Tag Archives: live science

December 20, 2014 · 4:18 pm

Two ‘pseudoscorpions’ discovered in Grand Canyon cave

LiveScience

By Tia Ghose

Published December 11, 2014

tuberochernes-cohni

Two new species of cave-adapted, eyeless pseudoscorpions have been discovered in a cave on the northern rim of the Grand Canyon. Here, one of the species, Tuberochernes cohni. (Courtesy of J. Judson Wynne, Northern Arizona University)

This story was updated on Wednesday. Dec. 10 at 9:15 a.m. ET.

Two new species of so-called pseudoscorpions have been discovered in a cave on the northern rim of the Grand Canyon.

The elusive creatures, which have adapted to their lightless environment by losing their eyes, were discovered in Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument, which abuts the better-known Grand Canyon National Park.

Unlike true scorpions, these scorpion imposters lack a tail with a venomous stinger. Instead, the arachnids use venom-packed stingers in their pincers to immobilize their prey, study author J. Judson Wynne, an assistant research professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Northern Arizona University, in Flagstaff, wrote in an email.

The tiny cave where the team discovered the new species just 250 feet in length nevertheless supports the highest diversity of cave-adapted arthropods of any known cave in the Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument, Wynne said. [Creepy Crawlies & Flying Wonders: Incredible Cave Creatures]

New species?

The researchers first discovered the two false scorpions during expeditions in a cave along the north rim of the Grand Canyon, between 2005 and 2007. But it took years before the team identified the species as unique.

“Contrary to popular belief, rarely are we in the field, collect an animal and then brandish our grubby field flasks of whiskey to toast a new species discovery,” Wynne told Live Science in an email.

To confirm the scorpion lookalikes were a new species, the team had to take them back to a taxonomic specialist, who analyzed all the details of the species and pored over all the existing data on similar species. In this case, the team found that one of the species had a thickened pair of legs and a mound on the pincer, while another had a much deeper pincer than other pseudoscorpionsqualifying each as a distinct species, study co-author Mark Harvey, senior curator at the Western Australian Museum in Perth, said in an email.

The creatures, dubbed Hesperochernes bradybaughii and Tuberochernes cohni, respectively, are about 0.12 inches long and feed on tiny invertebrates, including springtails, book lice, mites and possibly cricket nymphs. Many of their prey are just one-fourth the length of a grain of rice.

The two species are named after Jeff Bradybaugh, an advocate for cave research and the former superintendent of Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument, and Theodore Cohn, an entomologist who identified a new genus of cave cricket and passed away in 2013.

The fact that two separate species of pseudoscorpion can live in the cave while competing for the same food source suggests the cave supports a robust food web. The cave is one of the largest roosts of crickets in northern Arizona, and the pseudoscorpion prey feed on the cricket “frass,” or poop, as well as the fungus that grows on the poop. The cave is also home to a bizarre, eyeless fungus beetle that feeds on the poop fungus.

At one time, the pseudoscorpions’ ancestors lived in the desert environment outside the cave, but they have since adapted to hunting in an environment devoid of light, losing their eyes and gaining an elongated bodies in the process.

Odd insects

In general, pseudoscorpions are odd creatures. Not only are their pincers good for immobilizing prey, they also help the insects hitchhike to new locales.

“They will grasp onto another animal such as birds, mammals and even other insects. They hold on and can be transported long distances,” Wynne said.

This allows the insects to travel farther than they ordinarily could, so they can mate and disperse genes farther than they could walking on their own eight legs. These journeys may also take the scorpions to better hunting grounds, although there’s no guarantee that the next spot is better than their previous one, Wynne said.

But the pseudoscorpions aren’t just freeloaders; they help their animal hosts by devouring parasites such as mites.

The new species were described in the November issue of the Journal of Arachnology.

Editor’s Note: This story was corrected to note that pseudoscorpions don’t have a tail and that the ancestors to the cave pseudoscorpions probably lived in a desert environment, not a sunny one.

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December 16, 2014 · 12:37 am

6,000-year-old temple with possible sacrificial altars discovered

LiveScience

By Owen Jarus

Published October 21, 2014

prehistoric-temple-ukraine-1

A temple dating back about 6,000 years has been discovered within a massive prehistoric settlement in Ukraine. (courtesy Nataliya Burdo and Mykhailo Videiko/Institute of Archaeology NAS of Ukraine, Kyiv.)

A 6,000-year-old temple holding humanlike figurines and sacrificed animal remains has been discovered within a massive prehistoric settlement in Ukraine.

Built before writing was invented, the temple is about 197 by 66 feet in size. It was a “two-story building made of wood and clay surrounded by a galleried courtyard,” the upper floor divided into five rooms, write archaeologists Nataliya Burdo and Mykhailo Videiko in a copy of a presentation they gave recently at the European Association of Archaeologists’ annual meeting in Istanbul, Turkey.

