Paleontology news

A comet impact didn't set off a 1,300-year cold snap that wiped out most life in North America about 12,900 years ago, scientists say. Though no one disputes the occurrence of the frigid period, known as the Younger Dryas, more and more researchers have been unable to confirm a 2007 finding that says a collision triggered the change.

The 2007 research was based on a combination of archaeological artifacts and extraterrestrial magnetic grains in soil samples found in a thin layer of sediment throughout North America.

The original team, led by Richard Firestone, a nuclear chemist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, also found what he said are traces of charcoal and microscopic bits of carbon from intense fires ignited by the collision.

However new research, presented at a meeting of the Geological Society of America this week in Portland, Oregon, has taken aim at all of these findings.

Wetlands and Mini-Meteorites

Nicholas Pinter, a geologist at Southern Illinois University, argued that black mats described as charcoal in the 2007 research weren't actually charcoal.

Instead they were from ancient, dark soil formed in a long-ago wetland, Pinter said.

"It's a misunderstanding of what these layers represent."

Likewise, the small amounts of carbon "are not uniquely associated with high-intensity fire," he said.

As for the magnetic grains, they may well have come from outer space, he said.

But the grains are likely from the 30,000 tons of tiny meteorites that fall to Earth each year. He found such grains in equal or greater concentrations at many other layers dating to other time periods.

Evolution of Style

Vance Holliday, an archaeologist at the University of Arizona, added that there is no sign that the demise of the Clovis culture was caused by a comet crash.

Around the time of the cold snap, the style of spearpoints changed—which Firestone and colleagues argued was evidence that the Clovis peoples had declined due to the comet impact.

But Holliday said it reflects a normal evolution in preference. He compared spearpoint designs to the appearance—and disappearance—of tail fins on classic automobiles.

"We really don't know what style means in the archaeological record," he said. Tastes "come and go. We don't know why."

But "an extraterrestrial impact is an unnecessary solution for an archaeological problem that doesn't exist."

Sticking to His Guns

Firestone, the original proponent of the comet theory, is sticking to his guns.

Though no one can prove the Clovis disappeared, the total number of spearpoints plummeted after the impact, he said by email.

Likewise, other research has shown a gap of more than a hundred years between the Clovis and the ensuing Folsom culture, Firestone pointed out.

As for the other evidence, the comet-impact layer is very thin, he told Australia's Cosmos Magazine, and is easy to miss if samples are diluted with soils from adjacent layers.

University of Southern Illinois' Pinter is also wrong about the charcoal and carbon fragments, he added. These substances are not widespread as soil would be, and are found only in a narrow band of sediment.

In addition, the magnetic grains are not the same composition as what's found in typical tiny meteorites, he added.

credited to news.nationalgeographic.com

The tiniest dinosaur in North America weighed less than a teacup Chihuahua, a new study says.

Seen above as an artist's reconstruction in front of a Tyrannosaurus rex skull at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County in California, the agile Fruitadens haagarorum was just 28 inches (70 centimeters) long and weighed less than two pounds (one kilogram).

The diminutive dinosaur likely darted among the legs of larger plant-eaters such as Brachiosaurus and predators such as Allosaurus about 150 million years ago, during the late Jurassic period.

Parts of the skulls, vertebrae, arms, and legs from four F. haagarorum specimens were found in the 1970s in Colorado and later stored at the Natural History Museum.

A recent analysis of the fossil leg bones showed not only that the dinosaur is a new species but that the largest of the specimens are full-grown adults.

The discovery knocks Albertonykus borealis, a chicken-size dinosaur identified in 2008, off its pedestal as the tiniest North American dinosaur

The newfound dinosaur also had an unusual combination of teeth for a reptile: canine-like teeth in the front of its jaws and molar-shaped teeth along its cheeks, according to the October 21 study, which appears in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

This arrangement and the creature's small stature mean it's likely that F. haagarorum ate plants, eggs, and insects.

The tiny dinosaur was found in Colorado's fossil-rich Fruita Paleontological Area. To find such an unexpected species in a well-studied area suggests it's "still possible to discover completely unique and remarkable [fossil] species," study leader Richard Butler, of the Bavarian State Collection for Paleontology in Munich, Germany, said in a statement.

