The Archeology Thread

[bolverk 29,708]

Been thinking about starting this a while. I realize Nerdz doesn't get too much traffic, but if there's a single thread for archeological finds, this thread could have legs.

New type of ancient human discovered in Israel

The skull fragment and jawbone found near Ramla in Israel
 

Researchers working in Israel have identified a previously unknown type of ancient human that lived alongside our species more than 100,000 years ago.

They believe that the remains uncovered near the city of Ramla represent one of the "last survivors" of a very ancient human group.

The finds consist of a partial skull and jaw from an individual who lived between 140,000 and 120,000 years ago.

Details have been published in the journal Science.

The team members think the individual descended from an earlier species that may have spread out of the region hundreds of thousands of years ago and given rise to Neanderthals in Europe and their equivalents in Asia.

The scientists have named the newly discovered lineage the "Nesher Ramla Homo type".

Dr Hila May of Tel Aviv University said the discovery reshapes the story of human evolution, particularly those of the Neanderthals. The general picture of Neanderthal evolution had in the past been linked closely with Europe.

"It all started in Israel. We suggest that a local group was the source population," she told BBC News. "During interglacial periods, waves of humans, the Nesher Ramla people, migrated from the Middle East to Europe."

The human finds were uncovered during the excavation of a sinkhole. Thousands of stone tools and animal remains were also found
 

The team thinks that early members of the Nesher Ramla Homo group were already present in the Near East some 400,000 years ago. The researcher have noticed resemblances between the new finds and ancient "pre-Neanderthal" groups in Europe.

"This is the first time we could connect the dots between different specimens found in the Levant" said Dr Rachel Sarig, also from Tel Aviv University.

"There are several human fossils from the caves of Qesem, Zuttiyeh and Tabun that date back to that time that we could not attribute to any specific known group of humans. But comparing their shapes to those of the newly uncovered specimen from Nesher Ramla, justify their inclusion within the [new human] group."

Dr May suggests that these humans were the ancestors of Neanderthals.

"The European Neanderthal actually began here in the Levant and migrated to Europe, while interbreeding with other groups of humans."

Others travelled east to India and China, said Prof Israel Hershkovitz, suggesting a connection between East Asian archaic humans and Neanderthals in Europe.

"Some fossils found in East Asia manifest Neanderthal-like features as the Nesher Ramla do," he said.

One of the stone tools used by the Nesher Ramla humans. It was produced with the same techniques used by modern humans at the time

The researchers base their claims on similarities in features between the Israeli fossils and those found in Europe and Asia, though their assertion is controversial. Prof Chris Stringer, from the Natural History Museum in London, has recently been assessing Chinese human remains.

"Nesher Ramla is important in confirming yet further that different species co-existed alongside each other in the region at the time and now we have the same story in western Asia," he said.

"However, I think it's a jump too far at the moment to link some of the older Israeli fossils to Neanderthals. I'm also puzzled at suggestions of any special link between the Nesher Ramla material and fossils in China."

The Nesher Ramla remains themselves were found in what used to be a a sinkhole, located in an area frequented by prehistoric humans. This may have been an area where they hunted for wild cattle, horses and deer, as indicated by thousands of stone tools and bones of hunted animals.

According to an analysis by Dr Yossi Zaidner at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, these tools were constructed in the same manner that modern humans of the time also made their implements.

"It was a surprise that archaic humans were using tools normally associated with Homo sapiens. This suggests that there were interactions between the two groups," Dr Zaidner said.

"We think that it is only possible to learn how to make the tools through visual or oral learning. Our findings suggest that human evolution is far from simple and involved many dispersals, contacts and interactions between different species of human."

[bolverk 29,708]

Another big find.

Discovery of ‘Dragon Man’ Skull in China May Add Species to Human Family Tree
A laborer discovered the fossil and hid it in a well for 85 years. Scientists say it could help sort out the human family tree and how our species emerged.

https://vp.nyt.com/video/2021/06/24/94400_1_25dragonman-loop_wg_1080p.mp4

Scientists on Friday announced that a massive fossilized skull that is at least 140,000 years old is a new species of ancient human. It belonged to a mature male who had a huge brain, massive brow ridges, deep set eyes and a bulbous nose. The skull had remained hidden in an abandoned well for 85 years, after a laborer came across it at a construction site in China.

The researchers named the new species Homo longi and gave it the nickname “Dragon Man,” for the Dragon River region of northeast China where the skull was discovered. The team said that Homo longi, and not the Neanderthals, was the extinct human species mostly closely related to our own. If confirmed, that could significantly change our view of how — and even where — our species, Homo sapiens, evolved.

A number of experts questioned this conclusion, published in three papers that provided the first detailed look at the fossil. But many still thought that the find could help scientists reconstruct the human family tree.

All the experts who reviewed the data in the studies said it is a magnificent fossil.

“It’s a beautiful thing,” said John Hawks, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “It’s very rare to find a fossil like this, with a face in good condition. You dream of finding this stuff.”

Spoiler

 

In 1933, a laborer working at a bridge construction site in the city of Harbin discovered the peculiar skull. It’s likely that the man — whose name has been withheld by his family — recognized that he had found a scientifically important specimen. Just four years earlier, researchers had found another humanlike skull, nicknamed Peking Man, near Beijing. It appeared to link the people of Asia to their evolutionary forerunners.

Rather than hand over the new skull to the Japanese authorities who occupied northeast China at the time, the laborer chose to hide it. He did not mention the skull to anyone for decades. In an account of the fossil’s discovery, the authors of the new papers speculated that he was ashamed of having worked for the Japanese.

Shortly before his death in 2018, the laborer told his family about the fossil. They went to the well and found it. The family donated it to the Geoscience Museum of Hebei GEO University, where scientists immediately could see that it had been exquisitely well preserved.

In the papers published Friday, the researchers argued that Homo longi appears to have been an adult of great size. His cheeks were flat and his mouth broad. The lower jaw is missing, but the researchers infer from the Dragon Man’s upper jaw and other fossil human skulls that he likely lacked a chin. They say that his brain was about 7 percent larger than the average brain of a living human.

The researchers argue that Dragon Man’s anatomical features are found in no previously named species of hominin, the lineage of bipedal apes that diverged from other African apes and later became a series of larger-brained species that fanned out across the planet.

“It’s distinctive enough to be a different species,” said Christopher Stringer, a paleoanthropologist at the Natural History Museum in London and co-author of two of the three Dragon Man papers.

The scientists analyzed the chemical composition of the fossil, and determined it was at least 146,000 years old, but no older than 309,000 years.

