Archeology Today

Roman-Era Sword Uncovered in Ancient Ditch

2011-08-12T15:33:00.000-07:00

The sword with remains of the scabbard on it. Photo: Clara Amit, courtesy of the Israel Antiquities Authority

A sword used by a Roman soldier during the brutal pacification of the Jews and the destruction of the Temple at Jerusalem nearly 2,000 years ago, has emerged from an ancient drainage tunnel beneath the city, Israeli authorities announced this week.

Excavated since 2007, the tunnel, which was used by Jewish rebels as a hiding place from the Romans, has also yielded a stone object adorned with a rare engraving of a menorah, the seven-branched temple candelabra that was the symbol of ancient Judaism.

The 60-centimetre (23.6-inches) long weapon, still in its leather scabbard, is the third Roman sword found in Jerusalem.

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What makes the finding unique is the fine state of preservation, said the excavation directors Eli Shukron of the Israel Antiquities Authority and Ronny Reich of the University of Haifa.

"It seems that the sword belonged to an infantryman of the Roman garrison stationed in Israel at the outbreak of the Great Revolt against the Romans in 66 AD," the researchers said in a statement.

At that time, the Jewish people revolted against the tyranny of Rome, but despite a remarkable resistance, they were ultimately crushed.

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The Romans also destroyed the second Temple, which, according to Jewish tradition, was built by King Herod the Great on the site of King Solomon’s temple. This was razed by the Babylonians around 587 BC.

In 70 AD, the Romans under Titus plundered tons of gold, silver trumpets and gold candelabra from Herod’s magnificent white-and-gold temple. Then they paraded the treasure, which also helped finance the building of the Colosseum, through the streets of Rome in triumph.

The stone engraved with the image of the menorah. Courtesy of Vladimir Naykhi

The moment was captured in a frieze carved into the Arch of Titus, which clearly shows the menorah, the seven-branched temple candelabra, being exposed through the streets.

The menorah was also recorded in a stone object unearthed near the Temple Mount.

"Interestingly, even though we are dealing with a depiction of the seven-branched candelabrum, only five branches appear here. The portrayal of the menorah’s base is extremely important because it clarifies what the base of the original menorah looked like, which was apparently tripod shaped," the researchers said.

The fact that the stone object was found near the Temple Mount would suggest that it belonged to a passerby who saw the menorah with his own eyes.

"Amazed by its beauty, he incised his impressions on a stone and afterwards tossed his scrawling to the side of the road, without imagining that his creation would be found 2,000 years later," the researchers said.

Giant fossil shows huge birds lived among dinosaurs

2011-08-11T15:31:00.001-07:00

The fossilised jawbone is nearly twice the length of that of an ostrich, the largest bird found on Earth today

An enormous jawbone found in Kazakhstan is further evidence that giant birds roamed - or flew above - the Earth at the same time as the dinosaurs.

Writing in Biology Letters, researchers say the new species, Samrukia nessovi, had a skull some 30cm long.

If flightless, the bird would have been 2-3m tall; if it flew, it may have had a wingspan of 4m.

The find is only the second bird of such a size in the Cretaceous geologic period, and the first in Asia.

The only other evidence of a bird of such a size during the period was a fossilised spinal bone found in France and reported in a 1995 paper in Nature.

Sharing space

An overwhelming majority of the birds known from the period would have been about crow-sized, but Dr Darren Naish of the University of Portsmouth said that a second find of an evidently different species suggests that large birds were common at the time.

"This fossil is only known from its lower jaw, so unfortunately we can't say anything at all with certainty about the shape and form of the whole animal.

"If it was flightless and sort of ostrich-shaped, it would have been maybe 2-3m tall and somewhere over 50kg," he explained to BBC News. "If it was a flying animal, then maybe it was shaped like a big albatross or a condor."

Dr Naish also wondered about the dinosaurs with which the enormous birds shared their space.

"I think the really interesting thing is that they're living alongside the big dinosaurs we know were around at the time: big tyrannosaurs, long-necked sauropods, duck-billed dinosaurs," he said. "That opens up loads of questions about ecological interactions that we can only speculate about.

"People have said there weren't big birds when there were big pterosaurs, but now we know there were."

Antimatter belt around Earth discovered by Pamela craft

2011-08-10T15:31:00.000-07:00

The antiprotons lie sandwiched between the inner and outer Van Allen belts (in red) around the Earth

A thin band of antimatter particles called antiprotons enveloping the Earth has been spotted for the first time.

The find, described in Astrophysical Journal Letters, confirms theoretical work that predicted the Earth's magnetic field could trap antimatter.

The team says a small number of antiprotons lie between the Van Allen belts of trapped "normal" matter.

The researchers say there may be enough to implement a scheme using antimatter to fuel future spacecraft.

The antiprotons were spotted by the Pamela satellite (an acronym for Payload for Antimatter Matter Exploration and Light-nuclei Astrophysics) - launched in 2006 to study the nature of high-energy particles from the Sun and from beyond our Solar System - so-called cosmic rays.

These cosmic ray particles can slam into molecules that make up the Earth's atmosphere, creating showers of particles.

Many of the cosmic ray particles or these "daughter" particles they create are caught in the Van Allen belts, doughnut-shaped regions where the Earth's magnetic field traps them.

Among Pamela's goals was to specifically look for small numbers of antimatter particles among the far more abundant normal matter particles such as protons and the nuclei of helium atoms.

'Abundant source'

The new analysis, described in an online preprint, shows that when Pamela passes through a region called the South Atlantic Anomaly, it sees thousands of times more antiprotons than are expected to come from normal particle decays, or from elsewhere in the cosmos.

Antiprotons "annihilate" if they come into contact with normal protons

The team says that this is evidence that bands of antiprotons, analogous to the Van Allen belts, hold the antiprotons in place - at least until they encounter the normal matter of the atmosphere, when they "annihilate" in a flash of light.

Although normal matter particles outweigh the antiprotons by thousands to one, the band is "the most abundant source of antiprotons near the Earth", said Alessandro Bruno of the University of Bari, a co-author of the work.

"Trapped antiprotons can be lost in the interactions with atmospheric constituents, especially at low altitudes where the annihilation becomes the main loss mechanism," he told BBC News.

"Above altitudes of several hundred kilometres, the loss rate is significantly lower, allowing a large supply of antiprotons to be produced."

Dr Bruno said that, aside from confirming theoretical work that had long predicted the existence of these antimatter bands, the particles could also prove to be a novel fuel source for future spacecraft - an idea explored in a report for Nasa's Institute for Advanced Concepts.

17 Lost Egyptian Pyramids Discovered By Space Archaeologists

2011-05-26T15:10:00.001-07:00

A new golden age of Egyptology may have only just begun.

But this time things are a little different. Instead of treks through the desert, khaki hats, and camel rides into the sunset, modern archeologists are using satellite imaging and modern technology to uncover the lost secrets of Egypt.

Astoundingly, scientists at the University of Alabama at Birmingham believe they have discovered 17 "lost" pyramids using this methodology, according to MSNBC.

1,000 tombs and 3,000 ancient settlements have also been uncovered with the use of infra-red technology, according to the BBC.

Thus far, at least two of the suspected pyramids have been confirmed and excavated.

From the BBC:

We were very intensely doing this research for over a year. I could see the data as it was emerging, but for me the "Aha!" moment was when I could step back and look at everything that we'd found and I couldn't believe we could locate so many sites all over Egypt.
"To excavate a pyramid is the dream of every archaeologist," she said.

The team analysed images from satellites orbiting 700km above the earth, equipped with cameras so powerful they can pin-point objects less than 1m in diameter on the earth's surface.

The program at the university is funded by NASA.

Egypt's Lost Cities, a program detailing these new discoveries, will air on the BBC on May 30.

Pharaoh Statue Unearthed In Egypt

2011-04-26T11:58:00.001-07:00

CAIRO — Archaeologists unearthed one of the largest statues found to date of a powerful ancient Egyptian pharaoh at his mortuary temple in the southern city of Luxor, the country's antiquities authority announced Tuesday.

The 13 meter (42 foot) tall statue of Amenhotep III was one of a pair that flanked the northern entrance to the grand funerary temple on the west bank of the Nile that is currently the focus of a major excavation.

The statue consists of seven large quartzite blocks and still lacks a head and was actually first discovered in the 1928 and then rehidden, according to the press release from the country's antiquities authority. Archaeologists expect to find its twin in the next digging season.

Excavation supervisor Abdel-Ghaffar Wagdi said two other statues were also unearthed, one of the god Thoth with a baboon's head and a six foot (1.85 meter) tall one of the lion-headed goddess Sekhmet.

Archaeologists working on the temple over the past few years have issued a flood of announcements about new discoveries of statues. The 3,400-year-old temple is one of the largest on the west bank of the Nile in Luxor, where the powerful pharaohs of Egypt's New Kingdom built their tombs.