"If dinosaur ecosystems were that diverse, who knows what astonishing beasts are waiting for us to discover?"

credited to news.nationalgeographic.com

In an article published in the open-access, peer-reviewed journal PLoS ONE on October 21, 2009, 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 archeological 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. Scientists as far back as Charles Darwin have thought that adaptation to grassland environments profoundly influenced the course of human evolution. This idea has remained well-entrenched, even with recent recognition that hominin origins took place in a woodland environment and that the adaptive landscape in Africa fluctuated dramatically in response to short-term climatic shifts.

During the critical time period between 3 and 1.5 million years ago, the origin of lithic technology and archeological sites, the evolution of Homo and Paranthropus, selection for endurance running, and novel thermoregulatory adaptations to hot, dry environments in H. erectus have all been linked to increasingly open environments in Africa.

However, ecosystems in which grassland prevails have not been documented in the geological record of Pliocene hominin evolution, so it has been unclear whether open habitats were even available to hominins, and, if so, whether hominins utilized them. In their new study, Plummer and colleagues provide the first documentation of both at the 2-million-year-old Oldowan archeological site of Kanjera South, Kenya, which has yielded both Oldowan artifacts and well-preserved faunal remains, allowing researchers to reconstruct past ecosystems.

The researchers report chemical analyses of ancient soils and mammalian teeth, as well as other faunal data, from the ~2.0-million-year-old archeological sites at Kanjera South, located in western Kenya. The principal collaborating institutions of the Kanjera project are QueensCollege of the City University of New York, the Smithsonian Institution's Human Origins Program, and the NationalMuseums of Kenya. The findings demonstrate that the recently excavated archeological sites that preserve Oldowan tools, the oldest-known type of stone technolog y, were located in a grassland-dominated ecosystem during the crucial time period.

The study documents what was previously speculated based on indirect evidence – that grassland-dominated ecosystems did, in fact, exist during the Plio-Pleistocene (ca. 2.5-1.5 million years ago) and that early human tool-makers were active in open settings. Other recent research shows that the Kanjera hominins obtained meat and bone marrow from a variety of animals and that they carried stone raw materials over surprisingly long distances in this grassland setting. A comparison with other Oldowan sites shows that by 2.0 million years ago, hominins, almost certainly of the genus Homo, lived in a wide range of habitats in East Africa, from open grassland to woodland and dry forest.

Plummer and colleagues conclude that early Homo was flexible in its habitat use and that the ability to find resources in both open and wooded habitats was a key part of its adaptation. This strongly contrasts with the habitat usage of older species of Australopithecus and appears to signify an important shift in early humans' use of the landscape.

credited to Public Library of Science

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. These remarkable findings have been made public by the Greek government after the start of a five year collaborative project involving the Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and The University of Nottingham.

As a Mycenaean town the site offers potential new insights into the workings of Mycenaean society. Pavlopetri has added importance as it was a maritime settlement from which the inhabitants coordinated local and long distance trade.

The Pavlopetri Underwater Archaeology Project aims to establish exactly when the site was occupied, what it was used for and through a systematic study of the geomorphology of the area, how the town became submerged.

This summer the team carried out a detailed digital underwater survey and study of the structural remains, which until this year were thought to belong to the Mycenaean period — around 1600 to 1000 BC. The survey surpassed all their expectations. Their investigations revealed another 150 square metres of new buildings as well as ceramics that suggest the site was occupied throughout the Bronze Age — from at least 2800 BC to 1100 BC.

The work is being carried out by a multidisciplinary team led by Mr Elias Spondylis, Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture in Greece and Dr Jon Henderson, an underwater archaeologist from the Department of Archaeology at The University of Nottingham.

Dr Jon Henderson said: "This site is unique in that we have almost the complete town plan, the main streets and domestic buildings, courtyards, rock-cut tombs and what appear to be religious buildings, clearly visible on the seabed. Equally as a harbour settlement, the study of the archaeological material we have recovered will be extremely important in terms of revealing how maritime trade was conducted and managed in the Bronze Age."

Possibly one of the most important discoveries has been the identification of what could be a megaron — a large rectangular great hall — from the Early Bronze Age period. They have also found over 150 metres of new buildings including what could be the first example of a pillar crypt ever discovered on the Greek mainland. Two new stone built cist graves were also discovered alongside what appears to be a Middle Bronze Age pithos burial.