Today, the planet is home to just one species of hominin — Homo sapiens. But Dragon Man existed at a time when a number of drastically different kinds of hominins coexisted, including Homo erectus — a tall human with a brain two-thirds the size of our own — as well as tiny hominins including Homo naledi in South Africa, Homo floresiensis in Indonesia and Homo luzonensis in the Philippines.

The oldest Homo sapiens fossils also date to this time. Neanderthals — which shared our large brain and sophisticated toolmaking — ranged from Europe to Central Asia during the period when Dragon Man may have lived.

In recent years, studies of fossil DNA have also revealed yet another humanlike lineage in this period, the Denisovans. The DNA came largely from isolated teeth, chipped bones and even dirt. Those remains are not enough to show us what Denisovans looked like.

The most promising fossil yet found that could be evidence of Denisovans came from a cave in Tibet: a massive jaw with two stout molars, dating back at least 160,000 years. In 2019, scientists isolated proteins from the jaw, and their molecular makeup suggests they belonged to a Denisovan, rather than a modern human or Neanderthal.

This molecular evidence — combined with fossil evidence — suggests that the common ancestors of Homo sapiens, Neanderthals and Denisovans lived 600,000 years ago.

Our lineage split off on its own, and then 400,000 years ago, Neanderthals and Denisovans diverged. In other words, Neanderthals and Denisovans were our closest extinct relatives. They even interbred with the ancestors of modern humans, and we carry bits of their DNA today.

But many puzzles still endure from this stage of human history — especially in East Asia. Over the past few decades, paleoanthropologists have found a number of fossils, many incomplete or damaged, that have some features that make them look like our own species and other features that suggest they belong elsewhere on the hominin family tree.

Katerina Harvati, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Tübingen in Germany who was not involved in the new study, said that the Dragon Man skull could “help clarify some of the confusion.”

To figure out how Homo longi fits into the human family tree, the scientists compared its anatomy with 54 hominin fossils. The researchers found that it belongs to a lineage that includes the jaw in Tibet that has been identified as a Denisovan.

The skull was even more similar to a portion of a skull discovered in 1978 in the Chinese county of Dali, dating back 200,000 years. Some researchers thought the Dali fossil was of our own species, while others thought it belonged to an older lineage. Still others even called the fossil a new species, Homo daliensis.

The authors of the new studies argue that Dragon Man, the Tibetan jaw and the Dali skull all belong to a single lineage — one that is the closest branch to our own species. While Homo longi had distinctive features, it also shared traits with us, such as a flat face tucked under its brow rather than jutting out, as was the case with Neanderthals.

“It is widely believed that the Neanderthal belongs to an extinct lineage that is the closest relative of our own species. However, our discovery suggests that the new lineage we identified that includes Homo longi is the actual sister group of H. sapiens,” Xijun Ni, a co-author of the studies and a paleoanthropologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Hebei GEO University said in a news release.

Those conclusions are spurring debate among paleoanthropologists — including the authors of the new papers.

Some of the debate concerns what to call Dragon Man. Scientists follow strict rules about naming new species. That would require Dragon Man to share a name with the Dali skull, if they are as similar as the authors claim.

“In my view, it is a distinct species which I would prefer to call Homo daliensis,” Dr. Stringer said.

Other experts thought the similarity between the Tibetan jaw, with the Denisovan-like proteins, and the skull from Harbin pointed to Dragon Man’s real identity.

“When I first saw the picture of the fossil I thought, now we finally know what Denisovans looked like,” said Philipp Gunz, a paleoanthropologist at Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.

Karen Baab, a paleoanthropologist at Midwestern University in Arizona, agreed: “Harbin is better understood as a Denisovan.”

An assortment of clues point that way. The tooth on Dragon Man’s upper jaw has the same massive shape as the one on the Denisovan jaw found in Tibet, for example. Both lack a third molar. Dragon Man also lived in Asia at the same time that Denisovan DNA tells us that they were in the same place.

Even if Dragon Man is a Denisovan, there would be more puzzles to solve. The DNA of Denisovans clearly shows that their closest cousins were Neanderthals. The new study, based instead on fossil anatomy, indicates instead that Homo longi and Homo sapiens are more closely related to each other than to Neanderthals.

“I think that the genetic data in this case is more reliable than the morphological data,” said Bence Viola, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Toronto, who was not involved in the new study.

“Obviously, something doesn’t match,” Dr. Stringer acknowledged. “The important thing is the recognition of a third human lineage in East Asia, with its own distinctive combination of features.”

One way to solve the mystery of Dragon Man would be to get DNA from his remarkable skull. Dr. Stringer said he is ready for more surprises.

 

“It’s going to be a more complicated plot.”

[Red Five 40,881]

On 6/24/2021 at 4:55 PM, bolverk said:

The scientists have named the newly discovered lineage the "Nesher Ramla Homo type".

C'mon guys. It's 2021. We don't talk like that anymore. 

[NotActuallyALonghorn 4,977]

Has there ever been another discipline if science that mad such broad conclusions based on such small sample sizes as anthropology? I get that they dont have much to work with, and it is immensely interesting to ponder, but I can't help but wonder if we don't have a massively skewed vision of history. But still, I guess that that is the best we can hope for for the most part.

[DoobieWah 1,454]

I took a bunch of archaeology classes at UT in my brief return in 1989. I had a class with Dr Tom Hester and another with Dr E Mott Davis and a couple of others. 

Love that stuff. Been reading Archaeology magazine for twenty years or more. 

https://archaeologica.org/news is a daily read for me. 

There's a British series on YouTube called Time Team that ran for twenty years or so that's pretty good.

 

I'll be watching this space for updates. 

[DoobieWah 1,454]

2 hours ago, NotActuallyALonghorn said:

Has there ever been another discipline if science that mad such broad conclusions based on such small sample sizes as anthropology?

Climate change?

They make broad conclusions based  on 100 years of observations. 

There is no other discipline that claims the science is “settled”, including archaeology. 

[NotActuallyALonghorn 4,977]

I'll agree that a lot of climate change literature suffers from the same lack of sample size, however in the aggregate there are so many things we can look at that give us ample evidence that it really isn't in the same ballpark as saying "hey we found this fragment of a humanoid skull in a cave somewhere, and instead of asking whether or not it is a representative sample we are going to classify it as a whole new species!"

[DoobieWah 1,454]

I’ll let my prior post stand as written. 

[bolverk 29,708]

Nothing spectacular here, but still kind of cool that people were interested in fossils 2,900 years ago.

Scientists find unexplained collection of fossilized shark teeth in Jerusalem

[WhatTheBuck 28,797]

On 6/28/2021 at 4:44 AM, DoobieWah said:

Climate change?

They make broad conclusions based  on 100 years of observations. 

There is no other discipline that claims the science is “settled”, including archaeology. 

Wrong. 