Inside the temple, archaeologists found the remains of eight clay platforms, which may have been used as altars, the finds suggested. A platform on the upper floor contains “numerous burnt bones of lamb, associated with sacrifice,” write Burdo and Videiko, of the Institute of Archaeology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. The floors and walls of all five rooms on the upper floor were “decorated by red paint, which created [a] ceremonial atmosphere.” [See Photos of the Prehistoric Temple & Animal Remains]

The ground floor contains seven additional platforms and a courtyard riddled with animal bones and pottery fragments, the researchers found.

Massive settlement

The temple, which was first detected in 2009, is located in a prehistoric settlement near modern-day Nebelivka. Recent research using geophysical survey indicates the prehistoric settlement is 588 acres, almost twice the size of the modern-day National Mall in Washington, D.C. It contained more than 1,200 buildings and nearly 50 streets.

A number of other prehistoric sites, of similar size, have been found in Ukraine and other parts of Eastern Europe. These sites are sometimes referred to as belonging to the “Trypillian” culture, a modern-day name. The name is derived from the village of Trypillia in Ukraine, where artifacts of this ancient culture were first discovered.

Archaeologists found that when this prehistoric settlement was abandoned, its structures, including the newly discovered temple, were burnt down, something that commonly occurred at other Trypillian culture sites.

Ornaments and figurines 

Fragments of figurines, some of which look similar to humans, were also found at the temple. Like findings at other Trypillian sites, some of the figurines have noses that look like beaks and eyes that are dissimilar, one being slightly larger than the other.

Ornaments made of bone and gold were also discovered at the temple. The gold ornaments are less than an inch in size and may have been worn on the hair, researchers say.

At the time the prehistoric settlement near Nebelivka flourished other early urban centers were being developed in the Middle East. And the newly discovered prehistoric temple is similar, in some ways, to temples from the fifth to fourth millennia B.C. that were built in ancient Middle East cities, such as those in Anatolia and Mesopotamia, Burdo and Videiko note.

For example a 6,000-year-old temple at the ancient city of Eridu, in modern-day Iraq, also had a floor partitioned into smaller rooms, they note.

The discovery was recently published, in Ukrainian, in the journal Tyragetia. Another paper reporting on recent research at the settlement was published recently online in the journal Antiquity.

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October 16, 2014 · 6:44 pm

Snake robots! Slithering machines could aid search-and-rescue efforts

LiveScience

By Elizabeth Palermo, Staff Writer

Published October 10, 2014

robot-snake

The Carnegie Mellon snake robot has finally mastered the art of slithering up a sandy slope. (Nico Zevallos and Chaohui Gong)

One snake’s ability to shimmy up slippery sand dunes could inspire new technologies for robots that could perform search and rescue missions, carry out inspections of hazardous wastes and even explore ancient pyramids.

A new study looked at the North American desert-dwelling sidewinder rattlesnake (Crotalus cerastes), a creature better known for its venomous bite than its graceful movements. But this snake can climb up sandy slopes without sliding back down to the bottom a feat that few snake species can accomplish.

Snakelike, or limbless, robots are intriguing to scientists for several reasons. First, their lack of legs, wheels or tracks means they don’t often get stuck in ruts or held up by bumps in their path. They could also be used to access areas that other bots can’t get to, or to explore places that aren’t safe for humans. [Biomimicry: 7 Clever Technologies Inspired by Nature]

The sidewinder shimmy

To get a closer look at their live study subjects, the researchers headed to Zoo Atlanta, where they were able to examine six sidewinder rattlesnakes. They tested the snakes on a specially designed inclined table covered with loosely packed sand.

Fifty-four trials were conducted, with each of the six snakes slithering up the sandy table nine times, three times each at varying degrees of steepness. As the snakes worked their way up the makeshift sand dune, high-speed cameras tracked their movements, taking note of exactly where their bodies came into contact with the sand as they moved upward.

The researchers found that sidewinder snakes live up to their name. The slithery creatures moved up the sandy incline in a sideways motion, with their heads pointing toward the top of the incline and the rest of their bodies moving horizontally up the slope. The researchers then looked more carefully at how sidewinders carry out these complex movements.

“The snakes tended to increase the amount of body in contact with the surface at any instant in time when they were sidewinding up the slope and the incline angle increased,” said Daniel Goldman, co-author of the study and an associate professor of biomechanics at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. Specifically, the snakes doubled the amount of their bodies touching the sand when navigating the slope, he added.

And the parts of the snake’s body that were touching the sand during the ascent never slipped back down the slope because the creature applied the right amount of force in its movements, keeping the sand under it from sliding, Goldman told Live Science.

Snake robots

To put their newfound understanding of sidewinding to good use, Goldman and his colleagues got in touch with Howie Choset, a professor at The Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Choset, who has been developing limbless robots for years, already developed a snakelike bot that performs well both in the lab and in real-life situations. However, his slithering machine has run into one particular problem during field tests.

“These guys have been making a robot sidewind for years over a wide diversity of substrates, but they had a lot of trouble on sandy slopes,” Goldman said.