Mr Spondylis said: "It is a rare find and it is significant because as a submerged site it was never re-occupied and therefore represents a frozen moment of the past."

The Archaeological Co-ordinator Dr Chrysanthi Gallou a postdoctoral research fellow at The University of Nottingham is an expert in Aegean Prehistory and the archaeology of Laconia.

Dr Gallou said: "The new ceramic finds form a complete and exceptional corpus of pottery covering all sub-phases from the Final Neolithic period (mid 4th millennium BC) to the end of the Late Bronze Age (1100 BC). In addition, the interest from the local community in Laconia has been fantastic. The investigation at Pavlopetri offers a great opportunity for them to be actively involved in the preservation and management of the site, and subsequently for the cultural and touristic development of the wider region."

The team was joined by Dr Nicholas Flemming, a marine geo-archaeologist from the Institute of Oceanography at the University of Southampton, who discovered the site in 1967 and returned the following year with a team from Cambridge University to carry out the first ever survey of the submerged town. Using just snorkels and tape measures they produced a detail plan of the prehistoric town which consisted of at least 15 separate buildings, courtyards, streets, two chamber tombs and at least 37 cist graves. Despite the potential international importance of Pavlopetri no further work was carried out at the site until this year.

This year, through a British School of Archaeology in Athens permit, The Pavlopetri Underwater Archaeology Project began its five year study of the site with the aim of defining the history and development of Pavlopetri.

Four more fieldwork seasons are planned before their research is published in full in 2014.

credited to University of Nottingham

The ministry said the lake, found 12 meters below ground at the San al-Hagar archaeological site in Egypt's eastern Nile Delta, was 15 meters long and 12 meters wide and built out of limestone blocks. It was in a good condition.

It was the second sacred lake found at Tanis, which became the northern capital of ancient Egypt in the 21st pharaonic dynasty, over 3,000 years ago. The first lake at the site was found in 1928, the ministry said.

The goddess Mut, sometimes depicted as a vulture, was the wife of Amun, god of wind and the breath of life. She was also mother of the moon god Khonsu.

credited to reuters.com

Contestants on TV shows like Top Chef and Hell's Kitchen know that their meat-cutting skills will be scrutinized by a panel of unforgiving judges. Now, new archaeological evidence is getting the same scrutiny by scientists at Tel Aviv University and the University of Arizona. Their research is providing new clues about how, where and when our communal habits of butchering meat developed, and they're changing the way anthropologists, zoologists and archaeologists think about our evolutionary development, economics and social behaviors through the millennia.

Presented in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, new finds unearthed at Qesem Cave in Israel suggest that during the late Lower Paleolithic period (between 400,000 and 200,000 years ago), people hunted and shared meat differently than they did in later times. Instead of a prey's carcass being prepared by just one or two persons resulting in clear and repeated cutting marks –– the forefathers of the modern butcher ― cut marks on ancient animal bones suggest something else.

Different rules of the game

"The cut marks we are finding are both more abundant and more randomly oriented than those observed in later times, such as the Middle and Upper Paleolithic periods," says Prof. Avi Gopher of TAU's Department of Archaeology. "What this could mean is that either one person from the clan butchered the group's meat in a few episodes over time, or multiple persons hacked away at it in tandem," he interprets. This finding provides clues as to social organization and structures in these early groups of hunters and gatherers, he adds.

Among human hunters in the past 200,000 years, from southern Africa to upstate New York or sub-arctic Canada, "there are distinctive patterns of how people hunt, who owns the products of the hunt, how carcasses are butchered and shared," Prof. Gopher says. "The rules of sharing are one of the basic organizing principles of hunter-gatherer cultures. From 200,000 years ago to the present day, the patterns of meat-sharing and butchering run in a long clear line. But in the Qesem Cave, something different was happening. There was a distinct shift about 200,000 years ago, and archaeologists and anthropologists may have to reinterpret hunting and meat-sharing rituals."

Meat-sharing practices, Prof. Gopher says, can tell present-day archaeologists about who was in a camp, how people dealt with danger and how societies were organized. "The basic logic of butchering large animals has not changed for a long time. Everyone knows how to deal with the cuts of meat, and we see cut marks on bones that are very distinctive and similar, matching even those of modern butchers. It's the more random slash marks on the bones in Qesem that suggests something new."

Where's the beef?

