Fossil and Archaeology News Archives Page 3

Lemur's Little Finger Poses a Mystery (3/20/2008)

Analysis of the first hand bones belonging to an ancient lemur has revealed a mysterious joint structure that has scientists puzzled. ...> Full Article

Anthropology Research Team Finds That 'Hobbit' Fossil Evidence Is Linked To Human Evolution (3/20/2008)

New Methods To Study and Compare Skull Shapes Illustrate Evolution is Not a Linear Path ...> Full Article

First 'rule' of evolution suggests that life is destined to become more complex (3/19/2008)

Scientists have revealed what may well be the first pervasive 'rule' of evolution. ...> Full Article

Natural Selection and the Human Skull (3/19/2008)

New research adds to the evidence that chance, rather than natural selection, best explains why the skulls of modern humans and ancient Neanderthals evolved differently. The findings may alter how anthropologists think about human evolution. ...> Full Article

Clovis-age overkill didn't take out California's flightless sea duck (3/18/2008)

Scientists cite radiocarbon dating of bones at coastal archaeological sites ...> Full Article

Death creates life (3/16/2008)

In prehistoric times, the Earth was hit by a hailstorm of meteorites with a belt of dust that subsequently covered the planet. But instead of killing all life on Earth, the exact opposite occurred. Biological diversity increased in the wake of all these meteorite impacts, shows new research ...> Full Article

Evidence of Ice Age hunters found below North Sea (3/15/2008)

An amazing collection of 28 flint hand-axes, dated by archaeologists to be around 100,000 years-old, have been unearthed in gravel from a licensed marine aggregate dredging area 13km off Great Yarmouth. ...> Full Article

Classics professor exploring a 'lost' city of the Mycenaeans (3/14/2008)

Along an isolated, rocky stretch of Greek shoreline, a Florida State University researcher and his students are unlocking the secrets of a partially submerged, "lost" harbor town believed to have been built by the ancient Mycenaeans nearly 3,500 years ago. ...> Full Article

Bone Detective Digs His Work (3/13/2008)

Archaeologists and historians have assembled to solve this ancient murder mystery. ...> Full Article

Miocene Fossil Discovered by New Mexico Tech Geologists (3/12/2008)

Geologists discover new fossil embedded in a rock face. ...> Full Article

Domestication of the donkey (3/12/2008)

Researchers have found evidence for the earliest transport use of the donkey and the early phases of donkey domestication ...> Full Article

Micronesian Islands colonized by small-bodied humans (3/11/2008)

Fossils of small-bodied humans from the Micronesian island of Palau inhabited the island between 1400 and 3000 years ago and share some – although not all – features with the H. floresiensis specimens ...> Full Article

A fossilized giant rhino bone questions the isolation of Anatolia, 25 million years ago (3/11/2008)

Contrary to generally accepted belief, Anatolia was not geographically isolated 25 million years ago ...> Full Article

Evidence of commerce between ancient Israel and China (3/9/2008)

Throughout the 12th and 13th centuries - during the time of the Crusades -ceramic vessels reached Acre from: Mediterranean regions, the Levant, Europe, North Africa, and even China - reveals new research, which examined trade of ceramic vessels, conducted at the University of Haifa. ...> Full Article

World's oldest missing pages (3/8/2008)

Experts in the study of late antiquity at Cardiff University have welcomed the discovery of what has been described as "the world's oldest missing pages" ...> Full Article

Hobbits may be human after all (3/6/2008)

Researchers have joined the worldwide debate over the hobbit-like fossils found on the Indonesian island of Flores, with a controversial new theory suggesting their primitive features are the result of a medical condition. ...> Full Article

Innovative archaeological survey reveals unknown aspects of China's past (3/4/2008)

At 13 years, one of longest running Sino-American scientific collaborations of any kind ...> Full Article

Centuries-old Maya Blue Mystery Finally Solved (3/2/2008)