[WhatTheBuck 28,797]

On 6/28/2021 at 10:27 AM, DoobieWah said:

I’ll let my prior post stand as written. 

Still wrong. 

[WhatTheBuck 28,797]

On 6/28/2021 at 2:24 AM, NotActuallyALonghorn said:

Has there ever been another discipline if science that mad such broad conclusions based on such small sample sizes as anthropology? I get that they dont have much to work with, and it is immensely interesting to ponder, but I can't help but wonder if we don't have a massively skewed vision of history. But still, I guess that that is the best we can hope for for the most part.

There’s actually always a lot of disagreement with it the science community about these things. The paradox is that it would make it even harder if we had a complete archaeological record.

I’m not in the mood to dig out the book but Richard Dawkins gives a good explanation about it. Recommended reading:

[DoobieWah 1,454]

57 minutes ago, WhatTheBuck said:

Still wrong. 

Sure sure. Science is settled. 
 

👌

[WhatTheBuck 28,797]

21 hours ago, DoobieWah said:

Sure sure. Science is settled. 
 

👌

Spoken like a true ignoramus.

You really don’t know what science is or how it works, do you?

I’ve been aware of the consensus on anthropological global warming (let’s call it what it is) for more than 30 years. The evidence has only gotten stronger. Few subjects in science have less unanimous consensus than AGW. Not even the nature of gravity. I don’t know the source of your denialism, and I really don’t care. I really don’t have the patience to hear it 

This isn’t the place to debate it even if I thought you were open to considering that you might be wrong. But the archaeological record, and the fossil record, and numerous scientific disciplines from physics and chemistry to astronomy and geology to biology and anthropology to oceanography and actual climatology all support the overwhelming consensus. Not to mention the evidence we can see with our own eyes.

I’ve also followed the denial machine for at least 15 years so there’s not an argument you can make that I haven’t heard before. And don’t bother referencing industry-funded “scientists” like Lindzen, Singer, Curry, the Pielkes, Christy or Spencer, Soon or Baliunas, Curry, or any of the rest of a fairly narrow bunch of morons posing as experts. I’ve heard it all before. 

[bolverk 29,708]

Hey guys, can we just chat about cool old shit that's been found in the ground to include baubles, buildings, and bones here please? kthxbai

[bolverk 29,708]

A Giant Chalk Figure Is Finally Starting to Make Some Sense
And we have snails to thank for that.

In March 2020, archaeologists traveled to a hilltop in Dorset, England, to bag a giant. They sliced into his elbows and feet, then took bits of him back to their labs in bags and metal tubes.

No actual behemoth was harmed in the process, because the Cerne Abbas Giant is a geoglyph—a large artwork emblazoned into the landscape. The 180-foot-tall figure was created by scouring away grass to reveal the white chalk beneath, then packing the trenches with more chalk quarried nearby. Thanks largely to his 26-foot phallus, the giant has become a beloved fertility icon. According to folklore, couples who couple on his crotch will successfully conceive.

But this naked man has been clothed in mystery. Until this May, researchers debated whether he was an Iron Age fertility symbol, a Roman representation of Hercules, or a parody of 17th-century politician Oliver Cromwell.

Now, using a combination of laser beams and snails, scientists have established that the giant was born between A.D. 700 and A.D. 1100 in the late Saxon or early medieval period. The results were totally unexpected because no other chalk figures date from that time, says environmental archaeologist Mike Allen. “We were all wrong … and that’s tremendously exciting.”

Still, several questions remain about the “Rude Man” and dozens of other chalk geoglyphs scrawled across Southern England.

Spoiler

For millennia, people have used these grasslands as a bucolic blackboard, drawing horses, giants, war memorials, and even an oversized kiwi bird. Thanks to the chalky geology—formed in the time of the dinosaurs, when tiny marine creatures sank like snowflakes to the floors of inland seas—these figures are the only geoglyphs of their kind in the world. Yet surprisingly little is known about them.

“They are iconic, and they are big tourist attractions,” Allen says. “And archaeologically, they are just a total enigma.”

Every December, observers standing on Dragon Hill in Oxfordshire can watch a spellbinding spectacle unfold. The sun rises behind the Uffington White Horse, a 360-foot-long chalk geoglyph that seems to gallop across a hillside toward an Iron Age fort. Because of its low trajectory in midwinter, the sun then “appears to roll over the body of the horse [on the horizon] and make a gentle arc in the sky,” says Joshua Pollard, an archaeologist at the University of Southampton.

For centuries, no one had any idea when people created this or many other mysterious geoglyphs, nor what they might represent. Yet generation after generation has painstakingly maintained them. If chalk figures aren’t weeded and rechalked, they grass over in about 20 years.

Then, about 30 years ago, it became possible to date the figures thanks to a technique called optically stimulated luminescence (OSL). In the 1990s, archaeologist David Miles led a team to date the Uffington White Horse. The scientists took samples of the strata, focusing on the lowest layer of packed chalk and the original sediment beneath it. By shining a laser at the samples, researchers released the particles trapped within. The concentration of these particles helps scientists calculate when a soil sample last absorbed the sun’s rays. In this case, the White Horse’s deepest layers last saw sunlight between 1380 B.C. and 550 B.C.

At around 3,000 years old, the Uffington White Horse is by far Britain’s oldest dated chalk geoglyph. Archaeologists believe Bronze Age farmers used deer antlers and wooden shovels to scour the steed out of the turf. Pollard thinks the geoglyph is a sun horse—a common creature in ancient Indo-European cosmology that carries the sun across the sky like a chariot. The figure may have been the focus of winter-solstice celebrations.

Other dating efforts suggest a huge age gap exists between the Uffington White Horse and most other geoglyphs, which generally date from the 1500s or later. It’s possible that other figures from the intervening years or ancient times have grassed over. Researchers know of about 60 historically documented geoglyphs that have disappeared.

Another possibility is that the long period of social upheaval starting in the 1500s—including the Reformation and English Civil War—triggered a revival of geoglyph creation linked to patriotic, nationalist mythology. The Long Man of Wilmington—a 235-foot-tall chalk man holding a staff in each hand—may be one such symbol. In 2003, OSL dated the figure to roughly A.D. 1545, prompting archaeologist Martin Bell, from the University of Reading, to theorize that the Long Man represents a mythical giant.

“During that period, there was a big mythology about the role of giants in Britain’s origin myth,” Bell says. “That led to giants being depicted in other [chalk] hill figures, which are described in historical documents but which have now vanished.” According to these legends, giants were the original rulers of Albion—an ancient name for Britain that may mean “white land” and refer to the chalky geology.

Thanks to advancing technologies, Pollard says, “I think there’s potential to detect and rediscover other lost chalk hill figures.” Meanwhile, scientists continue to study the geoglyphs through OSL and a second, unexpected method: snail archaeology.