The Qesem Cave finds demonstrate that man was at the top of the food chain during this period, but that they shared the meat differently than their later cousins. The Tel Aviv University excavators and Prof. Mary Stiner of the University of Arizona (Tucson) hypothesize that the Qesem Cave people hunted cooperatively. After the hunt, they carried the highest-quality body parts of their prey back to the cave, where the meat was cut using stone-blade tools and then cooked on the fire.

"We believe this reflects a different way of butchering and sharing. More than one person was doing the job, and it fits our expectations of a less formal structure of cooperation," says Prof. Gopher. "The major point here is that around 200,000 years ago or before, there was a change in behavior. What does it mean? Time and further excavations may tell."

Qesem, which means "magic" in Hebrew, was discovered seven miles east of Tel Aviv about nine years ago during highway construction. It is being excavated on behalf of TAU's Department of Archaeology by Prof. Avi Gopher and Dr. Ran Barkai in collaboration with an international group of experts. The cave contains the remains of animal bones dating back to 400,000 years ago. Most of the remains are from fallow deer, others from wild ancestors of horse, cattle, pig, and even some tortoise. The data that this dig provides has been invaluable: Until now there was considerable speculation as to whether or not people from the late Lower Paleolithic era were able to hunt at all, or whether they were reduced to scavenging, the researchers say.

credited to American Friends of Tel Aviv University

If it were still alive today, the largest snake ever known to have lived would feel right at home in South America's tropical rain forests. That's because the modern ecosystem contains many of the same plants that grew in the massive serpent's home turf some 60 million years ago, according to a new study detailing the earliest known "modern" rain forest.

Many of the newfound plant fossils are of palm, legume, and flowering species that still dominate South America's rain forests, said study team member Scott Wing, a paleontologist at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.

"That was kind of surprising," Wing said. "What we're seeing here is the first modern rain forest that we have any record of."

Forest Recovery

Based on the fossil leaves, scientists think Titanoboa's rain forest was a few degrees warmer and contained fewer plant species than the modern version.

This lower diversity could be evidence that the ancient forests were still recovering from the catastrophic event that killed off the dinosaurs some five million years earlier, the scientists say.

The team thinks a dino-killer asteroid may have struck several hundred miles away from Colombia, in what is now Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula. Such an impact could have triggered forest fires and worldwide climate change.

In fact, pollen fossils from before the impact show that South America's dino-era forests were dramatically different from the tropical rain forests Titanoboa called home.

The plant species that existed alongside the world's largest snake were so successful that many of them survived to the modern day.

credited to news.nationalgeographic.com

The volcanic explosion that obliterated much of the island that might have inspired the legend of Atlantis apparently triggered a tsunami that traveled hundreds of miles to reach as far as present-day Israel, scientists now suggest.

The new findings about this past tsunami could shed light on the destructive potential of future disasters, researchers added.

The islands that make up the small circular archipelago of Santorini, roughly 120 miles (200 km) southeast of Greece, are what remain of what once was a single island, before one of the largest volcanic eruptions in human antiquity shattered it in the Bronze Age some time between 1630 B.C. to 1550 B.C.

Speculation has abounded as to whether the Santorini eruption inspired the legend of Atlantis, which Plato said drowned in the ocean. Although the isle is often regarded as just an invention, the explosion might have given rise to the story of a lost empire by helping to wipe out the real-life Minoan civilization that once dominated the Mediterranean, from which the myth of the bull-headed 'minotaur' comes.

The primary means by which the eruption potentially wreaked havoc on the Minoan civilization is by the giant tsunami it would have triggered. However, the precise effects of this eruption and killer wave have been a mystery for decades.

Now scientists find the tsunami may have been powerful enough to race some 600 miles (1,000 km) from Santorini to reach the farthest eastern shores of the Mediterranean, leaving behind a layer of debris more than a foot thick by the coast of Israel.

Researchers dove as far as 65 feet deep (20 meters) off the coast of Caesarea in Israel to collect tubes of sediment, or cores, more than 6 feet long (2 meters) from the seabed.

"The work resembles a construction site with pneumatic hammers, heavy weights, floats to counter-weight equipment, hoses — Each time we took the system down it took hours of surface preparation, planning, and discussion," said researcher Beverly Goodman, a marine geoarchaeologist at Interuniversity Institute for Marine Sciences at Eilat, Israel.

