Fossil and Archaeology News - October 2009 Archives

Inequality, 'silver spoon' effect found in ancient societies (10/31/2009)

The so-called "silver spoon" effect -- in which wealth is passed down from one generation to another -- is well established in some of the world's most ancient economies, according to an international study coordinated by a UC Davis anthropologist. The study, to be reported in the Oct. 30 issue of Science, expands economists' conventional focus on material riches, and looks at various kinds of wealth, such as hunting success, food sharing partners, and kinship networks. ...> Full Article

The largest bat in Europe inhabited northeastern Spain more than 10,000 years ago (10/30/2009)

Spanish researchers have confirmed that the largest bat in Europe, Nyctalus lasiopterus, was present in north-eastern Spain during the Late Pleistocene. The Greater Noctule fossils found in the excavation site at Abric Romani prove that this bat had a greater geographical presence more than 10,000 years ago than it does today, having declined due to the reduction in vegetation cover. ...> Full Article

Snail fossils suggest semiarid eastern Canary Islands were wetter 50,000 years ago (10/29/2009)

Isotopic measurements performed on fossil land snail shells found in ancient soils on the subtropical eastern Canary Islands resulted in oxygen isotope ratios that suggest the Spanish archipelago off the northwest coast of Africa has become progressively drier over the past 50,000 years, according to research by Yurena Yanes and Crayton Yapp at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. ...> Full Article

New look for antiques (10/28/2009)

Italian researchers working with Piero Baglioni at the University of Florence have developed a technique to effectively remove old polymer layers from sensitive historic artworks. As the researchers report in the journal Angewandte Chemie, the new cleaning system involves only a tiny proportion of volatile organic compounds. ...> Full Article

Ancient 'monster' insect offers Halloween inspiration (10/27/2009)

Just in time for Halloween, researchers have announced the discovery of a new, real-world "monster" -- what they are calling a "unicorn" fly that lived about 100 million years ago and is being described as a new family, genus and species of fly never before observed. ...> Full Article

Geologist analyzes earliest shell-covered fossil animals (10/24/2009)

The fossil remains of some of the first animals with shells, ocean-dwelling creatures that measure a few centimeters in length and date to about 520 million years ago, provide a window on evolution at this time, according to scientists. Their research indicates that these animals were larger than previously thought. ...> Full Article

2-million-year-old evidence shows tool-making hominins inhabited grassland environments (10/23/2009)

In an article published in the open-access, peer-reviewed journal PLoS ONE Oct. 21, Dr. Thomas Plummer of Queens College at the City University of New York, Dr. Richard Potts of the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History and colleagues report the oldest archaeological evidence of early human activities in a grassland environment, dating to 2 million years ago. The article highlights new research and its implications concerning the environments in which human ancestors evolved. ...> Full Article

Pavlopetri - the world's oldest known submerged town (10/22/2009)

The world's oldest known submerged town has been revealed through the discovery of late Neolithic pottery. The finds were made during an archaeological survey of Pavlopetri, off the southern Laconia coast of Greece. ...> Full Article

Fracture zones endanger tombs in Valley of Kings (10/20/2009)

Ancient choices made by Egyptians digging burial tombs may have led to today's problems with damage and curation of these precious archaeological treasures, but photography and detailed geological mapping should help curators protect the sites, according to a Penn State researcher. ...> Full Article

Blue highways (10/19/2009)

In January, Williams College Professor of Chemistry Anne Skinner, along with six Williams students, will visit the headwaters of the Blue Nile to conduct archeological research. The project is part of a National Science Foundation grant.The three-year $330,000 NSF grant, under the direction of Professor John Kappelman of the University of Texas-Austin, is supporting research on "Blue Highways: Evaluating Middle Stone Age Riverine-Based Foraging, Mobility, and Technology Along the Trunk Tributaries of the Blue Nile." ...> Full Article

World's oldest submerged town dates back 5,000 years (10/18/2009)

Archaeologists surveying the world's oldest submerged town have found ceramics dating back to the Final Neolithic. Their discovery suggests that Pavlopetri, off the southern Laconia coast of Greece, was occupied some 5,000 years ago -- at least 1,200 years earlier than originally thought. ...> Full Article

Plant fossils give first real picture of earliest Neotropical rainforests (10/17/2009)

A team of researchers including a University of Florida paleontologist has used a rich cache of plant fossils discovered in Colombia to provide the first reliable evidence of how Neotropical rainforests looked 58 million years ago. ...> Full Article

A 200,000-year-old cut of meat (10/16/2009)

New findings from the Qesem Cave archaeological dig in Israel indicate that during the Lower Paleolithic Period people prepared and shared meat differently than in earlier times, providing new clues into our evolutionary development, economics and social behaviors. ...> Full Article