Amenhotep III, who was the grandfather of the famed boy-pharaoh Tutankhamun, ruled in the 14th century B.C. at the height of Egypt's New Kingdom and presided over a vast empire stretching from Nubia in the south to Syria in the north.

The pharaoh's temple was largely destroyed, possibly by floods, and little remains of its walls. It was also devastated by an earthquake in 27 B.C. But archaeologists have been able to unearth a wealth of artifacts and statuary in the buried ruins, including two statues of Amenhotep made of black granite found at the site in March 2009.

Help support a great new Feature Film on Kickstarter

2011-04-08T12:10:00.000-07:00

The Red Robin" Oscar cast/crew attached to Thriller

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/theredrobin/the-red-robin-academy-award-cast-attached-to-thril
Plus I am on the crew!
About this project

STARRING:

Academy Award winner Maximillian Schell (Judgement at Nuremberg)

Dominic Monaghan (Merry in Lord of the RingsTrilogy & "LOST")

Hill Harper ("CSI NY" & Tyler Perry's For Colored GIrls)

Claire Forlani (Meet Joe BLack/ The Medallion)

Jane Alexander (The Ring/Terminator 2/Kramer vs Kramer)

Roger Guenveur Smith(American Gangster/Fighting)

"The Red Robin" was conceived 6 years ago when I was about to max out my credit cards to make my second feature bare-bones, guerilla-style, as in no big names, no trailers, no flashy premiere party at the Ziegfield, just enough to feed the crew so they wouldn't revolt. Previously, I completed a small feature film called "Slaves of Hollywood" with most of the above attributes and was invited to 35 festivals worldwide (winning 3), secured distribution and received rave reviews in Los Angeles, so I was no stranger to the idea of making movies on a shoestring nor how much effort would be required not only to write/shoot/edit the movie but to get out and sell, sell, sell!

What started out as a micro-budget movie with unknown actors has evolved into a film that now has Academy Award stars and producers attached. We have 6 incredible luminaries of the silver screen:

Executive Producing the movie is Academy Award winner, Jonathan Sanger(Vanilla Sky,The Elephant Man, The Producers) as well as Rick Porras(Co-producer of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy).

Once the project was fully-packaged, I teamed up with some strong business partners who have helped us raise most of the $525,000 budget. The remaining balance is being filled by a combination of tax-credits, soft government money(depending on where we shoot), and 1 or 2 pre-sales. At this point, we are set to shoot in October 2011. Why I'm here and what I'm asking for is support to help me cover the balance of our POST PRODUCTION COSTS. The budget we currently have is enough to get the film "in the can" and ready for a 3 month edit schedule. At this point, as an editor myself, I am tapping into all the wonderful relationships I have with major post houses to get us great discounts without compromising quality. I've already cut deals that have reduced my budget from over $100k to $25,000. Now, with this pedigree of this cast, I know I can get a post-house to barter in-kind services if they have the available edit space and personnel, but I thought how cool it would be to say that this film's post-production was made possible by the Kickstarter community. If I make my fundraising goal, I will have a special credit in the movie that will say just that.

I put together this TEASER-TRAILER to give a "taste" of the tone of my "film" If it all excites, provokes or compels you, please consider donating to be part of this special movie. Thanks for giving this project your time and consideration.

Project location: New York, NY

Scientists' amazing California discovery includes fishing tackle 12,000 years old

2011-03-07T06:53:00.001-08:00

People are discovering antique fishing tackle all the time, in closets and at garage sales, but none of that compares to discoveries made recently by archaeologists at two of the Channel Islands off Southern California.

Looking for signs of ancient human settlement, they unearthed meticulously-crafted spearheads and other tools (see photo at right) that date back 12,000 years and provide insight into the lives of a seafaring culture that obtained bounty from the ocean.

The astonishing discoveries, at three sites on Santa Rosa and San Miguel islands west of Santa Barbara, strongly support the theory that during an era when the first traces of humans appeared in the archaeological record in North America, a coastal culture existed that was distinct from the well-chronicled inland Clovis culture, which consisted of big-game hunters who subsisted on mastodons and other large mammals.

A 15-member team led by Jon Erlandson of the University of Oregon's Museum of Natural and Cultural History found chipped stone tools, used for fishing and hunting, along with an abundance of discarded seashells and bones.

A story about the finds appears in the March 4 issue of Science; it was summarized by New Scientist and Science Daily. New Scientist's headline: "Found: fine American fishing tackle, 12 millennia old."

In the Science Daily piece, Erlandson said, "This is among the earliest evidence of seafaring and maritime adaptations in the Americas, and another extension of the diversity of Paleoindian economies. The points we are finding are extraordinary, the workmanship amazing. They are ultra thin, serrated and have incredible barbs on them. It's a very sophisticated chipped-stone technology."

The sites are thought to have represented seasonal hunting grounds. Prey items probably included surf perch and rockfish, geese, cormorants and other birds, shellfish and perhaps seals, sea lions and otters. The crescent-shaped stones probably were used at the ends of darts to stun birds. Fish and larger marine mammals were speared.

Team member Todd Braje, of Humboldt State University, is quoted by New Scientist as saying, "We found very thin, expertly made projectile points and it blew us away that these delicate flint-knapped points are this old."

Most of the tools were different from those unearthed at inland Clovis sites on the North American mainland, but some of the spearheads were similar, perhaps implying that trade existed between the cultures.

The newly discovered sites might help scientists learn more about how North America became populated. It's widely believed that people arrived via a land bridge connecting Siberia and Alaska, but some scientists believe seafaring migration occurred.

Erlandson explained that his team's find supports the notion that mariners were either first to inhabit North America, or that they arrived at about the same time as those via the land route.

While the recent finds are not the oldest in North America, Braje explained in the New Scientist story that "this pushes back the chronology of New World seafaring to 12,000, maybe 13,000 years ago. It gets us a big step closer to showing that a coastal migration route happened, or was at least possible."

-- Top image is of the ancient fishing tackle discovered recently by scientists at Santa Rosa and San Miguel islands off Southern California. Courtesy of Jon Erlandson. Second image, of Santa Miguel Island, and Channel Islands map graphic are from Wikipedia

'Thunder Thighs' Dinosaur, Brontomerus Mcintoshi, Discovered In Utah

2011-02-28T06:47:00.001-08:00

Back in the Early Cretaceous Period, it paid to have thunder thighs. Fossils recovered from Utah's Hotel Mesa Quarry suggest a newly discovered species had very powerful legs.

The new species, detailed in the journal Acta Palaeontologica Polonica, is classified as part of the sauropod family, a group of dinosaurs known for their long necks and tails. According to Discovery News, this dinosaur's neck and tail would have stretched out longer than any living python. The team named the dinosaur Brontomerus mcintoshi -- in Greek, "thunder thighs."

The dinosaur, estimated to be about the size of a large modern elephant, possessed an unusually large hip bone, suggesting enormous thighs. Scientists predict that with the dinosaur's legs, he would have been able to deliver a powerful kick. University College's Dr. Mike Taylor suggests that kicking would have been a display of dominance, a way for males to compete for females. It also would have been helpful in fighting off predators, reports the BBC.

Other recently discovered dinosaurs had different ways to fight off predators. These include the Kosmoceratops, whose 15 horns were used to both attract mates and intimidate rivals, and Eodromaeus, whose quick moves as a predator may have an evolutionary connection to the Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Beyond finding a dino with fat thighs, the discovery challenges commonly held beliefs about sauropods -- it was previously thought that sauropods started to disappear in the Early Cretaceous period.

Unfortunately, scientists will not be able to learn as much about "thunder thighs" as they would like. Hotel Mesa Quary has been looted by commercial fossil-hunters, who, according to Dr. Taylor, "left behind broken remnants and smashed bits of bone; and in some cases they were using broken bones to hold down tarpaulins - that's really the most disgraceful aspect of it." If only "thunder thighs" were alive today, perhaps he would've booted them from the site.

Priceless Pharaoh Statue Found Near Garbage Can

2011-02-23T07:04:00.001-08:00

A limestone statue of the renegade Pharaoh Akhenaten has been recovered beside a garbage bin near the Egyptian National Museum in Cairo from which it had been stolen 20 days ago, Egypt's Ministry of Antiquities said Thursday.

The priceless statue was found by a 16-year-old boy near a trash can in Cairo's Tahrir Square, where the 18-day protest that brought down Hosni Mubarak took place.

"He brought the statue to his home and when his mother saw it she called her brother, Dr. Sabry Abdel Rahman, a professor at the American University in Cairo. Dr. Rahman, in turn, called the Ministry of State for Antiquities Affairs to hand the statue over," said the Ministry of Antiquities Affairs in a statement.

Lying by the garbage, as if it suffered another damnatio memoriae some 3,300 years later, the statue shows Akhenaten wearing a blue crown and holding an offering table in his hands.