In the spring of 2020, Allen, the environmental archaeologist, brought soil samples from the Cerne Abbas Giant to his lab and “made mud pies with them,” he says. He laboriously plucked out hundreds of half-millimeter snail-shell fragments and identified their species based on minute differences in whorl patterns, lines, and hair pits.

Snails are not typically used as a dating technique, but Allen can roughly estimate when a geoglyph was formed based on historic snail migration. Around the first century, Romans imported certain fleshy snails to Britain to eat as escargot, whereas later snail species hitched a ride on hay packed into medieval merchant ships.

In the giant’s earliest layer, Allen found two mollusk species regarded as medieval immigrants—Cernuella virgata and Candidula gigaxii. Those snails were not present in the soil that predates the geoglyph. So, last summer, Allen announced that the figure was probably medieval or later. The new OSL results pinpoint an early-medieval time frame, somewhat earlier than Allen expected but still overlapping with the presence of these snails.

The new dates have sparked research efforts to uncover who the giant represents. Some researchers think the nearby Cerne Abbey was established in A.D. 987 to convert locals who worshipped a pagan god named Heil or Helith. So the figure might depict that Anglo-Saxon deity, according to Martin Papworth, a senior archaeologist with the U.K.’s National Trust.

Interestingly, historic documents from Cerne Abbey don’t mention the giant until 1694. This leads Papworth to hypothesize that the geoglyph was forgotten and grassed over for hundreds of years before people saw a shadowy shape on the hillside and decided to reawaken the giant.

The snails seem to agree with this hypothesis. Snail species offer clues to how vegetation changes over time because many species prefer a specific habitat. Some dwell in dense woodland. Some sway in long grasses. Some squiggle in short grass grazed on by sheep.

Allen’s analysis suggests that, at various times, the geoglyph may have been overgrown with plants, perhaps intentionally. “There may be some periods in British history where people felt seeing a naked man on the hillside wasn’t appropriate for young women or for society,” he says.

People have been chalking, rechalking, and changing the giant for centuries, so the archaeological material at the hillside runs deep, Papworth says. Evidence shows the figure may have once held a cloak and a severed head, and was emasculated and remasculated in Victorian times. More recently, it received a COVID-appropriate face mask.

That’s what makes these geoglyphs so enchanting. Many people think of art as the creation of a single artist at one point in time. The chalk figures are created and re-created communally and continuously. Each time, they may be altered slightly—or greatly.

And because the meaning of many geoglyphs is unknown, each community can infuse them with ever-changing stories, even as they connect with the generations that have carried on this tradition for thousands of years.

 

 

Edited July 13, 2021 by bolverk

[Onboard 2.0 9,083]

4 minutes ago, bolverk said:

A Giant Chalk Figure Is Finally Starting to Make Some Sense
And we have snails to thank for that.

In March 2020, archaeologists traveled to a hilltop in Dorset, England, to bag a giant. They sliced into his elbows and feet, then took bits of him back to their labs in bags and metal tubes.

No actual behemoth was harmed in the process, because the Cerne Abbas Giant is a geoglyph—a large artwork emblazoned into the landscape. The 180-foot-tall figure was created by scouring away grass to reveal the white chalk beneath, then packing the trenches with more chalk quarried nearby. Thanks largely to his 26-foot phallus, the giant has become a beloved fertility icon. According to folklore, couples who couple on his crotch will successfully conceive.

But this naked man has been clothed in mystery. Until this May, researchers debated whether he was an Iron Age fertility symbol, a Roman representation of Hercules, or a parody of 17th-century politician Oliver Cromwell.

Now, using a combination of laser beams and snails, scientists have established that the giant was born between A.D. 700 and A.D. 1100 in the late Saxon or early medieval period. The results were totally unexpected because no other chalk figures date from that time, says environmental archaeologist Mike Allen. “We were all wrong … and that’s tremendously exciting.”

Still, several questions remain about the “Rude Man” and dozens of other chalk geoglyphs scrawled across Southern England.

  Hide contents

 

For millennia, people have used these grasslands as a bucolic blackboard, drawing horses, giants, war memorials, and even an oversized kiwi bird. Thanks to the chalky geology—formed in the time of the dinosaurs, when tiny marine creatures sank like snowflakes to the floors of inland seas—these figures are the only geoglyphs of their kind in the world. Yet surprisingly little is known about them.

“They are iconic, and they are big tourist attractions,” Allen says. “And archaeologically, they are just a total enigma.”

Every December, observers standing on Dragon Hill in Oxfordshire can watch a spellbinding spectacle unfold. The sun rises behind the Uffington White Horse, a 360-foot-long chalk geoglyph that seems to gallop across a hillside toward an Iron Age fort. Because of its low trajectory in midwinter, the sun then “appears to roll over the body of the horse [on the horizon] and make a gentle arc in the sky,” says Joshua Pollard, an archaeologist at the University of Southampton.

For centuries, no one had any idea when people created this or many other mysterious geoglyphs, nor what they might represent. Yet generation after generation has painstakingly maintained them. If chalk figures aren’t weeded and rechalked, they grass over in about 20 years.

Then, about 30 years ago, it became possible to date the figures thanks to a technique called optically stimulated luminescence (OSL). In the 1990s, archaeologist David Miles led a team to date the Uffington White Horse. The scientists took samples of the strata, focusing on the lowest layer of packed chalk and the original sediment beneath it. By shining a laser at the samples, researchers released the particles trapped within. The concentration of these particles helps scientists calculate when a soil sample last absorbed the sun’s rays. In this case, the White Horse’s deepest layers last saw sunlight between 1380 B.C. and 550 B.C.

At around 3,000 years old, the Uffington White Horse is by far Britain’s oldest dated chalk geoglyph. Archaeologists believe Bronze Age farmers used deer antlers and wooden shovels to scour the steed out of the turf. Pollard thinks the geoglyph is a sun horse—a common creature in ancient Indo-European cosmology that carries the sun across the sky like a chariot. The figure may have been the focus of winter-solstice celebrations.

Other dating efforts suggest a huge age gap exists between the Uffington White Horse and most other geoglyphs, which generally date from the 1500s or later. It’s possible that other figures from the intervening years or ancient times have grassed over. Researchers know of about 60 historically documented geoglyphs that have disappeared.

Another possibility is that the long period of social upheaval starting in the 1500s—including the Reformation and English Civil War—triggered a revival of geoglyph creation linked to patriotic, nationalist mythology. The Long Man of Wilmington—a 235-foot-tall chalk man holding a staff in each hand—may be one such symbol. In 2003, OSL dated the figure to roughly A.D. 1545, prompting archaeologist Martin Bell, from the University of Reading, to theorize that the Long Man represents a mythical giant.