To get the robot moving over sandy dunes, the researchers applied what they now know about the sidewinding rattlesnake’s patterns of movement. They programmed the robot so that more of its body would come into contact with the ground as it slides up the slope. They also applied what they had learned about force, which enables the robot to move its weight in such a way that it keeps moving upward over the sand without rolling back down the slope.

Now that Choset’s snake robot can move over tough terrain, it’ll be better equipped to handle the tasks that it was built to tackle.

“Since these robots have a narrow cross section and they’re relatively smooth, they can fit into places that people and machinery can’t otherwise access,” Choset told Live Science.

For example, these limbless robots could be used during search-and-rescue missions, since the slithery machines can crawl into a collapsed building and search for people trapped inside without disturbing the compromised structure. The snake bot could also be sent into containers that may hold dangerous substances, such as nuclear waste, to take samples and report back to hazmat specialists.

Choset also said these robotic sidewinding abilities could come in handy on archaeological sites. For instance, the robots could one day be used to explore the insides of pyramids or tombs, he said.

The research represents a key collaboration between biologists and roboticists, said Auke Ijspeert, head of the Biorobotics Laboratory at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology at Lausanne (EPFL), who was not involved in the new study.

“I think its a very exciting project which managed to contribute to the two objectives of biorobotics,” Ijspeert told Live Science.

“On one hand, they took inspiration from biology to design better control methods for the robot,” Ijspeert said. “By looking at how sidewinding takes place in a snake, especially with slopes, they found out the strategy that the animal uses and, when they tested it on the robot, it could really improve the climbing capabilities of the robot.”

The researchers also achieved the second goal of biorobotics, he said, which is to use a robot as a scientific tool. By testing the different speeds at which the robotic snake could successfully climb up the sand, the researchers were able to pinpoint exactly how fast real snakes make their way up these slippery slopes.

“It’s a nice example of how robots can help in biology and how biology can help in robotics.”

The study was published online Oct. 9 in the journal Science.

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October 10, 2014 · 7:59 pm

Mummified fetus reveals ancient surgical procedure

LiveScience

By Agata Blaszczak Boxe

Published October 03, 2014

mummified-fetus

A mummified fetus dating back to 1840 and discovered in Central Italy. (Ruggero D’Anastasio)

A 19th-century mummified fetus that underwent an ancient surgical procedure while in its mother’s womb has been discovered by researchers in Italy, according to a new report.

The procedure was apparently done when a mother’s life was in danger or the fetus had already died.

The investigators found the mummy after a devastating magnitude-6.3 earthquake occurred in L’Aquila in central Italy on April 6, 2009. The earthquake resulted in more than 300 deaths and damaged many buildings in the nearby area, including the historical St. John the Evangelist church in the village of Casentino. The floor of the church partially collapsed, exposing underground rooms holding mummified human bodies, which included the new found fetus that dates back to 1840, according to the researchers’ estimates.

When the researchers examined the fetus mummy using a radiograph, they saw a fetal skeleton that was not fully connected or articulated, which means that some of the bones were not in the exact same position to each other as they likely were when the fetus was alive. They were not able to establish the sex of the fetus, as they could not determine the morphology of its pelvic and jaw bones, which scientists use to identify sexual characteristics of skeletons. The researchers did estimate the fetus was at 29 weeks of development inside its mother’s womb. [See Photos of the Mummy Fetus and Excavation Site]

A few features of the mummy suggested that an operation had taken place. The fetus’ skull had been dissected in several places and disconnected from the spine, while its arms had been separated from the rest of the body at the joints, none of which typically occurs in the process of post-mortem examinations. All of these characteristics “strongly suggest a case of embryotomy,” which was a procedure that occurred before removing the fetus from the womb, study author Ruggero D’Anastasio of University Museum at University of Chieti, Italy, told Live Science.

This likely case of embryotomy “is the only anthropological proof of this surgical practice up to now in this geographical region,” he added.

Embryotomy was a common practice in ancient times, D’Anastasio said. The procedure was practiced in Alexandria and then in Rome during the first and second centuries, the researchers wrote in the study. Physicians typically performed it when a mother’s life was threatened due to delivery complications or when the fetus was already thought to be dead in the womb.

According to some reports, however, “embryotomy was [also] the most extreme method of abortion during the medieval period,” they wrote.

The remains of this fetus had been reassembled to match its anatomic shape, including the fragments of the skull being placed at the top of the mummy inside a headgear. The careful reassembly and dressing of the fetus indicates a high sense of compassion for the death of unborn children within the local community at the time, the researchers said.

The other human remains found at the site likely date back to the 19th century or earlier, as confirmed by a scientific method of age determination called radiocarbon dating and information gathered from personal objects. Those items include rings and rosary beads, shoes and clothes, as well as the textiles and shrouds used for wrapping the mummified bodies.

Some of the bodies had lesions from autopsy procedures, such as craniotomy, in which a bone flap is removed from the skull to access the brain, according to the report published online Aug. 12 in the International Journal of Osteoarcheology.