"It was returned intact, except for the offering table that was found separately inside the Egyptian museum," the ministry said.

The son of Amenhotep III and most likely the father of Tutankhamun, Akhenaten (1353 B.C. - 1336 B.C.) is known as the "heretic" pharaoh who established the capital of his kingdom in Amarna, introducing a monotheistic religion for the sun god Aten that overthrew the pantheon of the gods.

After his death, when Egypt returned to the traditional religion, Akhenaten's name, images and the traces of his reign were eradicated.

Indeed, the recovered limestone statue is one of the few statues that we have from the Amarna Period.

"The entire reign of Akhenaton was unique. The style of the statues and reliefs produced during a large part of the reign are unique as well," Jacques Kinnaer, a Belgian Egyptologist, creator of The Ancient Egypt Site, told Discovery News.

"I'm relieved to hear that this priceless statue has been recovered," Kinnaer said.

Described to have suffered "very minor damage" during the break-in at the museum on Jan. 28, 2011, the statue is slated to be the "the first object that will be cleaned and restored."

The limestone carving was declared missing last Saturday along with other 17 artifacts, then daringly recovered near a garbage at a public square. It has become the symbol of the alternating feelings that have struck the Egyptologist's community in the past two and a half weeks.

Indeed, the story of the looted artifacts at the Egyptian museum reads like a crime-fiction story.

According to Zahi Hawass, who under Mubarak was recently named minister of antiquities, the thieves broke into the museum through its windowed ceiling, sliding down to the floor with ropes.

Desperately looking for a mummy in order to find gold and "red mercury," which it is fabled to be a magical substance used by the ancient Egyptians in mummification, they smashed a New Kingdom empty coffin and 13 vitrines.

The first dramatic reports, which referred to some 70 stolen objects, were followed by more reassuring announcements.

"I would like to assure everybody that the Egyptian Museum, Cairo is safe," Hawass said.

But last Saturday Hawass revealed that 18 objects, including two gilded wood statues of King Tutankhamun, were missing.

"To date, four objects have been found: the heart scarab of Yuya, a shabti of Yuya, the statue of the goddess Menkaret carrying Tutankhamun, and the statue of Akhenaten as an offering bearer," said the ministry.

How the Akhenaten statue got from the museum to Tahrir Square, in the midst of the protests that were going on at that time, to end up in a garbage can, remains a mystery to many Egyptologists.

"Why would the thief have hauled the statue so far through the crowds, only to throw the statue in the garbage can? Did the thief panic, perhaps? Or was it an agreed drop off place and did someone else neglect to pick it up?," wondered Kinnaer, who also runs the Facebook page Protect Egyptian Cultural Heritage.

"Or was it dropped of in the garbage can only recently? The thieves may have realized that they were not going to get away with trying to sell the piece, and so they threw it away," Kinnaer said.

Meanwhile, reports of looting in different archaeological sites have been announced.

Sabry Abdel Aziz, head of the pharaonic sector of the ministry of state for antiquities affairs, reported that the tomb of Hetep-Ka, in Saqqara, was broken into, and the false door was stolen along with objects stored in the tomb.

"In Abusir, a portion of the false door was stolen from the tomb of Re-Hotep. In addition, many magazines also suffered break-ins: magazines in Saqqara, including the one near the pyramid of Teti, and the magazine of Cairo University all had their seals broken," said the ministry.

At the Egyptian museum, guarded by the military, the inventory continues.

"Dr. Hawass asked that the focus be on accurate information rather than speed," said the statement.

Photo: Dr. Youssef Khalifa (center), head of the archaeological committee appointed by the Minister, and the returned statue of Akhenaten. (Photo: Ahmed Amin); State of Akhenaten after its return to the Egyptian Museum, Cairo. (Photo: Ahmed Amin)

Ancient Brits Ate Their Dead And Crafted Cups From Skulls

2011-02-18T07:51:00.001-08:00

LONDON — Ice age Britons drank from human skulls and may even have eaten flesh and bone marrow, but they were far from barbarians.

That's the conclusion of experts studying the oldest known examples of "skull cups," found in a cave in southwest England.

The bowls look almost like works of art, ritual items laced with meaning. Look more closely, however, and it becomes clear they are made from human skulls. Scientists say they are the oldest known carbon-dated skull cups, said by experts to be about 14,700 years old.

British scientists writing in the Public Library of Science journal maintain the cups were fashioned in such a meticulous way that they only credible explanation for their manufacture is that they were used as bowls to hold liquid. If the hunters and gatherers simply wanted to eat the deceased person's brains, there would have been far easier ways to get at them, scientists said.

Experts believe the rare cups – two made from adults skulls, one from a child thought to be about three years-old – were used in some sort of ritual, as was common in many parts of the world.

"It is likely that this was part of some symbolic ritual and not mere necessity," said Sylvia Bello, lead author of the study. She said that the artifacts demonstrate how skilled early humans were at the manipulation of human bodies.

The practice of using human skulls as cups or bowls has been well documented in many cultures, and in some cases skull cups have been elaborately decorated and used to adorn temples and in religious ceremonies. The practice was documented by the Greek historian Herodotus in the fifth century B.C..

But the three skull cups found in an English cave are the only known examples from the British Isles, scientists said.

The three skulls aren't the first historic clues to early man found in Gough's Cave in Somerset. In 1903, the complete skeleton of a man dated to about 10,000 years ago was found at the same site. Explorations of the site, which in human and animal remains, began even earlier.

Although the team found indications that some of the flesh and bone marrow from the skulls was eaten, they concluded that cannibalism was unlikely to have been the main purpose of the modifications.

"It is impossible to say the flesh was consumed," Bello said. "They could have de-fleshed to have a clean skull to work with, but then did they consume part of the brain or the soft tissue? We can't prove it. I don't know if they then consumed the brain, but that wasn't the first purpose."

She did say the bone marrow seems to have been consumed.

The use of skulls as cups or bowls in northern Europe is thought to have been fairly common during that time frame, but it is very rare to find actual examples that can be accurately dated by modern techniques, said Rick Schulting, an archaeology professor at the University of Oxford.

"These finds are important because there are so few finds from this period," he said. "These are fully modern humans like us but we have very little insight into what they thought about themselves and their world. We know they had some burials, we know they cared about their dead. This adds complexity to their world."

He said they were probably used in the ritual consumption of human remains, but said details cannot be known.

"It's not some barbaric bloodthirsty example," said Schulting, who was not involved in the project. "It's always a ritualistic setting where you eat the remains of the dead, but we can't know in this case whether you're eating your own revered ancestors, to keep in contact, or eating the outsider, the enemy, as a way of insulting them and imbibing their power and their spirit."

He said it was not unusual in that time period for people to consume the brain, which is seen as the seat of an individual's identity, but it is not clear because of the lack of evidence whether this was done as an act of respect or contempt.

The distribution of cut marks seen on the skulls indicates that they were scrupulously "cleaned" of any soft tissues, and subsequently modified by the removal of the facial region. The skulls were then meticulously shaped into cups by retouching the broken edges, Bello said.

"All in all it was a very painstaking process given the tools available," she said.

Egyptian Museum Missing 18 Items After Unrest

2011-02-15T07:47:00.001-08:00

CAIRO — A full inventory of the Egyptian Museum has found that looters escaped with 18 items during the anti-government unrest, including two gilded wooden statues of famed boy king Tutankhamun, the antiquities chief said Sunday.

The 18-day uprising that forced out President Hosni Mubarak engulfed the areas around the museum, on the edge of Cairo's Tahrir Square. On Jan. 28, as protesters clashed with police early on in the turmoil and burned down the adjacent headquarters of Mubarak's ruling party, a handful of looters climbed a fire escape to the museum roof and lowered themselves on ropes from a glass-paneled ceiling onto the museum's top floor.

Around 70 objects – many of them small statues – were damaged, but until Sunday's announcement, it was not known whether anything was missing.

Antiquities Minister Zahi Hawass said the museum's database department determined 18 objects were gone. Investigators searching for those behind the thefts were questioning dozens of people arrested over several days after last month's break-in.

The most important of the missing objects is a limestone statue of the Pharaoh Akhenaten standing and holding an offering table. Akhenaten is the so-called heretic king who tried to introduce monotheism to ancient Egypt.

"It's the most important one from an artistic point of view," said museum director Tarek el-Awady. "The position of the king is unique and it's a beautiful piece of art." During Akhenaten's so-called Amarna period, named after his capital, artists experimented with new styles.

Also gone is a gilded wooden statue of the 18th Dynasty King Tutankhamun, Akhenaten's son, being carried by a goddess. Pieces are also missing from another statue of the boy king wielding a fishing harpoon from a boat.

"We have the boat and the legs of the king, but we are missing other parts of the body," el-Awady said. "We are looking everywhere for them – around the museum, outside, on the roof, from where the thieves got into the museum."