“During that period, there was a big mythology about the role of giants in Britain’s origin myth,” Bell says. “That led to giants being depicted in other [chalk] hill figures, which are described in historical documents but which have now vanished.” According to these legends, giants were the original rulers of Albion—an ancient name for Britain that may mean “white land” and refer to the chalky geology.

Thanks to advancing technologies, Pollard says, “I think there’s potential to detect and rediscover other lost chalk hill figures.” Meanwhile, scientists continue to study the geoglyphs through OSL and a second, unexpected method: snail archaeology.

In the spring of 2020, Allen, the environmental archaeologist, brought soil samples from the Cerne Abbas Giant to his lab and “made mud pies with them,” he says. He laboriously plucked out hundreds of half-millimeter snail-shell fragments and identified their species based on minute differences in whorl patterns, lines, and hair pits.

Snails are not typically used as a dating technique, but Allen can roughly estimate when a geoglyph was formed based on historic snail migration. Around the first century, Romans imported certain fleshy snails to Britain to eat as escargot, whereas later snail species hitched a ride on hay packed into medieval merchant ships.

In the giant’s earliest layer, Allen found two mollusk species regarded as medieval immigrants—Cernuella virgata and Candidula gigaxii. Those snails were not present in the soil that predates the geoglyph. So, last summer, Allen announced that the figure was probably medieval or later. The new OSL results pinpoint an early-medieval time frame, somewhat earlier than Allen expected but still overlapping with the presence of these snails.

The new dates have sparked research efforts to uncover who the giant represents. Some researchers think the nearby Cerne Abbey was established in A.D. 987 to convert locals who worshipped a pagan god named Heil or Helith. So the figure might depict that Anglo-Saxon deity, according to Martin Papworth, a senior archaeologist with the U.K.’s National Trust.

Interestingly, historic documents from Cerne Abbey don’t mention the giant until 1694. This leads Papworth to hypothesize that the geoglyph was forgotten and grassed over for hundreds of years before people saw a shadowy shape on the hillside and decided to reawaken the giant.

The snails seem to agree with this hypothesis. Snail species offer clues to how vegetation changes over time because many species prefer a specific habitat. Some dwell in dense woodland. Some sway in long grasses. Some squiggle in short grass grazed on by sheep.

Allen’s analysis suggests that, at various times, the geoglyph may have been overgrown with plants, perhaps intentionally. “There may be some periods in British history where people felt seeing a naked man on the hillside wasn’t appropriate for young women or for society,” he says.

People have been chalking, rechalking, and changing the giant for centuries, so the archaeological material at the hillside runs deep, Papworth says. Evidence shows the figure may have once held a cloak and a severed head, and was emasculated and remasculated in Victorian times. More recently, it received a COVID-appropriate face mask.

That’s what makes these geoglyphs so enchanting. Many people think of art as the creation of a single artist at one point in time. The chalk figures are created and re-created communally and continuously. Each time, they may be altered slightly—or greatly.

And because the meaning of many geoglyphs is unknown, each community can infuse them with ever-changing stories, even as they connect with the generations that have carried on this tradition for thousands of years.

 

 

Fucking cool as shit.  Love history, and its mysteries.

[bolverk 29,708]

Obsidian stones from south central Oregon that were used as part of hunting weapons 8,000-9,000 years ago found on ridge at bottom of Lake Huron that was once a causeway when water levels were lower.

 

[bolverk 29,708]

tl;dr: There's long been a debate about when humans settled the Western Hemisphere with most supporting the claim that we didn't get here until about 13,000 years. A discovery that people were settled along the shore of a lake at White Sands, NM, pushes that date back to at least 23,000 years ago. Cool shit and fascinating.

Ancient Footprints Push Back Date of Human Arrival in the Americas
Human footprints found in New Mexico are about 23,000 years old, a study reported, suggesting that people may have arrived long before the Ice Age’s glaciers melted.

Ancient human footprints preserved in the ground across the White Sands National Park in New Mexico are astonishingly old, scientists reported on Thursday, dating back about 23,000 years to the Ice Age.

The results, if they hold up to scrutiny, would rejuvenate the scientific debate about how humans first spread across the Americas, implying that they did so at a time when massive glaciers covered much of their path.

Researchers who have argued for such an early arrival hailed the new study as firm proof.

“I think this is probably the biggest discovery about the peopling of America in a hundred years,” said Ciprian Ardelean, an archaeologist at Autonomous University of Zacatecas in Mexico who was not involved in the work. “I don’t know what gods they prayed to, but this is a dream find.”

For decades, many archaeologists have maintained that humans spread across North and South America only at the end of the last ice age. They pointed to the oldest known tools, including spear tips, scrapers and needles, dating back about 13,000 years. The technology was known as Clovis, named for the town of Clovis, N.M., where some of these first instruments came to light.

The age of the Clovis tools lined up neatly with the retreat of the glaciers. That alignment bolstered a scenario in which Siberian hunter-gatherers moved into Alaska during the Ice Age, where they lived for generations until ice-free corridors opened and allowed them to expand southward.

But starting in the 1970s, some archaeologists began publishing older evidence of humanity’s presence in North America. Last year, Dr. Ardelean and his colleagues published a report of stone tools in a mountain cave in Mexico dating back 26,000 years.

Other experts have been skeptical of such ancient finds. Ben Potter, an archaeologist at the Arctic Studies Center at Liaocheng University in China, said that some of these supposed tools might actually be oddly shaped rocks. Dr. Potter also questioned some of the dates scientists have assigned to their finds. If a tool sinks into underlying sediment, for example, it may appear to be older than it really is.

“There are unresolved issues with every single one of them,” Dr. Potter said of the older purported sites. “None of them are unequivocal.”

The study at White Sands now adds a new line of evidence for an early arrival: Instead of tools, the researchers have found footprints.

The footprints were first discovered in 2009 by David Bustos, the park’s resource program manager. Over the years, he has brought in an international team of scientists to help make sense of the finds.

Together, they have found thousands of human footprints across 80,000 acres of the park. One path was made by someone walking in a straight line for a mile and a half. Another shows a mother setting her baby down on the ground. Other tracks were made by children.

“The children tend to be more energetic,” said Sally Reynolds, a paleontologist at Bournemouth University in England and a co-author of the new study. “They’re a lot more playful, jumping up and down.”

Mathew Stewart, a zooarchaeologist at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena, Germany, who was not involved in the study, said that the evidence that humans had left the footprints was “unequivocal.”