Within the cores, they found evidence of up to nearly 16 inches of sediment deposited roughly about the date of the Santorini eruption. The range of sizes of the particles making up this deposit is the kind one might find laid down by a tsunami — storms, in comparison, cannot kick up the seafloor as much, and as such the range of particle sizes they generate is more limited.

The discovery was very much an accident, Goodman noted. They were actually researching the demise of the harbor of ancient Caesarea, the cause of which remains hotly debated, with culprits including earthquakes and tsunamis.

"I was testing how two later Roman and Byzantine tsunami deposits could be characterized by studying the different grain sizes — various sand, pebbles, rocks, ceramic pieces — in the deposit. Based on determining this 'signature,' I then noticed that there were more than the expected number of tsunami deposits," she explained. "I had no expectation that remnants of the Santorini event would be present in the cores."

These findings support the idea that the Santorini eruption and the side effects from it, such as the tsunami, were massive.

"In the case of the eastern Mediterranean, there seems to be a surprising dearth of archaeological sites along the coastline following the Santorini eruption event," Goodman said. Either archaeologists have failed to concentrate on this time span, "which isn't the case," she said, or the tsunami had a very real impact on coastal settlements.

The dramatic changes in life triggered by the tsunami "might have been part of the fabric of the Atlantis story," Goodman added. "The network of sea-based trade was rather sophisticated in that period, and colonies that were nearly solely dependent on those trade routes existed. It is hard to imagine that such a far-reaching disaster didn't cause them severe shortages in supplies, wealth and power."

Although Atlantis itself "is a myth and legend, it is informative about the experiences of the ancients," Goodman said. "It may very well be the case that those passing the story on had heard of or witnessed events in which coastal buildings went underwater because of earthquakes; beachfront towns were flooded during tsunamis; islands were created by underwater volcanic activity. There may be that grain of truth that lent legitimacy and a certain reality to the legend of Atlantis."

To better reconstruct the Santorini tsunami, the scientists plan to analyze deposits closer to the eruption, such as on Crete and in western parts of Turkey. Knowing the potential effect of tsunamis could be critical for the coastal planning and management, Goodman said, adding that the eastern Mediterranean is very highly populated and possesses considerable sensitive infrastructure such as power stations.

"I suppose there is always the question of whether I think another tsunami will occur in the eastern Med," Goodman said. "The answer is yes. I actually checked the elevation of the house I am moving to near Caesarea before agreeing to move there."

credited to livescience.com

A rare and surprising archaeological discovery at Tel Dor: A gemstone engraved with the portrait of Alexander the Great was uncovered during excavations by an archaeological team directed by Dr. Ayelet Gilboa of the University of Haifa and Dr. Ilan Sharon of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. "Despite its miniature dimensions – the stone is less than a centimeter high and its width is less than half a centimeter – the engraver was able to depict the bust of Alexander on the gem without omitting any of the ruler's characteristics" notes Dr. Gilboa, Chair of the Department of Archaeology at the University of Haifa. "The emperor is portrayed as young and forceful, with a strong chin, straight nose and long curly hair held in place by a diadem." The Tel Dor researchers have noted that it is surprising that a work of art such as this would be found in Israel, on the periphery of the Hellenistic world. "It is generally assumed that the master artists – such as the one who engraved the image of Alexander on this particular gemstone – were mainly employed by the leading Hellenistic courts in the capital cities, such as those in Alexandria in Egypt and Seleucia in Syria. This new discovery is evidence that local elites in secondary centers, such as Tel Dor, appreciated superior objects of art and could afford ownership of such items" the researchers stated.

The significance of the discovery at Dor is in the gemstone being uncovered in an orderly excavation, in a proper context of the Hellenistic period. The origins of most Alexander portraits, scattered across numerous museums around the world, are unknown. Some belonged to collections that existed even prior to the advent of scientific archaeology, others were acquired on the black market, and it is likely that some are even forgeries.

This tiny gem was unearthed by a volunteer during excavation of a public structure from the Hellenistic period in the south of Tel Dor, excavated by a team from the University of Washington at Seattle headed by Prof. Sarah Stroup. Dr. Jessica Nitschke, professor of classical archaeology at Georgetown University in Washington DC, identified the engraved motif as a bust of Alexander the Great. This has been confirmed by Prof. Andrew Stewart of the University of California at Berkeley, an expert on images of Alexander and author of a book on this topic.