Anthropologists from Wheaton College (Illinois) and The Field Museum have discovered how the ancient Maya produced an unusual and widely studied blue pigment that was used in offerings, pottery, murals and other contexts across Mesoamerica from about A.D. 300 to 1500. ...> Full Article

International team announces discovery of massive Jurassic marine reptile (2/29/2008)

Scientists discover of one of the largest dinosaur-era marine reptiles ever found â€" an enormous sea predator known as a pliosaur estimated to be almost 15 meters (50 feet) feet long ...> Full Article

Vikings did not dress the way we thought (2/27/2008)

Vivid colors, flowing silk ribbons, and glittering bits of mirrors - the Vikings dressed with considerably more panache than we previously thought. The men were especially vain, and the women dressed provocatively, but with the advent of Christianity, fashions changed, according to Swedish archeologist Annika Larsson. ...> Full Article

Royals weren't only builders of Maya temples, archaeologist finds (2/26/2008)

An intrepid archaeologist is well on her way to dislodging the prevailing assumptions of scholars about the people who built and used Maya temples. ...> Full Article

Ancient Puzzle Solved In Fossils From Canadian Rockies, Dating To Cambrian Explosion (2/24/2008)

Geologists have solved a puzzle found in rocks half a billion years old. ...> Full Article

Timbers from church speak of previously unknown drought during pioneers' arrival, study shows (2/22/2008)

A Brigham Young University geographer studying timbers from the Salt Lake Tabernacle concludes those old walls can talk, and they tell a new tale of pioneer hardship. ...> Full Article

Excavations In Iran Unravel Mystery Of 'Red Snake' (2/20/2008)

New discoveries unearthed at an ancient frontier wall in Iran provide compelling evidencThe 'Great Wall of Gorgan'in north-eastern Iran, a barrier of awesome scale and sophistication, including over 30 military forts, an aqueduct, and water channels along its route, is being explored by an international team of archaeologists from Iran and the Universities of Edinburgh and Durham. This vast Wall-also known as the 'Red Snake'-is more than 1000 years older than the Great Wall of China, and longer than Hadrian's Wall and the Antonine Wall put together. ...> Full Article

Giant Frog Jumps Continents (2/19/2008)

A giant frog fossil from Madagascar dubbed Beelzebufo or 'the frog from Hell' has been identified by scientists from UCL (University College London) and Stony Brook University, New York. The discovery of the 70 million year-old fossil frog, of a kind once thought unique to South America, lends weight to a new theory that Madagascar, India and South America were linked until late in the Age of Dinosaurs. ...> Full Article

Dung Happens And Helps Scientists: Scoop On Poop And Climate Change (2/18/2008)

When scientists around the world think of dung, they think of Jim Mead. ...> Full Article

Ancient tooth provides evidence of Neanderthal movement (2/17/2008)

A 40,000-year-old tooth has provided the first direct proof that Neanderthals moved from place to place in their lifetimes. ...> Full Article

Dutch team uncovers Egypt's earliest agricultural settlement (2/16/2008)

Archaeologists from UCLA and the University of Groningen (RUG) in the Netherlands have found the earliest evidence ever discovered of an ancient Egyptian agricultural settlement, including farmed grains, remains of domesticated animals, pits for cooking and even floors for what appear to be dwellings. ...> Full Article

Student names two new meat-eating dinosaurs (2/15/2008)

The remains of two new 110-million-year-old carnivorous dinosaurs have been named by a student from Bristol University and his former professor from fossils dug up in the Sahara Desert. ...> Full Article

Researchers find a sparrow-sized pterosaur in western Liaoning, China (2/14/2008)

The fossils of a dinky pterosaur ("winged lizard" in Greek, a group of winged reptiles that ruled the skies from 206 million to 65 million years ago) has been discovered by CAS paleontologists and their Brazilian co-workers in northeast China's Liaoning Province. The discovery was published February 11 online by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. ...> Full Article