 

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October 6, 2014 · 11:17 pm

52-million-year-old ‘ant-loving’ beetle caught in amber

LiveScience

By Laura Geggel, Staff Writer

Published October 03, 2014

beetle-in-amber

The beetle Protoclaviger trichodens got trapped in this piece of amber in India 52 million years ago. (J. Parker | AMNH)

A newly discovered 52-million-year-old fossil of an “ant-loving” beetle is the oldest example of its species on record, and may help researchers learn more about this social parasite, a new study finds.

Like its descendants living today, the ancient beetle was likely a myrmecophile, a species that depends on ants for survival. The prehistoric beetle probably shared living quarters with ants and benefited from their hard work by eating ant eggs and taking the ants’ resources.

Other myrmecophiles include the lycaenid butterfly, which lays its eggs in carpenter ants’ nests, tricking the ants into caring for their young; and the paussine ground beetle, which also dupes ants by living alongside them as it preys on the ants’ young and workers. [The 10 Most Diabolical and Disgusting Parasites]

The beetles’ and butterflies’ shared parasitic behavior suggests that myrmecophily (ant love) is an ancient evolutionary phenomenon, the researchers said. But the fossil record of such creatures is poor, making it unclear how and when this practice arose, they added.

The amber-encased beetle, now known as Protoclaviger trichodens, and other stealth beetles began to diversify just as modern ants became more abundant in prehistoric times, the researchers found.

“Although ants are an integral part of most terrestrial ecosystems today, at the time that this beetle was walking the Earth, ants were just beginning to take off, and these beetles were right there inside the ant colonies, deceiving them and exploiting them,” beetle specialist and lead researcher Joseph Parker, a research associate at the American Museum of Natural History and postdoctoral researcher at Columbia University, said in a statement.

There are roughly 370 known beetle species that belong to the Clavigeritaegroup, myrmecophiles that are about 0.04 to 0.12 inches long. But many more myrmecophile beetles are likely awaiting discovery, Parker said.”This tells us something not just about the beetles, but also about the ants their nests were big enough and resource-rich enough to be worthy of exploitation by these super-specialized insects,” Parker explained. “And when ants exploded ecologically and began to dominate, these beetles exploded with them.”

Sneaky beetles

The beetles use a sneaky strategy to bypass the high security surrounding ant nests. Ants rely on pheromones to recognize intruders, which they then dismember and eat. In a feat that continues to mystify scientists, Clavigeritaebeetles are able to pass through this smelling system and participate in colony life. [Mind Control: See Photos of Zombie Ants]

“Adopting this lifestyle brings lots of benefits,” Parker said. “These beetles live in a climate-controlled nest that is well protected against predators, and they have access to a great deal of food, including the ants’ eggs and brood, and most remarkably, liquid food regurgitated directly to their mouths by the worker ants themselves.”

The beetles have evolved to look a certain way to reap these benefits, he said.

Clavigeritaebeetles look nothing like their close relatives. The segments within their abdomens and antennas are fused, likely to provide protection against worker ants, which are somehow tricked into carrying the beetles around the nest. Eventually, the worker ants carry the beetles to the brood galleries, where the beetles feast on eggs and larvae, Parker said.

The beetles also have recessed mouthparts, which make it easy for them to receive liquid food from worker ants. They also coat their bodies with oily secretions from brushlike glands that may encourage the ants to “adopt” them, in lieu of attacking them. But the chemical makeup of these secretions is unknown.

“If you watch one of these beetles interact inside an ant colony, you’ll see the ants running up to it and licking those brushlike structures,” Parker said.

Rare beetle find

Yet it’s rare to encounter Clavigeritaebeetles in the wild, making the new specimen which is possibly the first fossil of this group to be uncovered a valuable find.

Researchers named it Protoclaviger trichodens, from the Greek word prtos(“first”) and claviger (“club bearer”). To describe its tufts of hair, the research team used the Greek word trchas (“hair”) and the Latin word dens (“prong”).

The fossil, from the Eocene epoch (about 56 million years ago to 34 million years ago), is an amber deposit from what was once a rich rainforest in India. The body may look like that of modern Clavigeritaebeetles, but two hooklike brushes on top of its abdomen, called trichomes, give it a primitive appearance, the researchers said. Also, Protoclaviger‘s abdominal segments are still separate, unlike the fused-together segments in today’s beetles.

“Protoclaviger is a truly transitional fossil,” Parker said. “It marks a big step along the pathway that led to the highly modified social parasites we see today, and it helps us figure out the sequence of events that led to this sophisticated morphology.”

The study was published today Oct. 2 in the journal Current Biology.

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June 26, 2014 · 11:02 pm

Remains of ‘end of the world’ epidemic found in ancient Egypt

LiveScience

By Owen Jarus

Published June 17, 2014

A photograph of the tattoo found on the mummified remains of a Sudanese woman.

Archaeologists have uncovered the remains of an epidemic in Egypt so terrible that one ancient writer believed the world was coming to an end.