Alexander was probably the first Greek to commission artists to depict his image – as part of a personality cult that was transformed into a propaganda tool. Rulers and dictators have implemented this form of propaganda ever since. The artists cleverly combined realistic elements of the ruler's image along with the classical ideal of beauty as determined by Hellenistic art, royal attributes (the diadem in this case), and divine elements originating in Hellenistic and Eastern art. These attributes legitimized Alexander's kingship in the eyes of his subjects in all the domains he conquered. These portraits were distributed throughout the empire, were featured on statues and mosaics in public places and were engraved on small items such as coins and seals. The image of Alexander remained a popular motif in the generations that followed his death – both as an independent theme and as a subject of emulation. The conqueror's youthful image became a symbol of masculinity, heroism and divine kingship. Later Hellenist rulers adopted these characteristics and commissioned self-portraits in the image of Alexander.

Dor was a major port city on the Mediterranean shore from the Middle Bronze Age (2000-1550 B.C.E) until the establishment of Caesarea during the Roman period. Alexander the Great passed through Dor in 332 B.C.E., following the occupation of Tyre and on his way to Egypt. It seems that the city submitted to Alexander without resistance. Dor then remained a center of Hellenization in the land of Israel until it was conquered by Alexander Janneus, Hasmonean king of Judah (c. 100 B.C.E.).

The team of archaeologists has been excavating at Tel Dor for close to thirty years and recently completed the 2009 excavation season. A number of academic institutions in Israel and abroad participate in the excavations, directed by Dr. Ayelet Gilboa of the University of Haifa and Dr. Ilan Sharon of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The project is supported by these two institutions along with the Israel Exploration Society, the Berman foundation for Biblical Archaeology, the Zinman Institute of Archaeology, the Wendy Goldhirsh Foundation, USA, and individual donors. The gemstone will be on public display at the Dor museum in Kibbutz Nahsholim.

credited to University of Haifa

Sorry, Spinal Tap fans—though a newfound stone circle in England is being called a mini-Stonehenge, it was never in danger of being crushed by a dwarf. Thirty-three-foot-wide (ten-meter-wide) "Bluestonehenge" was discovered just over a mile (1.6 kilometers) from the original Stonehenge near Salisbury, United Kingdom, scientists announced today.

Named for the color of its long-gone stones, Bluestonehenge, or Bluehenge, was dismantled thousands of years ago, and many of its standing stones were integrated into Stonehenge during a rebuilding of the larger monument, according to the archaeologists.

Mini-Stonehenge: Prehistoric Crematorium?

Bluestonehenge was found in August along the banks of the River Avon during excavations led by Mike Parker Pearson of the University of Sheffield in the U.K.

The circle of an estimated 25 bluestones was surrounded by a henge—an earthwork with a ditch and bank. The henge has been tentatively dated to 2400 B.C. But flint arrowheads found at the stone-circle site are of a type that suggests the rocks were erected as early as 3000 B.C.

More precise dates will have to wait until prehistoric deer antlers—used as pickaxes at Bluestonehenge—have been radiocarbon dated, the team said.

Made from a hard dolerite rock, the four-ton megaliths were hewn from ancient quarries in the Preseli Mountains of Wales, 150 miles (240 kilometers) away, Parker Pearson said. The manpower and logistics required to transport the stones suggests they had deep significance to ancient Britons, experts say.

Unlike Stonehenge, which aligns with the sun at the summer and winter solstices, Bluestonehenge shows no sign of a particular orientation, or even an entrance, the team reported.

Nor is there any evidence that people lived at the site. There's no pottery, animal bones, ornaments, or relics such as those unearthed at the nearby Stone Age village of Durrington Walls, found near Stonehenge in 2007.

However Bluestonehenge's empty stone holes were filled with charcoal, indicating that large amounts of wood were burned there—signifying, perhaps, a prehistoric crematorium. Perhaps not coincidentally, ashes have been found in holes at Stonehenge.

"Maybe the bluestone circle is where people were cremated before their ashes were buried at Stonehenge itself," Parker Pearson said in a statement.

Parker Pearson proposes that Stonehenge represented a "domain of the dead" to ancestor-worshiping ancient Britons.

