding the possible source of the world’s first coins

Archaeologists in central China found a mint that they believe may be the spot where people produced humanity’s first coins.

While the mint itself is long gone, the team found a pit filled with the industrial waste produced by coin production.

If correct, the discovery would mean people began producing coins about a century before initially thought. Currently, the world’s oldest mint was found in the Kingdom of Lydia in what is now western Turkey.

This overhead shot might be the first place humans minted coins. Photo: Zhengzhou University

The mint in Lydia is thought to have run sometime between 619BC and 560BC, while the one discovered in central China’s Henan province is estimated to have begun operating between 640BC and 550BC.

Do the Turkish and Japanese languages share a common ancestor?

New research published this year points to the possibility that the founding language of what would eventually split into a distinct group of five diverse tongues originally came from what is now northwest China.

The scientists said genetic, archaeological and linguistic analysis points to the fact that the five Transeurasian languages – Mongolian, Turkish, Tungusic, Japanese and Korean – originated in millet farmers in the Liao valley.

However, the relationship between Transeurasian languages is a source of intense debate, and many scientists hesitate to include Japanese and Korean in the language family.

A bird, oh wait, dinosaur, in an egg

It is widely accepted that modern birds are the descendants of dinosaurs, but the recent discovery of a fossilised embryo solidified the theory.

‘Baby Yingliang’ is the first discovery of a non-avian dinosaur that shares the developmental pattern of birds, notably with its head positioned below its body in the egg and its feet resting on both sides.

A dinosaur was discovered ‘tucking’ (pictured), strengthening the theory that they evolved from birds. Photo: Julius Csotonyi

The team wrote that this characteristic, called tucking, suggests a strong connection between birds and theropods, the group of dinosaurs that includes the Tyrannosaurus rex.

The fossil is between 66 and 72 million years old and was found in southeastern China.

Rediscovering an emperor

For nearly 1,000 years, Chinese people had believed Emperor Wen, the fifth ruler of the Han dynasty, was buried somewhere in a mountain named the Phoenix’s Mouth outside Xian. It turned out that the actual tomb lay a few kilometres away.

Called Emperor Wen’s Ba Mausoleum, the pyramid-shaped resting place had long been covered by the shifting environment over the centuries, making it hard to pinpoint as a unique archaeological site.

The site started to receive attention when artefacts discovered in the area were of exceptionally high quality for the time.

Emperor Wen is well-received in Chinese history and is considered a leader who oversaw a period of stability and economic growth.

A Great Discovery: Researchers Find a Preserved Dinosaur Embryo in a 72 million-year-old Fossilized Egg

Scientists discovered an incredibly rare baby dinosaur egg that is estimated to be a 70-million-year-old fossil.

They named it the Baby Yingliang after the name of the Chinese museum where it’s currently housed. The fossil egg preserves the embryonic skeleton of an oviraptorid dinosaur. Researchers published their findings on Tuesday and said the baby dinosaur’s posture is similar to that of a late-stage modern bird embryo.

The baby dinosaur is estimated to be about 70 million years old and a type of oviraptorosaur, a group of beaked therapod dinosaurs closely related to modern birds that lived about 130 million to 66 million years ago, according to National Geographic.

The egg was exceptionally preserved at around 7 inches long, and the baby dinosaur inside was estimated to be about 11 inches long from head to tail. Researchers believe that if it had lived, it would have grown to be about 2 to 3 meters long.

The baby fossil egg was found in China’s Jiangxi province and acquired in 2000 by Liang Liu, director of Yingliang Group, a Chinese stone company. The egg wound up in storage and wasn’t analyzed until about 10 years later during the construction of the Yingliang Stone Nature History Museum.

Skeletons of dinosaurs are rarely preserved in the embryonic stage, while the animal is unhatched from its egg. Through the discovery of Baby Yingliang, researchers from China, the U.K. and Canada were able to study the positions of the dinosaur with other previously found oviraptorid embryos. According to CNN, they concluded that they were moving and changing poses before hatching in a way similar to baby birds. 

Baby birds typically move in a way called tucking, which is controlled by the central nervous system and critical for a successful hatching. Beyond the pre-hatching behavior, Zelenitsky told CNN that dinosaurs were also known to sit on top of their eggs to incubate them, similar to the way birds do.

All birds evolved directly from a group of two-legged dinosaurs known as theropods, which include the Tyrannosaurus rex and smaller velociraptors. 

Morocco: Archaeologists Discovered the World’s Oldest Jewelry

Archaeologists found 150,000-Year-Old snail shell beads in Morocco's Bizmoune Cave.

In a cave in the western Morocco desert, archaeologists have discovered the world’s oldest jewelry: a set of shell beads dated from 142,000 and 150,000 years ago.

Made from half-inch-long sea snail shells, the 33 beads turned up during excavations conducted between 2014 and 2018 near the mouth of Bizmoune Cave, about 10 miles inland from the coastal city of Essaouira.

Surveyors first found the cave in 2004, and initial excavations had been conducted in 2008 and 2009. The team behind the discovery published their findings earlier this fall in the journal Science Advances.