Working at the Funerary Complex of Harwa and Akhimenru in the west bank of the ancient city of Thebes (modern-day Luxor) in Egypt, the team of the Italian Archaeological Mission to Luxor (MAIL) found bodies covered with a thick layer of lime (historically used as a disinfectant). The researchers also found three kilns where the lime was produced, as well as a giant bonfire containing human remains, where many of the plague victims were incinerated.

 Pottery remains found in the kilns allowed researchers to date the grisly operation to the third century A.D., a time when a series of epidemics now dubbed the “Plague of Cyprian” ravaged the Roman Empire, which included Egypt. Saint Cyprian was a bishop of Carthage (a city in Tunisia) who described the plague as signaling the end of the world. [See Photos of the Remains of Plague Victims & Thebes Site]

Occurring between roughly A.D. 250-271, the plague “according to some sources killed more than 5,000 people a day in Rome alone,” wrote Francesco Tiradritti, director of the MAIL, in the latest issue of Egyptian Archaeology, a magazine published by the Egypt Exploration Society.

Tiradritti’s team uncovered the remains of this body-disposal operation between 1997 and 2012. The monument his team is excavating was originally built in the seventh century B.C. for a grand steward named Harwa. After Harwa’s death, the Egyptians continuously used the monument for burial (Akhimenru was a successor who built his own tomb there). However, after its use for body disposal during the plague, the monument was abandoned and never used again.

The use of the complex “for the disposal of infected corpses gave the monument a lasting bad reputation and doomed it to centuries of oblivion until tomb robbers entered the complex in the early 19th century,” Tiradritti writes.

End of the world
Cyprian left a gut-wrenching record of what the victims suffered before they died. “The bowels, relaxed into a constant flux, discharge the bodily strength [and] a fire originated in the marrow ferments into wounds of the fauces (an area of the mouth),” he wrote in Latin in a work called “De mortalitate.” The “intestines are shaken with a continual vomiting, [and] the eyes are on fire with the injected blood,” he wrote, adding that “in some cases the feet or some parts of the limbs are taken off by the contagion of diseased putrefaction ”

Cyprian believed that the world was coming to an end.

“The kingdom of God, beloved brethren, is beginning to be at hand; the reward of life, and the rejoicing of eternal salvation, and the perpetual gladness and possession lately lost of paradise, are now coming, with the passing away of the world ” (translation by Philip Schaff, from the book “Ante-Nicene Fathers”, volume 5, 1885).

While the world, of course, did not end, the plague weakened the Roman Empire. “It killed two Emperors, Hostilian in A.D. 251 and Claudius II Gothicus in A.D. 270,” wrote Tiradritti. It is “a generally held opinion that the ‘Plague of Cyprian’ seriously weakened the Roman Empire, hastening its fall.” [In Photos: 14th-Century ‘Black Death’ Grave Discovered]

The newly unearthed remains at Luxor underscore the plague’s potency. Tiradritti’steam found no evidence that the victims received any sort of religious rites during their incineration. “We found evidence of corpses either burned or buried inside the lime,” he told Live Science in an interview. “They had to dispose of them without losing any time.”

What caused the plague?
The plague may have been some form of smallpox or measles, accordingto modern day scientists. While the discovery of human remains associated with the plague will give anthropologists new material to study, Tiradritti cautions they will not be able to extract DNA from the bodies.

While stories about researchers extracting DNA from mummies (such as Tutankhamun) have made headlines in recent years, Tiradritti told Live Science he doesn’t believe the results from such ancient specimens. “In a climate like Egypt, the DNA is completely destroyed,” he said. DNA breaks down over time, and permafrost (something not found in Egypt) is the best place to find ancient DNA samples, Tiradritti said.

Immense monument
The discovery of the body disposal site is just one part of the team’s research. Thebes is a massive site containing a vast necropolis, and the excavations of the MAIL are providing new data that allows scholars to determine how it changed between the seventh century B.C. and today.

The funerary complex of Harwa and Akhimenru, which the MAIL has been excavating since 1995, is one of the largest private funerary monuments of Egypt. Tiradritti notes that it is considered a key monument for studying a peak period in Egyptian art known as the “Pharaonic Renaissance” that lasted from the start of the seventh century B.C. until the mid-sixth century B.C. During this time, Tiradritti notes, artists created innovative new works that were rooted in older Egyptian artistic traditions.

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June 23, 2014 · 4:35 pm

Hidden paintings revealed at ancient temple of Angkor Wat

LiveScience

By Megan Gannon

Published May 28, 2014

elephants-after

A technique called decorrelation stretch analysis, which exaggerates subtle color differences, revealed images like this one showing two elephants facing each other.Antiquity, Tan et al.

Each year, millions of visitors flock to Angkor Wat, an ancient temple in modern-day Cambodia. There, they marvel at the 900-year-old towers, a giant moat and the shallow relief sculptures of Hindu gods. But what they can’t see are 200 hidden paintings on the temple walls.

New, digitally enhanced images reveal detailed murals at Angkor Wat showing elephants, deities, boats, orchestral ensembles and people riding horses all invisible to the naked eye.