"It could be that Bluestonehenge was where the dead began their final journey to Stonehenge," he added. "Not many people know that Stonehenge was Britain's largest burial ground at that time."

The Bluestonehenge discovery was made as part of the Stonehenge Riverside Project, a seven-year archaeological investigation of the Stonehenge area, supported in part by the National Geographic Society's Committee for Research and Exploration. Other funders include the U.K. Arts and Humanities Research Council.

Key Piece in Stonehenge Puzzle

Bluestonehenge may represents a vital part of the jigsaw as researchers slowly piece together the meaning of Stonehenge.

Stonehenge expert Mike Pitts, editor of British Archaeology magazine, said, "Up to now we've really thought of Stonehenge as this [one] stone circle. ...

"Maybe we need to actually start thinking about Stonehenge as a series of stone structures that are not necessarily all contained within that circular ditch [at Stonehenge proper]," added Pitts, who was not involved in the project.

The excavation team now believes Stonehenge incorporates the 25 bluestones that originally stood at Bluestonehenge. Only a few bluestone pieces were found at the new site, and "that is telling you that the stones are being taken out whole," said dig co-director Julian Thomas of the University of Manchester.

Bluestonehenge's stones were dragged along the avenue to Stonehenge during a major rebuilding phase around 2500 B.C., the archaeologists speculated.

If Bluestonehenge had been demolished much later—in Roman times, when reverence for the stones would have been diminished, for example—"they'd be breaking them up and turning them into building stone," Thomas said.

"I think it's very likely that the new stone circle is contemporary with the very earliest stages of Stonehenge," the archaeologist added.

British Archaeology's Pitts agreed that Bluestonehenge's rocks were likely appropriated for Stonehenge.

"It makes a lot of sense," Pitts said. "The megaliths that were in the pits down by the river had to have gone somewhere, and they clearly weren't broken up at the site, because its not covered [in fragments] of stone."

Mini-Stonehenge a Pit Stop on Route to Afterlife?

Parker Pearson agrees, seeing Bluestonehenge's location—on the river and at the beginning of a 1.75 mile (2.8 kilometer) earthen avenue leading to Stonehenge—as highly significant.

Previous excavations have drawn a picture of seasonal festivities at Durrington Walls, which some see as part of the "domain of the living" in the spiritual geography of the people of Stonehenge.

The dead would be celebrated at Durrington, then carried along a short avenue to the River Avon, archaeologists speculate. The procession would continue down the river, then "dock" at the foot of the avenue leading to Stonehenge—stopping, it's now thought, at Bluestonehenge, perhaps for cremation, before continuing to Stonehenge for burial.

Whatever Bluestonehenge's role along the route was, "it emphasizes the connection with the whole monumental complex," Thomas, of the University of Manchester, said.

"We tend to think of monuments as cultural, and a river or a mountain as something that's natural," he added. "What's fascinating about the Stonehenge complex is that these different elements are being threaded together.

"By constructing these monuments you're not just adding a cultural veneer on the surface, you're actually reengineering the world."

Given the Bluestonehenge discovery, British Archaeology's Pitts said, "I'm sure there are very significant discoveries still to be made in this landscape."

credited to news.nationalgeographic.com

Now, just a few weeks after tiny, early Raptorex kriegsteini was unveiled, a new wrench has been thrown into the family tree of the tyrannosaurs. The new Alioramus altai—a horned, long-snouted, gracile cousin of Tyrannosaurus rex—shared the same environment with larger, predatory relatives. A paper published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences describes this exceptionally well-preserved fossil, shedding light on a previously poorly understood genus of tyrannosaurs and describing a new suite of adaptations for meat eating. "This spectacular fossil tells us that there is a lot more anatomical and ecological variety in tyrannosaurs than we previously thought," says Stephen Brusatte, a graduate student affiliated with the American Museum of Natural History. "Not all tyrannosaurs were megapredators adapted for stalking and dismembering large prey. Some tyrannosaurs were small and slender. Compared to Tyrannosaurus, this new animal is like a ballerina."

Mark Norell, Chair of the Division of Paleontology at the Museum, agrees. "We now have evidence of two very different tyrannosaurs that lived in Asia at the same time and place—just like today, where lions and cheetahs live in the same area but look dissimilar and exploit their environment differently."