“[The beads] were probably part of the way people expressed their identity with their clothing,” Steven L. Kuhn, a professor of anthropology in the University of Arizona and one of the paper’s authors, said in a statement. “They’re the tip of the iceberg for that kind of human trait. They show that it was present even hundreds of thousands of years ago, and that humans were interested in communicating to bigger groups of people than their immediate friends and family.”

An international team of archaeologists recovered the 33 beads, between 2014 and 2018, from a cave in western Morocco. Photo by Steven L. Kuhn, courtesy of the University of Arizona.

The archaeologists used uranium-series dating, which measure the radioactive decay of uranium, to test the age of the beads and the surrounding layers of ash and sediment. The beads come from two sea snail species: the Columbella rustica, from the dove snail family, and Tritia gibbosula, commonly called the swollen nassa.

Each bead had a hole drilled through it, presumably so the ornaments could be hung on strings or clothing, possibly worn as earrings or a necklace. Many have smoothed, polished edges, suggesting the intentional work of a craftsperson. They are similar to other finds on the African continent, but the earliest examples had previously been just 130,000 years old.

“We don’t know what they meant,” Kuhn added, “but they’re clearly symbolic objects that were deployed in a way that other people could see them.”

By Sarah Cascone

'Persephone': A Unique Guide-Robot that leads Visitors in a Greek Cave in Macedonia

Persephone is a tour guide in Greece, but perhaps not the type people are used to.

Billed as the world’s first robot tour guide inside a cave, Persephone has been welcoming visitors since mid-July to the Alistrati Cave in northern Greece, 84 miles northeast of the city of Thessaloniki.

The multilingual robot covers the first roughly 500 feet of the part of the cave that is open to the public. In the remaining 2,400 feet, a human guide takes over.

The robot was named Persephone because, according to one version of the ancient Greek myth, it was in a nearby plain that Pluto — the god of the underworld who was also known as Hades — abducted Persephone, with the consent of her father Zeus, to take her as his wife.

The robot can give its part of the tour in 33 languages and interact at a basic level with visitors in three languages. It can also answer 33 questions, but only in Greek. Visitors will also be able to hear the myth of Persephone's abduction in Ancient Greek!

Nikos Kartalis, the scientific director for the Alistrati site, had the idea of creating the robot when he saw one on TV guiding visitors at an art gallery. Seventeen years later, “we got our funds and the robot guide became a reality,” Kartalis told The Associated Press.

The robot was built by the National Technology and Research Foundation and cost $139,000.

“We already have a 70% increase in visitors compared to last year since we started using” the robot, says Kartalis. “People are enthusiastic, especially the children, and people who had visited in the past are coming back to see the robot guide.”

“It is something unprecedented for them, to have the ability to interact with their robot by asking it questions and the robot answering them,” he said. “Many foreign visitors couldn’t believe Greece had the capacity to build a robot and use it as a guide in the cave.”

The robot moves along a walkway, passing through an ornate landscape of stalactites and stalagmites. These varied formations can reach 50 feet tall and are seen throughout the cave’s nearly 1.6-mile walkway, which is accessible to people with limited mobility.

“This cave is one of the most beautiful, not only in Greece but in Europe, as well,” says Kartalis. “It has stalactites and stalagmites in many shapes and colors, even red.”

He said the cave was 3 million years old and was first explored in 1974 by the Hellenic Speleological Society and a team of Austrian speleologists. It opened to visitors in 1998.

Persephone, with a white body, black head and two luminous eyes, moves on wheels, guiding visitors to the first three of eight stops along the walkway. She can do two more stops, but her low speed slows down the tour, which is conducted in three languages simultaneously. Persephone’s creators are considering ways to speed her up.

The robot’s begins by saying: “My name is Persephone, I am the daughter of the goddess Demeter and the wife of Pluto, the god of the underworld. I welcome you to my under Earth kingdom, the Alistrati Cave.”

Many visitors are intrigued by the robot guide.

“It was surprising for me. I’ve never experienced such a thing. Actually, honestly, I prefer a live guide, but it’s interesting doing it this way. And I like the pace of the robot. It goes slower, so I can look around,” said Patrick Markes, a Czech visitor.

Markes listened to the first three stops from the robοt in his native language and the rest in English from a human tour guide.

“I should thank Persephone, our robot, she said very fine things,” said Christos Tenis, a Greek visitor. “I’m impressed by the cave. Of course, we had a flawless (human) guide, she explained many things. I’m very impressed.”

Persephone is not the only technology used inside the cave. There’s a cellphone app in which a visitor, scanning a QR code, can see the Alistrati Beroni. That’s a microorganism that is only found in this cave, in the huge mounds of bat droppings left behind when the cave was opened and the bats migrated elsewhere.

Evdokia Karafera is one of the tour guides who partners with the robot.

“It is helpful, because it speaks many languages. There’s just a little delay in the touring,” she said. “Most find it fascinating, especially the children, and find it interesting that it speaks many languages.”

Karafera insisted, however, that human tour guides cannot be completely replaced.

“Robots, at some point in the future, will take over many jobs. But I believe they cannot replace humans everywhere,” she said. “(Visitors say) ‘the robot is interesting, original, but can’t substitute for the human contact with the guide and the conversation we can have on the way back.’”

Source: Associated Press