Many of the faded markings could be graffiti left behind by pilgrims after Angkor Wat was abandoned in the 15th century. But the more elaborate paintings may be relics of the earliest attempts to restore the temple, researchers said. [See Photos of Angkor Wat’s Secret Paintings]

Painting discovery
Subtle traces of paint caught the eye of Noel Hidalgo Tan, a rock-art researcher at Australian National University in Canberra, while he was working on an excavation at Angkor Wat in 2010.

‘Another set of paintings discovered from this study are so schematic and elaborate that they are likely not random graffiti, but an attempt to decorate the walls of the temple.’- Rock-art researcher Noel Hidalgo Tan

Built between A.D. 1113 and 1150, Angkor Wat stood at the center of Angkor, the capital of the Khmer Empire. The 500-acre complex, one of the largest religious monuments ever erected, originally served as a Hindu temple dedicated to the god Vishnu, but was transformed into a Buddhist temple in the 14th century.

Tan said he kept spotting traces of red pigment all over the walls when he was taking a stroll through the temple on his lunch break one day. He took a few pictures and planned to digitally enhance them later.

“I didn’t realize that the images would be so detailed, so I was naturally taken aback,” Tan told Live Science in an email.

The digitally enhanced pictures revealed paintings of elephants, lions, the Hindu monkey god Hanuman, boats and buildings perhaps even images of Angkor Wat itself. Tan went back to the site to conduct a more methodical survey in 2012 with his Cambodian colleagues from APSARA (which stands for the Authority for the Protection and Management of Angkor and the Region of Siem Reap).

Invisible images
“Some of the most detailed paintings, the ones located at the top of the temple, are passed by literally thousands of visitors every day, but the most elaborate scenes are effectively invisible to the naked eye,” Tan said in an email.

To make these paintings visible, Tan used a technique called decorrelation stretch analysis, which exaggerates subtle color differences. This method has become a valuable tool in rock-art research, as it can help distinguish faint images from the underlying rock. It has even been used to enhance images taken of the Martian surface by NASA’s Opportunity rover.

One chamber in the highest tier of Angkor Wat’s central tower, known as the Bakan, contains an elaborate scene of a traditional Khmer musical ensemble known as the pinpeat, which is made up of different gongs, xylophones, wind instruments and other percussion instruments. In the same chamber, there’s an intricate scene featuring people riding horses between two structures, which might be temples. [Image Gallery: How Technology Reveals Hidden Art Treasures]

“A lot of the visible paintings on the walls have been previously discounted as graffiti, and I certainly agree with this interpretation, but there are another set of paintings discovered from this study that are so schematic and elaborate that they are likely not random graffiti, but an attempt to decorate the walls of the temple,” Tan said.

Christophe Pottier, an archaeologist and co-director of the Greater Angkor Project who was not involved in the new study, agreed that these more complex murals show deliberate intention and can’t be interpreted as mere graffiti.

Pottier, however, added that the discovery of hidden paintings isn’t all that surprising. Though they haven’t been studied systematically before now, several traces of paintings have been found at the temple during the last 15 years.

“But I am very pleased, because the traces identified are quite diverse,lively and original,” Pottier said. Most of the paintings that were previously known depicted boats and floral and geometric designs, Pottier told Live Science in an email.

Though researchers don’t know exactly when the paintings were created, Tan speculated that the most elaborate artworks may have been commissioned by Cambodia’s King Ang Chan, who made an effort to restore the temple during his reign between 1528 and 1566. During this time, unfinished carvings were completed and Angkor Wat began its transformation into a Buddhist pilgrimage site. Some of the newly revealed paintings have Buddhist iconography, such as a painting of a temple that looks like a Buddhist mound-like monument known as a stupa.

The findings were detailed in the journal Antiquity this week.

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April 18, 2014 · 12:06 pm

Ancient puppy paw prints found on Roman tiles

Ancient puppy paw prints found on Roman tiles

LiveScience

By Megan Gannon

Published April 18, 2014

A dog pushed its paws into this ancient Roman tile before it could dry.Adam Slater, Wardell Armstrong Archaeology

The paw prints and hoof prints of a few meddlesome animals have been preserved for posterity on ancient Roman tiles recently discovered by archaeologists in England.

“They are beautiful finds, as they represent a snapshot, a single moment in history,” said Nick Daffern, a senior project manager with Wardell Armstrong Archaeology. “It is lovely to imagine some irate person chasing a dog or some other animal away from their freshly made tiles.”

 The artifacts, which could be nearly 2,000 years old,were found in the Blackfriars area of Leicester, the English city where the long-lost bones of King Richard III were discovered under a parking lot in 2012. Wardell Armstrong Archaeology was brought in to dig at a site where a construction company plans to build student housing.

Photos: Animal prints on ancient Roman tiles

At least one of the tiles is tainted with dog paw prints, and one is marked with the hoof prints of a sheep or a goat that trampled on the clay before it was dry.