Tyrannosaurs are bipedal predators that lived at the end of the Cretaceous (from 85 million years to approximately 65 million years ago) is currently known from several groups of fossils. One subfamily from North America includes Albertosaurus and Gorgosaurus, while the other subfamily bridges Asia and North America and includes Tyranosaurus, Tarbosaurus, and Alioramus. Both T. rex and Tarbosaurus are remarkably similar, even though they lived on different continents; both were predators with massive jaws and thick teeth that could crunch through bones. In fact, bite marks have been found on some fossils that were prey. Until now, Alioramus was known only from fragmentary fossils that were briefly described decades ago by a Russian paleontologist, and it has long been debated whether Alioramus was a proper tyrannosaur, a more primitive cousin, or perhaps a juvenile Tarbosaurus.

The new specimen and species, A. altai, was found on a 2001 Museum expedition to the Gobi Desert of Mongolia led by Norell and Michael Novacek. In fact, it was found at the same site as a Tarbosaurus fossil. But although its skeleton is anatomically similar to this larger relative, A. altai is half the size; the reconstructed size is about 369 kilograms, or 810 pounds. It is the skull that is dramatically different from close relatives. Although this dinosaur was carnivorous, the teeth are slender, the skull has small and weak muscle attachments, and the skull has a long snout with eight horns that were probably about five inches in length, features never seen in a tyrannosaur before.

Analysis of the braincase, though, ties the new species closely to tyrannosaurs. CT scans of the brain by co-author Gabe Bever, also of the Museum, show the large air sacks, huge olfactory bulbs, and the small inner ear expected for a tyrannosaur. Another co-author, Gregory Erickson, of Florida State University, analyzed the microstructure of the bone to determine that this animal died as a nine year old, essentially a teenager at 85% of its adult size.

"This fossil reveals an entirely new body type among tyrannosaurs, a group we thought we understood pretty well," says Norell. "The different body forms probably allowed Alioramus and Tarbosaurus to coexist."

Brusatte agrees, "A. altai probably fed differently from its larger cousin, going for smaller prey because it could not crunch through bone like its larger relatives."

credited to American Museum of Natural History

After surviving countless battles, a giant T. rex was ultimately taken down by a microscopic parasite akin to one carried by modern pigeons, scientists say.

In a new study, researchers instead propose that the holes are lesions made by an ancient version of trichomonosis, a single-celled parasite that infects the throats and beaks of modern birds.

Pigeons carry trichomonosis without suffering any symptoms. But the birds are common prey for falcons and other raptors, which then become infected and can also transmit the disease.

"There's a possibility that this disease is quite old," said study author Ewan Wolff, a paleontologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

T. Rex Infection

Sue was discovered in 1990 in South Dakota. Although the dinosaur's sex is unknown, the fossil was nicknamed for the female fossil hunter who found the bones.

The 42-foot-long (12.8-meter-long), 7-ton dinosaur lived about 67 million years ago, during the late Cretaceous period.

In addition to the jawbone holes, the fossil shows evidence that Sue survived multiple fractured ribs, arthritis, and savage clashes with other dinosaurs to reach the ripe old age of 28.

How the huge dinosaur died, however, has been unclear. Despite Sue's multiple injuries, the animal seems to have lived with most of them for years.

In birds, trichomonosis causes inflammation in the beak and upper digestive tract, which makes feeding and even breathing very difficult.

Birds' bodies react by sealing off infected tissue, but over time byproducts from this immune response can damage bone, creating lesions.

Sue had about ten such lesions on her jaw, some of them large enough for a human adult to poke a finger through.

Based on the size and number of lesions, the team thinks Sue's disease was at an advanced stage and may have been so severe that the dinosaur starved to death.

Parasite Link

The researchers also found evidence of possible trichomonosis-like infections in two other tyrannosaurid species, Daspletosaurus and Albertosaurus.

Sue may have contracted the disease after having been bitten by another T. rex during a fight or by cannibalizing the infected bodies of other tyrannosaurids, Wolff said.

The finding adds a new twist to the evolutionary connection between dinosaurs and modern birds.

That's because parasites tend to evolve with their hosts, Wolff said. Since tyrannosaurids are among the dinosaurs thought to be avian ancestors, it wouldn't be surprising for the same parasite that infected tyrannosaurids to now infect birds.

credited to news.nationalgeographic.com