He said none of the missing objects was from the gated room containing the gold funerary mask of Tutankhamun and other stunning items from his tomb in the Valley of the Kings – the museum's chief attractions. The looters did not break into the room, he said.

The other missing items are a statue of Nefertiti making offerings, a sandstone head of a princess and a stone statuette of a scribe from Amarna, a heart scarab and 11 wooden funerary statuettes of the nobleman Yuya.

Antiquities authorities also announced Sunday that thieves broke into a storage site at the royal necropolis of Dahshur, south of Cairo, on Feb. 11. They had no information yet on whether items were missing.

The Egyptian Museum remains closed and guarded by an army unit, but workers are cleaning the vast building and the garden around it. Efforts are being made to improve security.

On Sunday, the museum director and an architect walked around the roof of the 110-year-old building to draw up designs for upgrading security on the glass-paneled sections of the ceiling.

"We can't interfere with the original architecture of the building because it's a monument," el-Awady said. "But we are thinking about how to upgrade this and put in a new security system for the ceiling of the museum."

The security of Egypt's museums and archaeological sites came under scrutiny after the theft in August of a Van Gogh from an art museum in Cairo. El-Awady said the Egyptian Museum's alarms and other security systems were working during the looting.

The thieves caused considerable damage, breaking 13 display cases and tossing aside ancient objects in what museum staff believe was a frenzied search for gold.

"We pray to God that we'll never see another night like this," el-Awady said.

Humans Left Trees 4.2 Million Years Ago

2011-01-31T06:33:00.001-08:00

Wrist bones of human ancestors reveal when humans switched from living in trees to on the ground.

Fossilized wrist bones suggest humans switched from trees to a terrestrial lifestyle between 4.2 and 3.5 million years ago.
Tree dwellers experience more stress on the pinky side of their hands while terrestrial species tend to load more stress on the thumb side.
The timing of the switch coincides with climate and habitat changes and a shift in diet.

A reconstructed head of Australopithecus afarensis for an exhibit at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History.

Early human ancestors stopped swinging in trees and started walking on the ground sometime between 4.2 and 3.5 million years ago, according to a new study.

This key moment, when our ancestors became anatomically and behaviorally less ape-like, coincides with increased cooling, more defined seasonality, and a grassland growth spurt. All transformed former forest habitats into more varied ones, forcing our very early relatives to change their ways.

"With the trees being farther apart, it became energetically advantageous for hominids to cross the gaps bipedally," said Gabriele Macho, lead author of the study that was published in the latest issue of Folia Primatologica..

Macho, a paleoanthropologist at the Catalan Institute of Paleontology in Barcelona, and his colleagues made the determinations after analyzing wrist bones from two early hominid relatives: Australopithecus anamensis and Australopithecus afarensis (also known as the "Lucy" fossil). The former species is 600,000 years older than the latter and is believed to be its ancestor.

The researchers performed high-resolution CT scans of the central wrist bones, called capitates, of a modern orangutan, gorilla, chimpanzee and person to see how these bones differ between arboreal animals and more terrestrial ones.

They found that full-time tree swingers and dwellers load more force on the little finger side of their hands while terrestrial individuals load the thumb side more.

"Try it out yourself," Macho said. "Hold on to a pole or tree with a medium-sized diameter and observe where on the hand and wrist the greatest pressure is. You'll feel that the thumb side doesn't assume a great role."

The scientists observed that the Australopithecus anamensis wrist bones exhibited pressure loads associated with modern arboreal animals. The analyzed Australopithecus afarensis bones conversely showed stress loads comparable to those of more terrestrial species, including modern humans.

The researchers concluded that the important shift in early hominid lifestyle happened around the time when A. afarensis first emerged.

It's likely that Australopithecus anamensis walked on the ground at times too, but Macho points out that "form follows function."

Other evidence from the early human fossil record supports that major changes took place at about 4.2 million years ago.

Macho explained, "We know from cranio-dental remains that they also broadened their dietary niches and were no longer soft fruit eaters, as the last common ancestor is assumed to have been."

Carol Ward, a professor of integrative biology at the University of Missouri, thinks the new study is "important and highlights the need for more careful and detailed analysis of the functional anatomy of A. anamensis."

Ward told Discovery News that for decades, the earliest known australopith was A. afarensis, but the more recently unearthed A. anamensis permits comparison studies to highlight differences between the likely related species.

Robin Crompton, a professor of musculoskeletal biology at the University of Liverpool, said the new study took a "refreshing approach," benefited by technology.

"The burgeoning power of computers allows us to model mechanical performance of fossil bones and whole skeletons, and effectively 'reverse-engineer' them," Crompton said.

He hopes the findings will inspire future research to solve puzzles these new findings pose. For example, Crompton asked, "Could it be that, like humans, the hand of the later species is actually more adapted for tool manufacture and use, while other features of the upper limb remain adapted to climbing?"

Ancient Hominids Had Human-Like Grip

2011-01-30T06:31:00.000-08:00

Hominids may have evolved opposable thumbs long before they figured out how to make tools.

Orrorin's humanlike thumb calls into question a long-standing assumption that 1.8-million-year-old hand fossils from Homo habilis represent the earliest transition to a precision grip.
iStockphoto/Thinkstock

THE GIST:
Prehistoric hominids may have evolved opposable thumbs earlier than once thought.
A tiny fossil suggests hominids had a human-like grip at least 6 million years ago.
That's well before the earliest evidence of stone toolmaking, about 2.6 million years ago.

A tiny fossil thumb bone provides a gripping look at the early evolution of human hands, according to a study presented April 16 at the annual meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists.

An upright gait and a relatively sophisticated ability to manipulate objects apparently evolved in tandem among the earliest hominids at least 6 million years ago, said Sergio Almécijaof the Autonomous University of Barcelona. That's well before the earliest evidence of stone toolmaking, about 2.6 million years ago, arguing against the idea that fine motor skills for toolmaking drove the evolution of opposable thumbs.

Almécija and his colleagues studied a bone from the tip of a thumb belonging to Orrorin tugenensis. At an estimated 6 million years old, Orrorin is the second oldest hominid genus. A more recently identified hominid genus and species, Sahelanthropus tchadensis, may have lived 7 million years ago. Controversy exists over whether fragmentary Sahelanthropus and Orrorin fossils can be used to identify new hominid genera.

WATCH VIDEO: Clues from the pelvis of the human ancestor, Ardi, indicate she walked upright on two legs, not on all four like chimpanzees.
Limb and jaw pieces, as well as teeth, from at least five Orrorin individuals were unearthed in Kenya in 2000.
The thumb fossil indicates that Orrorin had a long enough thumb to meet the tips of the other fingers, allowing for fine manipulation of objects.

"The Orrorin thumb bone is the most human-like in the available fossil record, other than recent Homo species," Almécija said.

By comparing Orrorin's thumb with thumb bones from a variety of ancient apes and hominids, as well as from living people, Almécija uncovered a pattern that he says argues against the current notion that hominids first evolved handier hands as they learned to make stone tools. No Sahelanthropus thumb bones have been found.

In Almécija's view, early hominids inherited hands capable of fine manipulation from small-bodied apes that lived in Africa and Europe between 25 million and 5 million years ago. Hands then assumed a more apelike, less dexterous structure in later hominids, including Ardipithecus and Australopithecus, before again evolving a precision grip in the Homo lineage.

Orrorin's human-like thumb calls into question a long-standing assumption that 1.8-million-year-old hand fossils from Homo habilis, unearthed in Africa more than 40 years ago, represent the earliest transition to a precision grip, he added.

Almécija's group compared the Orrorin thumb bone to corresponding fossils from later Australopithecus and Homo. species, as well as to ancient apes. Many extinct apes possessed short hands with long thumbs suitable for tightly grasping objects or tree limbs, Almécija said. That arrangement served as the foundation for the evolution of early hominid hands, he hypothesized.

Russell Tuttle of the University of Chicago had previously predicted that early hominids had a relatively sophisticated grip. Tuttle called the new analysis of Orrorin's thumb "unsurprising." But what Orrorin would use a precision grip for is unclear, Tuttle noted. A thorough comparison of the Orrorin fossil to thumb bones from various living primates is needed, in his view.

"A chimp could knock out a basic stone tool with its hands if it had the cognitive ability to try to do so," Tuttle said.

Tuttle originally analyzed the H. habilis hand fossils cited by Almécija. The new evidence doesn't alter the status of those finds as representative of a key transition in hand anatomy related to stone toolmaking, Tuttle argued.

Another meeting presentation, delivered just after Almécija's, suggested that Orrorin's human-like thumb didn't necessarily evolve to support toolmaking. Erin Marie Williams of George Washington University in Washington, D.C., described surprising evidence that even the thumbs of living people aren't specially designed to enable the high-impact strikes of one stone on another needed to produce sharpened implements.