“My initial thought was that it must have been very difficult being a Roman tile manufacturer with these animal incursions going on all the time,” Philip Briggs, another Wardell Armstrong archaeologist, told Live Science in an email.

The tiles were found in layers of rubble that had been laid down as a hard base for subsequent floors, but the artifacts’ original context is unclear, Daffern said.

“We don’t know if the tiles were originally part of an earlier building or were bought in from elsewhere specifically to raise and stabilize ground,” Daffern told Live Science in an email.

Leicester was the stronghold of an Iron Age group known as the Corieltauvi tribe, and it remained an important city after the Roman conquest of Britain in the first century A.D., as it was located along the Fosse Way, a Roman road that connected southwestern England with the East Midlands.

The excavators say that, in addition to the animal-printed tiles, they’ve uncovered Roman tweezers, brooches, coins and painted wall plaster. They’ve also unearthed traces of a large Roman building perhaps a basilica, with a peristyle, or columned porch that was largely robbed of its masonry during the medieval era for other construction projects.

The archaeologists even discovered late Iron Age artifacts, such as several fragments of clay molds that the Corieltauvi tribe likely used to make coins before the Roman rule. Daffern said it’s rare to find sites with coin molds, given how closely managed coin production would have been during the Iron Age.

“I think the excavation thus far has significantly multiplied the number of coin mold fragments recovered from Leicester, probably by approximately tenfold,” Daffern said in an email.

The excavation is funded by construction company Watkin Jones. The archaeologists are providing updates on Wardell Armstrong Archaeology’s blog.

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October 19, 2013 · 4:00 pm

Ancient 4-eyed, mega-clawed creature had spider brain

Ancient 4-eyed, mega-clawed creature had spider brain

By Denise Chow

Published October 17, 2013

LiveScience
  • mega-claw creature.jpg

    A close-up of the head region of the Alalcomenaeus fossil specimen with the superimposed colors of a microscopy technique revealing the distribution of chemical elements in the fossil. Copper shows up as blue, iron as magenta and the CT scans as green. The coincidence of iron and CT denote nervous system. The creature boasted two pairs of eyes (ball-shaped structures at the top). (N. STRAUSFELD/UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA)

  • fossil-nervous-system

    This illustration shows the nervous systems of the Alalcomenaeus fossil (left), a larval horseshoe crab (middle) and a scorpion (right). Diagnostic features that reveal the evolutionary relationships among these animals include the forward posi (N. STRAUSFELD/UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA)

The discovery of a fossilized brain in the preserved remains of an extinct “mega-clawed” creature has revealed an ancient nervous system that is remarkably similar to that of modern-day spiders and scorpions, according to a new study.

The fossilized Alalcomenaeus is a type of arthropod known as a megacheiran (Greek for “large claws”) that lived approximately 520 million years ago, during a period known as the Lower Cambrian. The creature was unearthed in the fossil-rich Chengjiang formation in southwest China.

Researchers studied the fossilized brain, the earliest known complete nervous system, and found similarities between the extinct creature’s nervous system and the nervous systems of several modern arthropods, which suggest they may be ancestrally related. [Photos of Clawed Arthropod & Other Strange Cambrian Creatures]

The arthropod family
Living arthropods are commonly separated into two major groups: chelicerates, which include spiders, horseshoe crabs and scorpions, and a group that includes insects, crustaceans and millipedes. The new findings shed light on the evolutionary processes that may have given rise to modern arthropods, and also provide clues about where these extinct mega-clawed creatures fit in the tree of life.

“We now know that the megacheirans had central nervous systems very similar to today’s horseshoe crabs and scorpions,” senior author Nicholas Strausfeld, a professor in the department of neuroscience at the University of Arizona in Tucson, said in a statement. “This means the ancestors of spiders and their kin lived side by side with the ancestors of crustaceans in the Lower Cambrian.”

The newly identified creature measures a little over an inch long (3 centimeters), and has a segmented body with about a dozen pairs of attached limbs that enabled it to swim or crawl.

“Up front, it has a long pair of appendages that have scissorlike components basically an elbow with scissors on the end,” Strausfeld told LiveScience. “These are really weird appendages, and there has been a long debate about what they are and what they correspond to in modern animals.”

Previously, researchers suggested megacheirans were related to chelicerates, since the extinct creature’s scissorlike claws and the fangs of spiders and scorpions have similar structures, said Greg Edgecombe, a researcher at the Natural History Museum in London, England.

“They both have an ‘elbow joint’ in the same place, and they both have a similar arrangement of a fixed and movable finger at the tip,” Edgecombe told LiveScience. “Because of these similarities, one of the main theories for what ‘great appendage arthropods’ are is that they were related to chelicerates. Thus, our findings from the nervous system gave an injection of new data to support an existing theory.”

Fossilized brain images
The researchers used CT scans to make 3D reconstructions of features of the fossilized nervous system. The scientists also used laser-scanning technology to map the distribution of chemical elements, such as iron and copper, in the specimen in order to outline different neural structures.

