Excavations in the Seyitömer tumulus in the western Turkish province of Kütahya have uncovered a brush and baby rattle, which are estimated to date back 5,000 years. Many items from various eras are being unearthed in Kütahya excavations [Credit: AA]The artifacts were found by Dumlupınar University (DPU) Archaeology Department in a plot of land owned by a private company involved in coal mining....
Panama Canal expansion work has uncovered an unexpected trove of archaeological and palaeontological treasures, scientists said, as the massive construction project winds down. Panama Canal expansion dredges up historical treasures [Credit: AFP]Workers who have blasted through mountains and dug up thick vegetation, have also uncovered the fossils of some 3,000 invertebrates and 500 vertebrates, as...
Researchers from the Tübingen collaborative research center Resource Cultures (SFB 1070) have uncovered the remains of a previously unknown Copper Age settlement in the central Spanish region of Azután. Working with colleagues from the University of Alcalá de Henares, they found shards and stone tools over an area of around 90 hectares. The Dolmen de Azután grave chamber indicates major settlement...
One hundred and thirty-five artifacts have been transferred from the Egyptian museum in Tahrir Square to the under-construction Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) in preparation for the latter’s inauguration in August 2015, according to Ahmed Sharaf, head of the Museums Sector at the Ministry of Antiquities Thursday. An Egyptian conservator cleans a papyri sandal from the collection of King Tutankhamun...
The department of Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies at Penn State invites contributions for the Tombros conference on Hellenistic monarchies that will take place on April 24-25, 2015. This academic event will explore the socio-political and cultural landscape of the Hellenistic states with a particular focus on the interactions between old and new, between the new elites and the established...
About 400 million years ago a group of fish began exploring land and evolved into tetrapods – today's amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals. But just how these ancient fish used their fishy bodies and fins in a terrestrial environment and what evolutionary processes were at play remain scientific mysteries. ...
A Bronze Age palace excavation reveals an ancient wine cellar. Wine production, distribution, and consumption are thought to have played a role in the lives of those living in the Mediterranean and Near East during the Middle Bronze Age (1900-1600 BC), but little archaeological evidence about Bronze Age wine is available to support art and documentation about the role wine played during this period....
Two historical areas in the southeastern province of Diyarbakir are in danger of falling into greater disrepair after three watchmen at the site were forced to leave due to unpaid wages stemming from a budget shortfall. Diyarbakir’s Hilar Inns and the Cayonu Hill are registered as first-degree archaeological sites but they are in danger of becoming no more than a rubbish dump after the departure...
A rare seal of the Monastery of St. Sabas has been excavated in the Bayit VeGan neighborhood of Jerusalem. The seal was unearthed a year and a half ago, but it was only after processing and study that it was identified as a unique seal that was stamped by the Great Laura – the Monastery of St. Sabas. The Mar Saba seal [Credit: Clara Amit, Israel Antiquities Authority]During the summer of 2012, the...
A group of students discovered a 7,000-year-old mummy during a trip to northern Chile, local media reported Monday. A group of Chinchorro mummies — dated between 5000 B.C. and 3000 B.C. — are on display during the exhibition "Arica, a Thousand-Year-Old Culture," on Aug. 27, 2008, in the cultural center of the La Moneda presidential palace in Santiago, Chile Claudio Santana [Credit:...
Their remains sat, unmarked, in shallow graves at the Old City Cemetery in Lynchburg, Va., for decades. Now, two centuries after the Civil War, the bodies of 40 Confederate soldiers discovered over the past two months will receive a proper memorial. The Old City Cemetery in Lynchburg, Va., where archaeologists recently uncovered the unmarked remains of at least 80 Confederate soldiers [Credit:...
The catchment of Hanjiang River is regarded as one of the most important Paleolithic sites in central China. During 2009-2012, a scientific team led by Dr. WANG Shejiang, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, conducted surveys and discovered two new Paleolithic open-air sites in the Hanzhong Basin. Researchers unearthed 252 stone artifacts,...
A Russian fisherman who expected nothing more than a haul of tench and carp ended up catching a 4,000-year-old pagan god statue from the bottom of a riverbed. Archaeologists hailed the ancient find as 'unique and amazing' and 'worth its weight in gold'. The figurine has almond-shaped eyes, a large mouth with full lips, and a ferocious facial expression [Credit: Siberian Times]Local archaeologists...
Shiodome, a bustling commercial center full of glass skyscrapers, epitomizes today's Tokyo, but the area was built, quite literally, on the ruins of history. Until 1991, when the project to revitalize the former rail yard began, few people knew that relics from the city's past lay beneath the ground. Remnants of docks from the Edo Period (1603-1867) found under the Shiodome ruins, photographed...
Encouraged by the initial findings during trial trenches in the Fort area at Pulicat, north of the city, the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) has planned a detailed excavation in other parts of the mound, hoping to unravel the antiquarian origins of the site. The Pulicat excavation site [Credit: The Hindu]The ASI has written to the Tamil Nadu government for acquiring 11 acres on lease as no archaeological...
A new exhibit of a 9m-long fossil skeleton of an Allosaurus, resembling a Tyrannosaurus rex, is set to open at a Kentucky museum which asserts dinosaurs lived alongside humans a few thousand years ago. Ebenezer, the allosaur fossil on display at the Creation Museum in Kentucky [Credit: Creation Museum]A release from Answers in Genesis, the Christian ministry that owns the Creation Museum, says about...
Numerous dinosaur eggs and a clutch of turtle eggs have been recovered from the Tiantai Basin in Zhejiang Province of China. Paleontologists from Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences(IVPP), and Zhejiang Museum of Natural History described a new egg from the the Upper Cretaceous Chichengshan Formation of Tiantai Basin. The new specimen is a small,...
Soils that formed on the Earth’s surface thousands of years ago and that are now deeply buried features of vanished landscapes have been found to be rich in carbon, adding a new dimension to our planet’s carbon cycle. An eroding bluff on the Great Plains reveals a buried, carbon-rich layer of fossil soil — which could contribute to climate change, according to new research [Credit: Joseph Mason]The...
A new study of how biodiversity arises, by evolutionary biologists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, shows how a mutation in a single gene during development can lead to different consequences not only in how an animal's skull and jaw are shaped, but how this leads to different feeding strategies to exploit different ecological niches. For these experiments, Hu and Albertson consider the...
A team of Belgian biologists led by researchers at KU Leuven has provided the first genetic evidence that rapid evolution can help non-native plant species spread in new environments. Using samples of centuries-old herbaria and DNA analysis, the researchers reconstructed the genetic adaptations undergone by the Pyrenean rocket prior to its rapid spread in Belgium. The Pyrenean rocket (pictured) is...