"This calls into question hypotheses linking modern human thumb anatomy specifically to stone tool production," Williams said.

Williams and George Washington University biological anthropologist Brian Richmond attached special sensor devices to the fingers of six experienced stone toolmakers as they used a "hammer stone" with one hand to strike sharpened flakes from another stone.

Volunteers usually snapped their wrists as they hammered on stones, often delivering the most force and pressure to fingers other than the thumb, Richmond said. This argues against the thumb being especially important for this type of toolmaking.

Nine-Year-Old Accidentally Discovers a New Species of Human Ancestor

2011-01-29T06:31:00.000-08:00

Junior archaeologist stumbles on huge clue to humans' past
Imagine taking a stroll through the environs of South Africa - when suddenly, your toe is nearly stubbed on an evolutionary key to our human past.

That's precisely what happened Wednesday, when 9-year-old Matthew Berger spotted a fossilized collarbone of a child who lived almost 2 million years ago. As reported today on Bloomberg.com, Berger had wandered from his father's side only to come across an intriguing-looking bone sticking up out of a rock, then called out to him that he had found a fossil.

Ironically, his father Lee was conducting a formal archaeological dig just 15 yards away. Father and son had temporarily traveled to South Africa's Cradle of Life region for the purpose.

Matthew's discovery points to a new species of hominid according to scientists, and may be the missing link between us and our ape-like ancestors. Most of us remember Lucy, a 3.2 million year-old set of bones discovered in Ethiopia in 1974 - but this latest fossil comes from a time that isn't as well-documented, a time that researchers believe to be a significant turning point in evolutionary history: when the earliest members of the genus Homo were entering the world.

The collarbone was the bone that caught Matthew's eye, but several more remains belonging to the 2 million-year-old child were quickly recovered. A member of the species "Australopithecus sediba," it is one of the most complete sets ever found. And right next to it lay another nearly complete set of remains was found, those of a 30-year-old female - what scientists believe may have been the child's mother.

Both mother and child demonstrate long arms that suggest ape-like tree-climbing ability, but human-like legs that could allow them to move on two feet. They appear to have been discovered in a place once home to a body of water, and if a severe drought had hit mother and child's home, water might have indeed been what they were searching for. As such, the bones were out of reach from scavengers - hence, their unusual preservation.

The kicker? The ancient boy was roughly the same age as Matthew. Talk about having a long-lost twin.

Silverback Strut: Upright Gorilla Walks Like a Man

2011-01-28T06:38:00.001-08:00

A British wildlife center is getting international attention thanks to an ape with a unusual gait.

Ambam, a silverback western lowland gorilla at The Aspinall Foundation's Port Lympne Wild Animal Park in Kent, southeast England, walks upright -- like a person.

"All gorillas can do it to some extent," gorilla keeper Phil Ridges said in a news release. "But we haven't got any who do it like Ambam, and he is quite a celebrity at the park."

Thanks to a viral video, Ambam's silverback strut has made him into quite a celebrity around the world as well. A short clip of his stride has gotten more than 300,000 hits.

Silverback Strut
Kevin Jenner I Denise Hardy
98 photos

Ambam, a silverback gorilla at the Port Lympne Wild Animal Park in Kent, England, shows off the stance that's turned him into a viral video sensation. Ambam doesn't do the typical ape walk -- he stands and struts like a person.

It's about as striking as the old "silly walks" bit from Monty Python -- and so strange that some commenters on YouTube believe it's a fake.

But the foundation says there's no monkey business here, because Ambam isn't the only one with an upright stride.

In fact, it's a family affair.

"Ambam's father Bitam used to display the same behavior if he had handfuls of food to carry," Ridges said. "Ambam also has a full sister, Tamba, and a half sister ... who also sometimes stand and walk in the same way."

The 21-year-old bachelor is the largest gorilla at Port Lympne at 485 pounds. Add the upright stance, and Ambam is even more imposing.

"We think he might use it to get a height advantage to look over the wall when keepers come to feed him," Ridges said. "Ambam can also carry a lot more food if he stands and uses both hands, and walking on two feet also means he doesn't get his hands wet when it is raining."

The western lowland gorilla, known scientifically as the Gorilla gorilla gorilla, has gone from vulnerable to endangered to critically endangered in less than 20 years. And over three generations (in this case, 66 years), the population may have fallen by as much as 80 percent.

While there are no firm estimates on how many are left in the wild, the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List says the populations are suffering from illegal hunting and outbreaks of ebola virus.

On a more positive note, however, scientists from the Wildlife Conservation Society recently found a hidden "gorilla paradise" in the Lake Tele region of the Republic of Congo that may more than double the known population.

The Aspinall Foundation rescues gorillas orphaned by hunters, raises them and reintroduces them into the wild. The organization also has its own breeding population at its facilities, where it raises animals to be sent to reserves in Africa.

So far, Aspinall has returned 51 gorillas to protected areas -- including 43 that were rescued orphans. Reintroduced gorillas have had 14 successful births in the wild, helping to expand the critically endangered population.

And who knows -- maybe the reintroduced gorillas will show off some of Ambam's unique moves in the wild.

Gorilla Walks Like A Man!

Eodromaeus: New Dinosaur Species, 'Dawn Runner,' Discovered In South America

2011-01-14T07:52:00.001-08:00

WASHINGTON — Back at the dawn of the dinosaur era, a quick-moving predator set the stage for the famous and fearsome giants that followed in its footsteps, according to new research. "It was a little dinosaur, but it carried a big evolutionary stick," said Paul C. Sereno of the University of Chicago, a leader of the team that discovered Eodromaeus.

The 4-foot-long hunter lived 230 million years ago in what is now South America and appears to be the ancestor of such creatures as Tyrannosaurus rex.

"It is stunning," Sereno said of the find, reported in Friday's edition of the journal Science.

Its features, such as a balancing tail and air pockets in the skull, show it was closely related to T. rex, he said.

But while it stood on two feet like T. rex, Eodromaeus (pronounced eyo-DRO-may-us) was a lightweight at just 10- to 15-pounds.

"This is a very exciting find indeed," said Oliver W. M. Rauhut, a curator at the Bavarian State Collection for Palaeontology and Geology in Munich, Germany.

"The origin and early diversification of dinosaurs is still poorly understood," said Rauhut, who was not on the research team.

Nick Longrich of the department of geology and geophysics at Yale University agreed: "It's very significant, because it helps give us a better idea of what the ancestor of carnivorous dinosaurs – including Tyrannosaurus, Allosaurus and the birds – would have looked like."

"A new species of early dinosaur is always an exciting find, especially when the specimens are so complete, like Eodromaeus," added Randall B. Irmis, a professor of geology and geophysics at the University of Utah.

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It shares many features with an early carnivorous dinosaur named Tawa from New Mexico and reported last year by Irmis and colleagues.

The similarity supports the idea that these early carnivorous dinosaurs moved between North and South America during the Late Triassic period, said Irmis, who was not part of Sereno's research team.

In addition to the discovery of Eodromaeus – which means dawn runner – the researchers proposed reclassifying a previously known dinosaur called Eoraptor.

It was similar in size to Eodromaeus, but differences in the teeth indicate Eoraptor more likely was an ancestor of the giant plant-eating sauropod dinosaurs than the hunting theropods like T. rex with which it had been associated, according to Sereno, Paul N. Martinez of the National University of San Juan in Argentina, and their co-authors.

"The reclassification of Eoraptor actually makes perfect sense ... the teeth have always made me wonder," said Longrich, who was not on the research team.

Added Longrich, "this paper helps sort out the origin of several major groups – the big carnivores like T. rex, the birds, and the giant plant eaters like Apatosaurus," formerly known as Brontosaurus.

The new find brings scientists to within a few million years of the original "Eve" dinosaur, Sereno commented. But now the search gets elusive because of the lack of bones below the level where Eodromaeus was found.

Lower, there are footprints but not bones, Sereno said.

The Eodromaeus' fossils were discovered in the late 1990s in the Ischigualasto formation in northeastern Argentina.

Gwawinapterus Beardi: New Pterosaur Genus Discovered From Jawbone Found In Cabinet

2011-01-12T09:59:00.001-08:00

Sometimes it pays to snoop around. When researcher Victoria Arbour opened a storage cabinet at the University of Alberta, she discovered a jawbone sitting in a dark corner.

The fossil had been found inside a rock on B.C.'s Hornby Island five years ago. It had then been placed in storage at the University's paleontology department, its origin a mystery.

Arbour was baffled, and initially thought the jawbone may have belonged to a dinosaur. And yet the teeth, Arbour explains, "reminded me of piranha teeth, designed for pecking away at meat," according to CTV News. Finally, after months of investigation, Arbour identified the bone as belonging to a pterosaur.