Crushed bones reveal literal dino stomping ground (10/15/2009)

A rich dinosaur quarry near Moab, Utah, has one little problem: nearly all the bones are broken. BYU researchers pieced together what happened and concluded in a new study that the heap of carcasses was trampled while still fresh by big, thirsty sauropods. ...> Full Article

New type of flying reptile discovered (10/14/2009)

Discovered by scientists at the University of Leicester and the Geological Institute, Beijing, Darwin's pterodactyl preyed on flying dinosaurs and shows how a controversial type of evolution may have powered the origin of major new groups. ...> Full Article

The first neotropical rainforest was home of the Titanoboa (10/13/2009)

Plant fossils from the same site in northern Colombia where the Titanoboa was found reveal a rainforest very similar to modern neotropical rainforests, but several degrees warmer. ...> Full Article

Chinese and American paleontologists discover a new Mesozoic mammal (10/12/2009)

An international team of paleontologists has discovered a new species of mammal that lived in China's Liaoning Province 123 million years ago. This remarkably well preserved fossil, as reported in the Oct. 9 issue of Science, offers important insight into how the mammalian middle ear evolved. Such exquisite dinosaur-age mammals provide evidence of how developmental mechanisms have impacted the evolution of the earliest mammals. ...> Full Article

Early hominid first walked on 2 legs in the woods (10/11/2009)

Among the many surprises associated with the discovery of the oldest known, nearly complete skeleton of a hominid is the finding that this species took its first steps toward bipedalism not on the open, grassy savanna, as generations of scientists -- going back to Charles Darwin -- hypothesized, but in a wooded landscape. ...> Full Article

Climate change triggered dwarfism in soil-dwelling creatures of the past (10/10/2009)

Ancient soil biota decreased in size by up to 46 percent during period 55 million years ago ...> Full Article

Researcher has rare evidence of dinosaur cannibalism (10/9/2009)

University of Alberta researcher Phil Bell has found 70 million year old evidence of dinosaur cannibalism. The jawbone of what appears to be a Gorgosaurus was found in 1996 in southern Alberta. A technician at the Royal Tyrell Museum found something unusual embedded in the jaw. It was the tip of a tooth from another meat-eating dinosaur. ...> Full Article

Inside the first bird, surprising signs of a dinosaur (10/9/2009)

The raptor-like Archaeopteryx has long been viewed as the archetypal first bird, but new research reveals that it was actually a lot less "bird-like" than scientists had believed. ...> Full Article

Buried coins key to Roman population mystery? (10/8/2009)

University of Connecticut professor explains how coin hoards signal population size ...> Full Article

Trackway analysis shows how dinosaurs coped with slippery slopes (10/7/2009)

A new investigation of a fossilized tracksite in southern Africa shows how early dinosaurs made on-the-fly adjustments to their movements to cope with slippery and sloping terrain. Differences in how early dinosaurs made these adjustments provide insight into the later evolution of the group. ...> Full Article

Bizarre new horned tyrannosaur from Asia described (10/7/2009)

A paper published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences describes a new, exceptionally well-preserved fossil, Alioramus altai: a horned, gracile tyrannosaur. The new dinosuar species lived during the same time but seemed to occupy a slightly different ecological niche from its larger cousins, carnivorous bipeds Tyrannosaurus rex and Tarbosaurus. ...> Full Article

New findings show a quick rebound from marine mass extinction event (10/4/2009)

Researchers from MIT and their collaborators have done the most detailed analysis ever of a layer of sediments deposited during and immediately after the asteroid impact 65 million years ago that wiped out the dinosaurs and 80 percent of Earth's marine life. They found that at least some forms of microscopic marine life -- the so-called "primary producers," or photosynthetic organisms such as algae and cyanobacteria in the ocean -- had recovered within about a century after the mass extinction. ...> Full Article

Oldest hominid skeleton provides new evidence for human evolution (10/3/2009)

A Los Alamos National Laboratory geologist is part of an international research team responsible for discovering the oldest nearly intact skeleton of Ardipithecus ramidus, who lived 4.4 million years ago. The discovery reveals the biology of the first stage of human evolution better than anything seen to date. ...> Full Article

Rediscovering the dragon's paradise lost (10/2/2009)

The world's largest living lizard species, the Komodo dragon (Varanus komodoensis), is vulnerable to extinction and yet little is known about its natural history. New research by a team of palaeontologists and archaeologists from Australia, Malaysia and Indonesia, who studied fossil evidence from Australia, Timor, Flores, Java and India, shows that Komodo Dragons most likely evolved in Australia and dispersed westward to Indonesia. ...> Full Article