The footprints were formed when people strode over damp, sandy ground on the margin of a lake. Later, sediments gently filled in the prints, and the ground hardened. But subsequent erosion resurfaced the prints. In some cases, the impressions are only visible when the ground is unusually wet or dry — otherwise they are invisible to the naked eye. But ground-penetrating radar can reveal their three-dimensional structure, including the heels and toes.

Mammoths, dire wolves, camels and other animals left footprints as well. One set of prints showed a giant sloth avoiding a group of people, demonstrating that they were in close company.

“What is fascinating about the study of footprints is that they present snapshots in time,” Dr. Stewart said.

The work of determining the age of the prints fell to Jeffrey Pigati and Kathleen Springer, two research geologists at the United States Geological Survey.

In 2019, they went to White Sands to get a feel for the site. Walking around some of the footprints, the researchers sometimes came across ancient seeds of ditch grass that had grown by the lake. In some spots, the abundant seeds formed thick blankets.

The researchers brought some of the seeds back to their lab and measured the carbon in them to determine their age. The results came as a shock: The ditch grass had grown thousands of years before the end of the last ice age.

Dr. Pigati and Ms. Springer knew those numbers would be controversial. So they embarked on a far more ambitious study. “The darts are going to start flying, so we better be ready for them,” Dr. Pigati recalled.

The scientists dug a trench near one cluster of human and animal footprints to get a tighter estimate of their age. On the side of the trench, they could see layer after layer of sediment. Carefully mapping the surrounding ground, they were able to trace the footprints of humans and animals to six layers in the trench, interspersed with eleven seed beds.

The researchers collected ditch grass seeds from each bed and measured their carbon. These measurements confirmed the initial results: The oldest footprints at the site — left by an adult human and a mammoth — were located below a seed bed dating back about 22,800 years.

In other words, the people who left the footprints walked around White Sands about 10,000 years before the Clovis people. The youngest footprints, the researchers estimated, dated to about 21,130 years ago. That meant that people lived or regularly visited the lake for about 2,000 years.

“This is a bombshell,” said Ruth Gruhn, an archaeologist at the University of Alberta who was not involved in the study. “On the face of it, it’s very hard to disprove.”

Dr. Potter praised the White Sands team for their care in the new study, saying that it is the strongest case yet made for people in the Americas before 16,000 years ago. But he would feel more confident in the extraordinary age of the prints, he said, if there were other lines of evidence beyond the ditch grass seeds. The seeds could have absorbed older carbon from the lake water, making them seem older than they really are.

“I’d like to see stronger data, and I don’t know if it’s possible to get stronger data from this particular site,” he said. “If it’s true, then it really has some profound implications.”

If humans were well established in New Mexico 23,000 years ago, they must have started spreading down from Alaska long before that. “That starts to wind back the clock,” said Dr. Reynolds of Bournemouth University.

Some researchers have argued that people could have spread through the Americas even when the glaciers were at their peak. Instead of traveling down the mainland, they could have moved along the coast. Alternatively, Dr. Ardelean and his colleagues have proposed that people traveled inland more than 32,000 years ago, before Ice Age glaciers reached their maximum extent and blocked off that route.

Dr. Gruhn argued that both scenarios remained possible in light of the new evidence from White Sands. It would take more work to find earlier sites that favored one of them over the other. “We’ve got a lot to do,” she said.

Mr. Bustos and his colleagues have more investigations planned at White Sands. They want to learn about the behavior of the people who left their footprints there. Did they hunt the animals around them? Did they live permanently at the lake or just pay it visits?

They must work quickly. The erosion that has revealed the footprints will erase them from the landscape in a matter of months or years. Countless footprints are disappearing before the scientists even lay eyes on them.

“It’s kind of heartbreaking,” Mr. Bustos said. “We’re racing to try to document what we can.”

[Onboard 2.0 9,083]

2 hours ago, bolverk said:

tl;dr: There's long been a debate about when humans settled the Western Hemisphere with most supporting the claim that we didn't get here until about 13,000 years. A discovery that people were settled along the shore of a lake at White Sands, NM, pushes that date back to at least 23,000 years ago. Cool shit and fascinating.

Ancient Footprints Push Back Date of Human Arrival in the Americas
Human footprints found in New Mexico are about 23,000 years old, a study reported, suggesting that people may have arrived long before the Ice Age’s glaciers melted.

Ancient human footprints preserved in the ground across the White Sands National Park in New Mexico are astonishingly old, scientists reported on Thursday, dating back about 23,000 years to the Ice Age.

The results, if they hold up to scrutiny, would rejuvenate the scientific debate about how humans first spread across the Americas, implying that they did so at a time when massive glaciers covered much of their path.

Researchers who have argued for such an early arrival hailed the new study as firm proof.

“I think this is probably the biggest discovery about the peopling of America in a hundred years,” said Ciprian Ardelean, an archaeologist at Autonomous University of Zacatecas in Mexico who was not involved in the work. “I don’t know what gods they prayed to, but this is a dream find.”

For decades, many archaeologists have maintained that humans spread across North and South America only at the end of the last ice age. They pointed to the oldest known tools, including spear tips, scrapers and needles, dating back about 13,000 years. The technology was known as Clovis, named for the town of Clovis, N.M., where some of these first instruments came to light.

The age of the Clovis tools lined up neatly with the retreat of the glaciers. That alignment bolstered a scenario in which Siberian hunter-gatherers moved into Alaska during the Ice Age, where they lived for generations until ice-free corridors opened and allowed them to expand southward.

But starting in the 1970s, some archaeologists began publishing older evidence of humanity’s presence in North America. Last year, Dr. Ardelean and his colleagues published a report of stone tools in a mountain cave in Mexico dating back 26,000 years.

Other experts have been skeptical of such ancient finds. Ben Potter, an archaeologist at the Arctic Studies Center at Liaocheng University in China, said that some of these supposed tools might actually be oddly shaped rocks. Dr. Potter also questioned some of the dates scientists have assigned to their finds. If a tool sinks into underlying sediment, for example, it may appear to be older than it really is.

“There are unresolved issues with every single one of them,” Dr. Potter said of the older purported sites. “None of them are unequivocal.”

The study at White Sands now adds a new line of evidence for an early arrival: Instead of tools, the researchers have found footprints.

The footprints were first discovered in 2009 by David Bustos, the park’s resource program manager. Over the years, he has brought in an international team of scientists to help make sense of the finds.

Together, they have found thousands of human footprints across 80,000 acres of the park. One path was made by someone walking in a straight line for a mile and a half. Another shows a mother setting her baby down on the ground. Other tracks were made by children.

“The children tend to be more energetic,” said Sally Reynolds, a paleontologist at Bournemouth University in England and a co-author of the new study. “They’re a lot more playful, jumping up and down.”

Mathew Stewart, a zooarchaeologist at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena, Germany, who was not involved in the study, said that the evidence that humans had left the footprints was “unequivocal.”