Pterosaurs are giant flying reptiles that lived until the Cretaceous period, about 65 million years ago. Although often confused for dinosaurs, pterosaurs are not dinosaurs. In fact, DiscoveryNews reports that one pterosaur may have even eaten dinosaurs.

As for Arbour's pterosaur, her particular reptile has smaller teeth than others, and thus it is believed that Arbour has discovered a new genus, which she has named Gwawinapterus beardi. It is believed that this pterosaur had a wingspan of about ten feet, while other pterosaurs can have wingspans of over 30 feet. Arbour states that the pterosaur was a scavenger, and probably patrolled the skies with its wide wingspan.

This is the first pterosaur ever found in B.C., although back in the Cretaceous period, the coastal islands were actually part of what is now California. Perhaps sometimes, it's not bad to have a skeleton in your closet. Or at least a jawbone.
Arbour's study was published in the Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences.

Discovery Of Cretan Tools Points To Sea Travel 130,000 Years Ago

2011-01-04T06:18:00.001-08:00

ATHENS, Greece — Archaeologists on the island of Crete have discovered what may be evidence of one of the world's first sea voyages by human ancestors, the Greek Culture Ministry said Monday. A ministry statement said experts from Greece and the U.S. have found rough axes and other tools thought to be between 130,000 and 700,000 years old close to shelters on the island's south coast.

Crete has been separated from the mainland for about five million years, so whoever made the tools must have traveled there by sea (a distance of at least 40 miles). That would upset the current view that human ancestors migrated to Europe from Africa by land alone.

"The results of the survey not only provide evidence of sea voyages in the Mediterranean tens of thousands of years earlier than we were aware of so far, but also change our understanding of early hominids' cognitive abilities," the ministry statement said.

The previous earliest evidence of open-sea travel in Greece dates back 11,000 years (worldwide, about 60,000 years – although considerably earlier dates have been proposed).

The tools were found during a survey of caves and rock shelters near the village of Plakias by archaeologists from the American School of Classical Studies at Athens and the Culture Ministry.

Such rough stone implements are associated with Heidelberg Man and Homo Erectus, extinct precursors of the modern human race, which evolved from Africa about 200,000 years ago.

"Up to now we had no proof of Early Stone Age presence on Crete," said senior ministry archaeologist Maria Vlazaki, who was not involved in the survey. She said it was unclear where the hominids had sailed from, or whether the settlements were permanent.

"They may have come from Africa or from the east," she said. "Future study should help."

The team of archaeologists has applied for permission to conduct a more thorough excavation of the area, which Greek authorities are expected to approve later this year.

Ancient Roman Statue Uncovered In Israel Storm (PHOTOS)

2010-12-15T11:39:00.001-08:00

One of the strongest storms Israel has experienced in recent years brought winds of more than 100 kilometers per hour and sent 10-meter-high waves crashing onto the nation's coast. But the harsh weather also brought about something unexpected: the discovery of an ancient Roman statue in amazing condition, CNN is reporting. (Scroll down for photos.)

Dating back to the Roman occupation of the region 1,800 to 2,000 years ago, a white-marble figure of a woman in toga and sandals was unearthed in a cliff that partially collapsed after being battered by waves and rain at the Israeli port city of Ashkelon. In addition to the statue -- which is missing its head and arms -- experts identified pieces of a mosaic floor from what's thought to have been a Roman bathhouse, MSNBC is reporting.

"The statue fell into the sea when the ancient maritime cliff collapsed as a result of the storm," Ashkelon district archaeologist Yigal Israel is quoted by CNN as saying.

NASA Discovers New Life: Arsenic Bacteria With DNA Completely Alien To What We Know

2010-12-02T10:33:00.001-08:00

NASA is holding a press conference today at 2pm to announce a major finding in their research in astrobiology, and speculation is high the agency said the finding "will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life."

The news has leaked now, and while the discovery is not extraterrestrial life, NASA has indeed uncovered an entirely new form of life that "doesn't share the biological building blocks of anything currently living" on Earth, Gizmodo reports.

Discovered in the poisonous Mono Lake, California, this bacteria is made of arsenic, something that was thought to be completely impossible. While she and other scientists theorized that this could be possible, this is the first discovery. The implications of this discovery are enormous to our understanding of life itself and the possibility of finding beings in other planets that don't have to be like planet Earth.

One of the scientists set to speak at the conference today, Felisa Wolfe-Simon, had written a paper "Did Nature also choose arsenic?" earlier this year wondering if that element could also be a foundation for life:

We hypothesize that ancient biochemical systems, analogous to but distinct from those known today, could have utilized arsenate in the equivalent biological role as phosphate.
Organisms utilizing such 'weird life' biochemical pathways may have supported a 'shadow biosphere' at the time of the origin and early evolution of life on Earth or on other planets.

Such organisms may even persist on Earth today, undetected, in unusual niches.

It would seem her theory is correct. In March of this year the London Times had a fascinating report on Wolfe-Simon's research at Lake Mono:

She points out that Mono Lake arsenic life, if found, may only go as far as proving the extreme adaptability of life on Earth billions of years ago. It is generally agreed that on early Earth the chemical soup was very different because of the material being thrown out of the planet's depths by volcanoes and hydrothermal vents and the lack of biologically derived oxygen. If arsenic was around in far greater concentrations then, perhaps "arsenolife", as she calls it, in Mono Lake is evidence of that ancestral life, a finding that would deepen our understanding of how life on Earth got started.

There will be other scientists at the news conference. Jason Kottke gives a rundown on each of them and their expertise here. NASA's press release announcing the news conference is below.

NASA Sets News Conference on Astrobiology Discovery; Science Journal Has Embargoed Details Until 2 p.m. EST On Dec. 2

Press Release: Washington: -- NASA will hold a news conference at 2 p.m. EST on Thursday, Dec. 2, to discuss an astrobiology finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life. Astrobiology is the study of the origin, evolution, distribution and future of life in the universe.
The news conference will be held at the NASA Headquarters auditorium at 300 E St. SW, in Washington. It will be broadcast live on NASA Television and streamed on the agency's website at http://www.nasa.gov.

Participants are:
- Mary Voytek, director, Astrobiology Program, NASA Headquarters, Washington
- Felisa Wolfe-Simon, NASA astrobiology research fellow, U.S. Geological Survey, Menlo Park, Calif.
- Pamela Conrad, astrobiologist, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
- Steven Benner, distinguished fellow, Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution, Gainesville, Fla.
- James Elser, professor, Arizona State University, Tempe

Media representatives may attend the conference or ask questions by phone or from participating NASA locations. To obtain dial-in information, journalists must send their name, affiliation and telephone number to Steve Cole at stephen.e.cole@nasa.gov or call 202-358-0918 by noon Dec. 2.

Russian Scientist Working To Recreate Ice Age Ecosystem

2010-11-30T08:18:00.001-08:00

CHERSKY, Russia — Wild horses have returned to northern Siberia. So have musk oxen, hairy beasts that once shared this icy land with woolly mammoths and saber-toothed cats. Moose and reindeer are here, and may one day be joined by Canadian bison and deer.

Later, the predators will come – Siberian tigers, wolves and maybe leopards.

Russian scientist Sergey Zimov is reintroducing these animals to the land where they once roamed in millions to demonstrate his theory that filling the vast emptiness of Siberia with grass-eating animals can slow global warming.

"Some people have a small garden. I have an ice age park. It's my hobby," says Zimov, smiling through his graying beard. His true profession is quantum physics.

Climate change is felt most sharply in the Arctic, where temperatures are warming faster than anywhere else on the planet. Most climate scientists say human activity, especially industrial pollution and the byproducts of everyday living like home heating and driving cars, is triggering an unnatural warming of the Earth. On Monday, negotiators representing 194 countries open a two-week conference in Cancun, Mexico, on reducing greenhouse gases to slow the pace of climate change.

Zimov is trying to recreate an ecosystem that disappeared 10,000 years ago with the end of the ice age, which closed the 1.8 million-year Pleistocene era and ushered in the global climate roughly as we know it.

He believes herds of grazers will turn the tundra, which today supports only spindly larch trees and shrubs, into luxurious grasslands. Tall grasses with complex root systems will stabilize the frozen soil, which is now thawing at an ever-increasing rate, he says.

Herbivores keep wild grass short and healthy, sending up fresh shoots through the summer and autumn. Their manure gives crucial nourishment. In winter, the animals trample and flatten the snow that otherwise would insulate the ground from the cold air. That helps prevent the frozen ground, or permafrost, from thawing and releasing powerful greenhouse gases. Grass also reflects more sunlight than forests, a further damper to global warming.

It would take millions of animals to change the landscape of Siberia and effectively seal the permafrost. But left alone, Zimov argues, the likes of caribou, buffalo and musk oxen multiply quickly. Wherever they graze "new pastures will appear ... beautiful grassland."

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The project is being watched not only by climate scientists but by paleontologists and environmentalists who have an interest in "rewilding."