Though finding a well-preserved ancient nervous system is rare, the new study highlights the potential for similar discoveries, the researchers said.

“Finding ancient preservation of neural tissue allows us to analyzeextinct animals using the same tools we use for living animals,” Edgecombe said. “It suggests there should be more examples out there.”

About a year ago, Edgecombe and his colleagues found a different fossilized brain that revealed unexpected similarity to the brains of modern crustaceans.

“Our new find is exciting because it shows that mandibulates (to which crustaceans belong) and chelicerates were already present as two distinct evolutionary trajectories 520 million years ago, which means their common ancestor must have existed much deeper in time,” Strausfeld said in a statement. “We expect to find fossils of animals that have persisted from more ancient times, and I’m hopeful we will one day find the ancestral type of both the mandibulate and chelicerate nervous system ground patterns. They had to come from somewhere. Now the search is on.”

The detailed findings of the study were published online Wednesday in the journal Nature.

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May 30, 2013 · 5:23 am

King Richard III buried in hasty grave, archaeologists find

King Richard III buried in hasty grave, archaeologists find

By Stephanie Pappas

Published May 27, 2013

LiveScience

  • king-richard-skull

    The skull of the skeleton found at the Grey Friars excavation in Leicester, potentially that of King Richard III. (University of Leicester)

The body of King Richard III was buried in great haste, a new study finds perhaps because the medieval monarch’s corpse had been out for three days in the summer sun.

The new research is the first academic paper published on the discovery of Richard III, which was publically announced in February 2013. A team of archaeologists from the University of Leicester found the body beneath a parking lot in Leicester that was once the site of a medieval church. The full study was available online Friday, May 24.

The archaeological analysis contains details only alluded to in the initial announcement of the findings. In particular, the archaeologists found that Richard III’s grave was dug poorly and probably hastily, a sharp contrast to the neat rectangular graves otherwise found in the church where the king was laid to rest. [Gallery: The Discovery of Richard III]

Richard III’s journey to Leicester
Richard III ruled England from 1483 to 1485, when he was killed during the Battle of Bosworth Field, the definitive fight in the War of the Roses.

‘Richards damaged body had already been on public display for several days in the height of summer, and was thus in poor condition.’

– A team of archaeologists from the University of Leicester 

Historical records reveal that after the battle, Richard’s body was stripped and brought to Leicester, where it remained on public display for three days until burial on August 25, 1485. The church where the body was interred, a Franciscan friary called Grey Friars, was eventually demolished around 1538. A former mayor of Leicester built a mansion on the site, but by the 1700s, the land had been subdivided and sold off, the location of the church lost.

With it went all memory of where one of England’s most famous kings was buried. Richard III was immortalized by a Shakespeare play of the same name and made out to be a villain by the Tudor dynasty that followed his rule. Today, however, there are societies of Richard III enthusiasts called Richardians who defend the dead king’s honor. One of these Richardians, a screenwriter named Philippa Langley, spearheaded the excavation that discovered Richard III’s body.

Digging for Richard
The new paper, published in the journal Antiquity, outlines how archaeologists dug three trenches in a city government parking lot, hoping to hit church buildings they knew had once stood in the area. They soon found evidence of the friary they were looking for: first, a chapter house with stone benches and diamond-pattern floor tiles. This chapter house would have been used for daily monastery meetings.

South of the chapter houses, the excavation revealed a well-worn cloister walk, or covered walkway. Finally, the researchers found the church building itself. The church was about 34 feet wide. It had been demolished, but the floors (and the graves in the floor) were left intact. Among the rubble were decorated tiles and copper alloy letters that likely once marked the graves.

Brick dust suggested the outer church walls may have been covered with a brick faade, which would have created a striking red-and-white look with the church’s limestone-framed windows, the researchers wrote.

A hasty grave
Most of the graves in the Grey Friars church floor are neat and orderly, with squared-off rectangle sides. Richard III’s is an exception. The grave is irregularly shaped, with sloping sides. It was also too small for the 5-foot-8-inch skeleton interred within: Richard’s torso is twisted and his head propped up rather than laid flat. The body was also crammed against the north wall of the grave, perhaps because someone stood against the south wall to guide the body into its resting place. Whoever it was did not spend time afterward rearranging the body into a more symmetrical position.

“The haste may partially be explained by the fact that Richards damaged body had already been on public display for several days in the height of summer, and was thus in poor condition,” the researchers wrote.

There was no coffin in the grave, and likely no shroud, judging by the loose position of the skeleton’s limbs. However, the corpse’s hands were crossed and perhaps tied in front of him.

The study also delineates the 10 injuries on the corpse’s skeleton. Most are likely battle wounds, including two fatal blows to the back of the head. Two wounds on the face, one to the ribs and one to the buttock were likely delivered post-mortem, after Richard III was stripped of his armor, the researchers wrote. These “humiliation wounds” may have been designed to disrespect the king in death.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/05/27/battle-bruised-king-richard-iii-buried-in-hasty-grave/?intcmp=obinsite#ixzz2Ul5EP0MW

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