The footprints were formed when people strode over damp, sandy ground on the margin of a lake. Later, sediments gently filled in the prints, and the ground hardened. But subsequent erosion resurfaced the prints. In some cases, the impressions are only visible when the ground is unusually wet or dry — otherwise they are invisible to the naked eye. But ground-penetrating radar can reveal their three-dimensional structure, including the heels and toes.

Mammoths, dire wolves, camels and other animals left footprints as well. One set of prints showed a giant sloth avoiding a group of people, demonstrating that they were in close company.

“What is fascinating about the study of footprints is that they present snapshots in time,” Dr. Stewart said.

The work of determining the age of the prints fell to Jeffrey Pigati and Kathleen Springer, two research geologists at the United States Geological Survey.

In 2019, they went to White Sands to get a feel for the site. Walking around some of the footprints, the researchers sometimes came across ancient seeds of ditch grass that had grown by the lake. In some spots, the abundant seeds formed thick blankets.

The researchers brought some of the seeds back to their lab and measured the carbon in them to determine their age. The results came as a shock: The ditch grass had grown thousands of years before the end of the last ice age.

Dr. Pigati and Ms. Springer knew those numbers would be controversial. So they embarked on a far more ambitious study. “The darts are going to start flying, so we better be ready for them,” Dr. Pigati recalled.

The scientists dug a trench near one cluster of human and animal footprints to get a tighter estimate of their age. On the side of the trench, they could see layer after layer of sediment. Carefully mapping the surrounding ground, they were able to trace the footprints of humans and animals to six layers in the trench, interspersed with eleven seed beds.

The researchers collected ditch grass seeds from each bed and measured their carbon. These measurements confirmed the initial results: The oldest footprints at the site — left by an adult human and a mammoth — were located below a seed bed dating back about 22,800 years.

In other words, the people who left the footprints walked around White Sands about 10,000 years before the Clovis people. The youngest footprints, the researchers estimated, dated to about 21,130 years ago. That meant that people lived or regularly visited the lake for about 2,000 years.

“This is a bombshell,” said Ruth Gruhn, an archaeologist at the University of Alberta who was not involved in the study. “On the face of it, it’s very hard to disprove.”

Dr. Potter praised the White Sands team for their care in the new study, saying that it is the strongest case yet made for people in the Americas before 16,000 years ago. But he would feel more confident in the extraordinary age of the prints, he said, if there were other lines of evidence beyond the ditch grass seeds. The seeds could have absorbed older carbon from the lake water, making them seem older than they really are.

“I’d like to see stronger data, and I don’t know if it’s possible to get stronger data from this particular site,” he said. “If it’s true, then it really has some profound implications.”

If humans were well established in New Mexico 23,000 years ago, they must have started spreading down from Alaska long before that. “That starts to wind back the clock,” said Dr. Reynolds of Bournemouth University.

Some researchers have argued that people could have spread through the Americas even when the glaciers were at their peak. Instead of traveling down the mainland, they could have moved along the coast. Alternatively, Dr. Ardelean and his colleagues have proposed that people traveled inland more than 32,000 years ago, before Ice Age glaciers reached their maximum extent and blocked off that route.

Dr. Gruhn argued that both scenarios remained possible in light of the new evidence from White Sands. It would take more work to find earlier sites that favored one of them over the other. “We’ve got a lot to do,” she said.

Mr. Bustos and his colleagues have more investigations planned at White Sands. They want to learn about the behavior of the people who left their footprints there. Did they hunt the animals around them? Did they live permanently at the lake or just pay it visits?

They must work quickly. The erosion that has revealed the footprints will erase them from the landscape in a matter of months or years. Countless footprints are disappearing before the scientists even lay eyes on them.

“It’s kind of heartbreaking,” Mr. Bustos said. “We’re racing to try to document what we can.”

To me what's fascinating about this discovery is, did those early people eventually become what we now know as the native American tribes ?  Did these these early people eventually die out as the glacial period was advancing, and they were maybe unsuited for life in that brutal climate ? Or die off as the result of any number of other factors. 

[bolverk 29,708]

50 minutes ago, Onboard 2.0 said:

To me what's fascinating about this discovery is, did those early people eventually become what we now know as the native American tribes ?  Did these these early people eventually die out as the glacial period was advancing, and they were maybe unsuited for life in that brutal climate ? Or die off as the result of any number of other factors. 

I think those are good questions and definitely worth giving some thought to. My best guess is that since they were so far south, they likely would've been able to survive the last Ice Age as I don't believe the glaciers ever made it down there. But the flora/fauna would've been very different 23,000 years ago, given that there apparently was a lake where White Sands is now. Of course, they could've easily migrated elsewhere.

For me, this news gives a new degree of credence to a lot of the really old archeological finds in the Americas that many have been skeptical about being too old like the Topper Site in South Carolina.

[NotActuallyALonghorn 4,977]

I've been a skeptic of the Clovis first school of thought for a while, so this only reinforces it. I do think that the main migration of humans into the Americas happened according to what we have traditionally thought, but they weren't the first and they absorbed whatever culture there was before them.

[MillerEP 30,494]

2 hours ago, Onboard 2.0 said:

To me what's fascinating about this discovery is, did those early people eventually become what we now know as the native American tribes ?  Did these these early people eventually die out as the glacial period was advancing, and they were maybe unsuited for life in that brutal climate ? Or die off as the result of any number of other factors. 

I read The Great Courses' Ancient Civilizations of North America and from what I recall. The Clovis people predates what we would consider as the first tribes. The first what we would recognize was the "mound builders:" and those along the Columbia river (I forget what they were called). They basically found the first "totem poles" in those areas, and also mass graves, showing that shortly after they started forming villages they started killing each other. 

[bolverk 29,708]

59 minutes ago, NotActuallyALonghorn said:

I've been a skeptic of the Clovis first school of thought for a while, so this only reinforces it. I do think that the main migration of humans into the Americas happened according to what we have traditionally thought, but they weren't the first and they absorbed whatever culture there was before them.

I'm sure there's a whole lot of this. Within the last few years, the genealogy stuff has been able to link some of the North American tribes to groups in Siberia. Moreover, linguists have even been able to make a connection between the languages of the Apaches and Navajo with one in Siberia. So, it's a good bet there were successive waves. It could be that the more isolated groups in the Amazon basin are remnants of earlier groups of arrivals.

[thunderlounge 7,912]

2 hours ago, MillerEP said:

They basically found the first "totem poles" in those areas, and also mass graves, showing that shortly after they started forming villages they started killing each other. 

Merica!!!!!!!

 

 

Seriously though, this is akin to pre-Columbian contact. 
 

Fuck Columbus. Mother fucker was lost as shit. 
 