"This is a very interesting experiment," said Adrian Lister, of the Natural History Museum in London. "I think it's valid from an ecological point of view to put back animals that did formerly live there," he told AP Television News. He disapproved of suggestions to rewild nonnative species – for example, relocating elephants and rhinos to the American plains.

Zimov began the project in 1989, fencing off 160 square kilometers (40,000 acres) of forest, meadows, shrub land and lakes. It is surrounded by another 600 square kilometers (150,000 acres) of wilderness.

It is an offshoot of the Northeast Science Station, which he founded and where he has lived for 30 years. Already icebound by October, the park is 40 kilometers (25 miles) inland from the station, accessible only by boat in summer and by snow vehicles after the rivers freeze.

A 32-meter (105-foot) tower inside the park gives constant readings of methane, carbon dioxide and water vapor. The data feeds into a global monitoring system overseen by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Zimov's research on permafrost, greenhouse gas emissions and mammoth archaeology has attracted world scientists to his laboratories, a small cluster of cabins and a tiny chapel on a rocky bluff above a channel of the Kolyma River. A 20-bed barge is used for field trips in summer, and a $100,000 hovercraft is on order. Zimov sometimes uses an old Russian tank to bring supplies from the Chinese border, 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles) away.

Part of the station's attraction – and deterrence – is its remoteness. It is 6,600 kilometers (4,000 miles) and eight time zones east of Moscow. The nearby town of Chersky, with some 5,000 people, has few amenities, and the nearest city, Yakutsk, is a 4-1/2 flight. Many researchers, particularly Americans, prefer to work in Alaska or northern Canada, which are more accessible.

"Most of the Arctic is in Russia, and yet most of the Arctic research isn't," said Max Holmes, of Woods Hole Research Center in Massachusetts, director of the Polaris Project, which has sent undergraduates to the station for the last three summers.

Zimov started the park with a herd of 40 Yakutian horses, a semi-wild breed with a handsomely long mane that is raised by Yakuts and other native people for their meat. Short, sturdy and broad-backed, they survive harsh Siberian winters with the help of a furry hide, thick layers of fat and the ability to paw through a meter (3 feet) of snow to forage.

Of his first herd, Zimov said 15 were killed by wolves and bears, 12 died from eating wild hemlock that grows in the park, and two slipped through the perimeter and made their way back some 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) to their original pastures.

But he bought more. Now the horses have learned to avoid poisonous plants and to resist predators. Over the last three years, more colts were born and survived than horses lost.

The challenge is to find the right balance between grazers and predators, and how to help his animals get through their first winters.

His workers still give occasional buckets of grain to the horses to supplement their diet with salt. About half the horses come regularly to the cabin where a caretaker stays year-round. The other half are rarely seen except for their tracks.

Zimov also has had problems with the moose that he brought inside his enclosure. Moose still live in small numbers in surrounding forests, and the males jump back and forth over the 6-foot-high fence.

In September he traveled to a nature reserve on Wrangel Island, about five hours by boat across the East Siberia Sea, and brought back six 4-month-old musk oxen. One died a few weeks later. The others are kept in a small enclosure and fed hay until they can fend for themselves.

His objective is to see whether a thriving population of grazing animals will regenerate grasslands that disappeared long ago, which would slow and even halt the accelerating pace of permafrost thaw. So far, he says, the results are encouraging.

Today he has 70 animals in the park. He wants thousands to restock Siberia. To bring 1,000 bison from North America would cost $1 million, Zimov says, a small price to pay.

"If permafrost melts, 100 gigatons of carbon will be released this century," he said. "What's $1 million? One regular grant."
AP Television News producer Siobhan Starrs and APTN cameraman Dmitry Kozlov contributed to this story

Michelangelo's David Holding Secret Weapon?

2010-11-23T12:52:00.001-08:00

THE GIST
A new controversial study says Michelangelo’s David is gripping the remains of a secret weapon in his right hand.
The weapon was known as fustibal, or staff sling, with a leather strap attached to the end.
In his right hand David would hold a handle to which a staff had to be mounted, much like a golf pole.

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A close-up of the right hand of Michelangelo's David. Is he holding the remnants of a secret weapon?

Michelangelo's David might have held a secret weapon in his overly large right hand, according to new controversial research into the towering depiction of the biblical hero who killed Goliath.

Presented at "Florens 2010: The International Week of Cultural and Environmental Heritage," during a three-day tribute to Michelangelo’s masterpiece, the study concludes that David’s right hand is gripping the cylindrical fragment of a weapon.

“Bulging with veins, the right hand is holding what remains of a terrible weapon used in antiquity until the 17th century,” art historians Sergio Risaliti and Francesco Vossilla wrote in the book “L’Altro David” (“The Other David").

Called a fustibal, or staff-sling,the weapon was used to throw stones.

“With a leather sling attached to the end, the staff acted like a portable trebuchet (a large catapult-like device)," classical folklorist Adrienne Mayor, who was not involved in the study, told Discovery News.

The Bible says that when David went to fight Goliath, he took up his shepherd's staff, five smooth stones and his sling.

Of these, only the latter is represented in Michelangelo’s sculpture, as David holds the pouch of the sling in his left hand, above his shoulder.

Crossing his back down to the right hand, the straps of the rather long sling appear to be attached to a mysterious object.

“We believe the object is actually the handle to which a staff had to be mounted, much alike a golf pole,” Risaliti told Discovery News.

Combining the right hand and the left hand, the staff and the sling, Michelangelo would have actually fitted David with a fustibal, according to the researchers.

Standing high atop the Cathedral -- this was the destination first envisioned for the sculpture -- the weapon would have remained secret, as people would have only seen David holding a staff in his right hand and the sling’s pouch in his left.

“The staff was perfectly fitting a statue originally commissioned for Florence Cathedral. It would have rendered the biblical depiction of the shepherd boy,” Risaliti said.

Boasting a range of up to 600 feet, the fustibal was known since Roman times, and was first mentioned by the 4th century A.D. military writer Vegetius.

According to the researchers, it was also well known when Michelangelo (1475 –1564) begun sculpting his David in 1501.

Represented in several drawings by Leonardo Da Vinci (1452 –1519), the fustibal also appears in the artist's Lorenzo Ghiberti’s "Gates of Paradise" on the east portal of the Baptistery -- in the panel in which Ghiberti (1378 –1455) depicts David’s victory over Goliath.

The researchers speculate that the fustibal in the panel might have influenced Michelangelo, who greatly admired Ghiberti’s work.

The staff, however, was never mounted on the handle, likely because of the decision to display the 17-foot naked marble man beside the main doorway of the Piazza della Signoria.

“A shepherd staff wasn’t fitting with the political meaning of the statue, which became the first public Italian monument,” Risaliti said.

Transformed into a symbol of the republican freedom, David was first shown in Piazza Signoria on Sept. 8, 1504, and there it remained, at the mercy of the elements, until 1873 when it was moved to its present location in the Galleria dell'Accademia.

Other scholars are skeptical about the staff sling theory. According to American art historian Lynn Catterson, David is simply holding the handle portion of the sling.

“It acts as a brace or buttress, to protect the fingers which are a very fragile portion of the sculpture,” Catterson told Discovery News.

Cristina Acidini, superintendent of Florence museums, agrees with Catterson that David is holding the handle of the sling, which according to her is made from a horn.

“Many conjectures have been made about this object [some also speculate it is the stone David will hurl at Goliath’s head]. After 500 years, Michelangelo’s David continues to raise questions and interpretations,” Acidini told Discovery News.

3,000-Year-Old Trumpet Played Again

2010-11-22T11:23:00.001-08:00

Scientists analyze tunes from 3,000-year-old conch-shell instruments for insight into pre-Inca civilization.

THE GIST
Acoustic scientists played ancient conch shells to understand how they were used 3,000 years ago.
The eerie sounds may have been used in religious ceremonies.

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Ancient civilizations in Peru might have played this 3,000-year-old shell trumpet as part of a religious ceremony.
Jyri Huopaniemi

Now you can hear a marine-inspired melody from before the time of the Little Mermaid's hot crustacean band. Acoustic scientists put their lips to ancient conch shells to figure out how humans used these trumpets 3,000 years ago. The well-preserved, ornately decorated shells found at a pre-Inca religious site in Peru offered researchers a rare opportunity to jam on primeval instruments.

The music, powerfully haunting and droning, could have been used in religious ceremonies, the scientists say. The team reported their analysis Nov. 17 at the Second Pan-American/Iberian Meeting on Acoustics in Cancun, Mexico.

Listen to the ancient trumpets being played through links at bottom of story.

"You can really feel it in your chest," says Jonathan Abel, an acoustician at Stanford University's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics. "It has a rough texture like a tonal animal roar."

Archaeologists had unearthed 20 complete Strombus galeatus marine shell trumpets in 2001 at Chavín de Huántar, an ancient ceremonial center in the Andes. Polished, painted and etched with symbols, the shells had well-formed mouthpieces and distinct V-shaped cuts. The cuts may have been used as a rest for the player's thumb, says study co-author Perry Cook, a computer scientist at Princeton University and avid shell musician, or to allow the player to see over the instrument while walking.

To record the tunes and understand the acoustic context in which the instruments, called pututus, were played, the researchers traveled to Chavín.

As an expert shell musician blew into the horn, researchers recorded the sound's path via four tiny microphones placed inside the player's mouth, the shell's mouthpiece, the shell's main body and at the shell's large opening, or bell. Similar to a bugle, the instruments only sound one or two tones, but like a French horn, the pitch changes when the player plunges his hand into the bell.

The team used signal-processing software to characterize the acoustic properties of each trumpet. Following the sound's path made it possible to reconstruct the ancient shell's interior, a feat that normally involves sawing the shell apart or zapping it with X-rays.

The researchers also wanted to know how the site's ceremonial chamber, a stone labyrinth with sharply twisting corridors and ventilation shafts, changed the trumpet's sound. To find out, the team arranged six microphones around the musician and reconstructed the sound patterns on a computer.

If the trumpets were played inside the stone chamber in which they were found, the drone would have sounded like it was coming from several different directions at once. In the dimly lit religious center, that could have created a sense of confusion, Abel says.

"Were they used to scare people while they were there?" asks Abel. "There are still a lot of things left open."

Turns out, such questions about how sounds affect people and their behavior, an area called psychoacoustics, can be tested. It's a field of active research, and not just for ancient civilizations: Another group at Stanford is now studying how a room's acoustics affects human behavior. In one recent experiment, researchers separated test subjects into different acoustic environments to do a simple task -- ladling water from one bucket to another in a dimly lit room.

"What your ear can actually hear plays into how you would behave, or the psychological experience in the situation," says Abel.

SHELL CACOPHONY

A group of conch-shell instruments made by a pre-Inca civilization sound similar to a kid learning to play the trumpet. Click here to listen.

ANCIENT TONE

A musician plays the fundamental frequency and the first overtone of a 3,000-year-old shell trumpet unearthed in Peru. Click here to listen.

Ancient Chinese Dinner

2010-11-19T13:58:00.001-08:00

THE GIST

Noodles, cakes, porridge and meat bones dating back 2,500 years were recently found in a Chinese cemetery.
Chemical analysis reveals the starches were millet and that the cakes were baked.
The Chinese in this region were the first noodle makers and may have been among the world's first bakers.

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Among food recently found buried in China for 2,500 years were (a and d) noodles and (b and e) cakes that resemble today's Chinese moon cakes. Click to enlarge this image.
Yiwen Gong

Noodles, cakes, porridge, and meat bones dating to around 2,500 years ago were recently unearthed at a Chinese cemetery, according to a paper that will appear in the Journal of Archaeological Science.

Since the cakes were cooked in an oven-like hearth, the findings suggest that the Chinese may have been among the world's first bakers. Prior research determined the ancient Egyptians were also baking bread at around the same time, but this latest discovery indicates that individuals in northern China were skillful bakers who likely learned baking and other more complex cooking techniques much earlier.

"With the use of fire and grindstones, large amounts of cereals were consumed and transformed into staple foods," lead author Yiwen Gong and his team wrote in the paper.

Gong, a researcher at the Graduate University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, and his team dug up the foods at the Subeixi Cemeteries in the Turpan District of Xinjiang, China. This important cultural communication center between East and Central China has a desert climate.

"As a result, the climate is so dry that many mummies and plant remains have been well preserved without decaying," according to the scientists, who added that the human remains they unearthed at the site looked more European than Asian.

"Judging from the preserved mummies, most of them resemble typical Europeans, with light-colored hair, deep-set eyes, and protruding noses," the researchers wrote. "Of the 19 mummies examined, only three are Mongolian."

The individuals may have been living in a semi agricultural, pastoral artists' community, since a pottery workshop was found nearby, and each person was buried with pottery. The archaeologists also found bows, arrows, saddles, leather chest-protectors, boots, woodenwares, knives, an iron aw, a leather scabbard, and a sweater in the graves. But the scientists focused this particular study on the excavated food.

The food included noodles mounded in an earthenware bowl, sheep's heads (which may have held symbolic meaning), another earthenware bowl full of porridge, and elliptical-shaped cakes as well as round baked goods that resembled modern Chinese moon cakes.

Chemical analysis of the starches revealed that both the noodles and cakes were made of common millet.

The scientists next put new millet through a barrage of cooking experiments to see if they could duplicate the micro-structure of the ancient foods, which would then reveal how the prehistoric chefs cooked the millet.

The researchers determined that boiling damages the appearance of individual millet grains, while baking leaves them more intact. The scientists therefore believe the millet grains in one bowl were once boiled into porridge, the noodles were boiled, and the cakes were baked.

"Baking technology was not a traditional cooking method in the ancient Chinese cuisine, and has been seldom reported to date," according to the authors, who nevertheless believe these latest food discoveries indicate baking must have been a widespread cooking practice in northwest China 2,500 years ago.

The discoveries add to the growing body of evidence that millet was the grain of choice for this part of China. Houyuan Lu of the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Geology and Physics, along with other researchers, unearthed millet-made noodles dating to 4,000 years ago at the Laija archaeological site, also in northwest China.

In that case, "the noodles were thin, delicate, more than 19.7 inches in length and yellow in color," according to Lu and his colleagues. "They resemble the La-Mian noodle, a traditional Chinese noodle that is made by repeatedly pulling and stretching the dough by hand."

Gong and his team point out that millet was domesticated about 10,000 years ago in northwest China and was probably a food staple because of its drought resistance and ability to grow in poor soils.

Acoustic Archaeology Yielding Mind-Tripping Tricks

2010-11-17T06:04:00.001-08:00

THE GIST
Acoustic archaeology is an emerging field that melds acoustical analysis and old-fashioned bone-hunting.
Ancient people created fun house-like temples that featured scary sound effects.
Some of the sites were likely built by people who took sensory-altering drugs.

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Chavin stone art in the shape of a head, housed at the Museo De La Nacion in Lima, Peru. The 3,000 year-old Chavin culture produced tunnels and mazes with eerie sound effects. Click to enlarge this image.
Jorge Mori

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Researchers are uncovering the secrets of ancient civilizations who built fun house-like temples that may have scared the pants off worshipers with scary sound effects, light shows and perhaps drug-induced psychedelic trips.

The emerging field of acoustic archaeology is a marriage of high-tech acoustic analysis and old-fashioned bone-hunting. The results of this scientific collaboration is a new understanding of cultures who used sound effects as entertainment, religion and a form of political control.

Miriam Kolar, a researcher at Stanford University's Center for Computer Research and Acoustics, has been studying the 3,000 year-old Chavin culture in the high plains of Peru. Kolar and her colleagues have been mapping a maze of underground tunnels, drains and hallways in which echoes don't sound like echoes.

"The structures could be physically disorienting and the acoustic environment is very different than the natural world," Kolar said. Ancient drawings from the Chavin culture show a people who were fascinated with sensory experiences -- ancient hippies if you will.

"The iconography shows people mixed with animal features in altered states of being," said Kolar, who is presenting her recent work at a conference in Cancun, Mexico this week. "There is peyote and mucus trails out of the nose indicative of people using psychoactive plant substances. They were taking drugs and having a hallucinogenic experience."

If that wasn't enough, the mazes at Chavin de Huantar also include air ducts that use sunlight to produce distorted shadows of the maze's human participants. And sound waves from giant marine shells found in the maze in 2001 may have produced a frequency that actually rattled the eyeballs of those peyote-using ancients, Kolar said.

"We consider sound to be important," said Kolar. "We've gathered a lot of data and we're finally starting to publish it."

The Chavin de Huantar site in Peru isn't the only place where sound played an important role. The Mayan rulers at Chichen Itza in the Yucatan also figured out how to use sound for crowd control. David Lubman, an acoustic engineer who has spent the past 12 years studying the Mayan site, says a strange bird-like echo from the Kukulkan temple was actually constructed on purpose.

"It's sort of spooky," Lubman said from Irvine, Calif. "It's not an ordinary echo."

Lubman's analysis compared the acoustic soundprint of the quetzal bird, which was revered by Mayans, to the sound of the echo at Chichen Itza. The two sounds matched.

Lublin said the secret is in the acoustic properties of the steep staircase on the temple's front.

Other new research presented at this week's Acoustical Society of America conference in Cancun shows that Mayan rulers figured out how to build a public address system in the site's giant ball court. That allowed kings to address hundreds of warriors and subjects without screaming.

In England, British researchers are using modern tools of acoustics to figure out what drumming noises may have sounded like to ancient visitors to Stonehenge.