I picture it similar to the Pilgrims. They came early, and population slowly increased via migration over the next few hundred years. 
 

I can see where a smaller population size on earth at the time could slowly migrate around and take a significantly longer time to actually establish a presence large enough to have remnants more easily discovered and identifiable some 10k+ years later. 

[NotActuallyALonghorn 4,977]

We should also remember that we live at a time when being born and living to adulthood is trivial. We can't assume that an ancient culture would be able to populate a continent as well as our ancestors did four hundred years ago. Maybe humans have been making it to America somehow all along and we just hit right when the time was ripe. 

[Onboard 2.0 9,083]

6 hours ago, bolverk said:

I think those are good questions and definitely worth giving some thought to. My best guess is that since they were so far south, they likely would've been able to survive the last Ice Age as I don't believe the glaciers ever made it down there. But the flora/fauna would've been very different 23,000 years ago, given that there apparently was a lake where White Sands is now. Of course, they could've easily migrated elsewhere.

For me, this news gives a new degree of credence to a lot of the really old archeological finds in the Americas that many have been skeptical about being too old like the Topper Site in South Carolina.

If they were south of the line then in all probability they had a pretty good source of food (depending on when they crossed thru/inhabited that area) as many game species were probably pushed further south by the glacial advances. 

[bolverk 29,708]

5 minutes ago, Onboard 2.0 said:

If they were south of the line then in all probability they had a pretty good source of food (depending on when they crossed thru/inhabited that area) as many game species were probably pushed further south by the glacial advances. 

True, but the article also mentions fucking dire wolves. So, yeah, they might've been turned into dog food. Sad to think about really.

[thunderlounge 7,912]

37 minutes ago, NotActuallyALonghorn said:

We should also remember that we live at a time when being born and living to adulthood is trivial. We can't assume that an ancient culture would be able to populate a continent as well as our ancestors did four hundred years ago. 

Exactly. So same deal, just over a much more significant amount of time.

Just like people coming from Europe well before Columbus. The evidence is all over, but some just can’t fathom they are wrong. 

[Onboard 2.0 9,083]

1 hour ago, bolverk said:

True, but the article also mentions fucking dire wolves. So, yeah, they might've been turned into dog food. Sad to think about really.

Hey who doesn’t love a Dire wolf ?  
 

They're 600 pounds of sin grinning at your window.  They're gonna collect their due.

Edited September 25, 2021 by Onboard 2.0

[NotActuallyALonghorn 4,977]

 

The House of Frey?

Edited September 25, 2021 by NotActuallyALonghorn

[Armybrat 40,873]

Interesting thread.

I’ve always been fascinated by certain seaport cities like San Francisco & NYC expanding waterfront landfills using old sailing vessels. Then modern construction sites excavate the old wood ships:

https://www.military.com/history/colonial-sailing-ship-was-uncovered-foundation-of-world-trade-center.html?ESRC=eb_210924.nl

 

[Laxtonto 12,090]

Lil'Lax was very happy to see this article..

Scientists discover bones of two new dinosaur species — including a "horned crocodile-faced hell heron"

Spoiler

Scientists have discovered two new species of large, predatory dinosaurs with "unusual, crocodile-like skulls" on England's Isle of Wight. The dinosaurs are believed to be species of spinosaurids, and are the first skeletons of the dinosaur family to be uncovered in the United Kingdom since 1983.

The two new species are related to an ancient "unusual and controversial" family of dinosaurs, according to a report by paleontologists at the University of Southampton that was published in Scientific Reports on Wednesday.  

The first, Ceratosuchops inferodios, which means "horned crocodile-faced hell heron," has a head filled with low horns and bumps along its brow region, scientists found, and is believed to have had a hunting style similar to a "terrifying heron."

The second discovery, Riparovenator milnerae, which means "Milner's riverbank hunter," is similar to that of the Ceratosuchops inferodios and has a long tail and a crocodile-like snout. It was named in honor of British paleontologist Angela Milner who died on August 13. Milner is credited with naming the new species' closest relative, the Baryonyx dinosaur. 

Artists' impression of newly identified species. Anthony Hutchings/University of Southampton

The skeletons are still incomplete, but based on the tail and cranial fossils found so far, researchers believe both dinosaurs were about nine meters long — more than 29 feet. Their skulls were roughly a meter long — more than 3 feet. 

Study co-author David Horne said it's "very common" for "similar and closely related" carnivores to have lived in the same ecosystem.

"The Early Cretaceous rocks on the Isle of Wight describe an ancient floodplain environment bathed in a Mediterranean-like climate. Whilst generally balmy, forest fires occasionally ravaged the landscape, and the remains of burnt wood can be seen throughout the cliffs today," the University of Southampton said in a press release. "With a large river and other bodies of water attracting dinosaurs and housing various fish, sharks and crocodiles, the habitat provided the newly discovered spinosaurids with plenty of hunting opportunities."

The new dinosaurs are believed to be from the Cretaceous period, with the bones estimated to be more than 125 million years old, scientists said in a press release. Their research suggests spinosaurids may have first evolved in Europe before migrating to Asia, Africa and South America. 

Isle of Wight is commonly known as "Dinosaur Island," as fossils can be easily found along its beaches. 

Discovered brain case of the Ceratosuchops inferodios, which translates as the "horned crocodile-faced hell heron." Chris Barker/University of Southampton

In fact, it was a simple discovery on these beaches by two fossil collectors that ignited the hunt to identify the new species. In 2013, the University of Southampton said, fossil collectors found parts of two skulls near the isle's Brighstone Beach. Soon after, members of Dinosaur Isle Museum found a large portion of a tail, and now, more than 50 bones have been found, scientists said. 

"This is the rarest and most exciting find I've made in over 30 years of fossil collection," Brian Foster, one of the collectors, said in a statement. 

Jeremy Lockwood, who also found some of the fossils, said, "We realized after the two snouts were found that this would be something rare and unusual. Then it just got more and more amazing as several collectors found and donated other parts of this enormous jigsaw to the museum."

But scientists have long had a hunch that there were other spinosaur species out there. 

"We've known for a couple of decades now that Bryonyx-like dinosaurs awaited discovered on the Isle of Wight," said study co-author Darren Naish in a statement, "but finding the remains of two such animals in close succession was a huge surprise." 

The last and only time a spinosaurid skeleton had been uncovered in the U.K., researchers said, was in 1983. Aside from that skeleton, which was deemed to be that of a Baryonyx, researchers have only come across isolated teeth. 

 

[Armybrat 40,873]

Very interesting discovery of a Bronze Age village in England - full of daily life artifacts.

https://artdaily.cc/news/167675/This-was-village-life-in-Britain-3-000-years-ago