Sunday, March 15, 2015
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Archaeologists in London have begun digging up some 3,000 skeletons including those of victims of the Great Plague from a burial ground that will become a new train station, the company in charge said.
A team of 60 researchers will work in shifts six days a week over the next month at the Bedlam burial ground to remove the ancient skeletons, which will eventually be re-buried at a cemetery near London.
Crossrail, which is building a new east-west train line in London, said the dig near Liverpool Street station was being carried out on its behalf by the Museum of London's archaeology unit.
Photos: Accidental Archaeological Discoveries
The company said in a statement that the bones would be tested to "shed light on migration patterns, diet, lifestyle and demography" of Londoners at the time.
"Archaeologists hope that tests on excavated plague victims will help understand the evolution of the plague bacteria strain," Crossrail said.
The Bedlam ground was used between 1569 and 1738 -- a period that spanned Shakespeare's plays, the Great Fire of London and numerous plague outbreaks.
The excavation is also expected to further uncover the remains of an ancient Roman road, where Crossrail said that several artifacts such as horseshoes and cremation urns have already been found.
The area was London's first municipal burial ground and was named after the nearby Bethlem Royal Hospital or "Bedlam" -- the world's oldest psychiatric institution, which has since relocated outside London.
The burial ground was used by Londoners who could not afford a church burial or who chose to be buried there for religious or political reasons.
Members of the Levellers, a 17th-century political grouping that advocated popular sovereignty and religious tolerance, are believed to be buried there.
Medieval Poop Found: Still Stinks
Following excavation, constructors will build a new ticket hall for Crossrail's Liverpool Street station.
"The Bedlam burial ground spans a fascinating phase of London's history, including the transition from the Tudor-period City into cosmopolitan early-modern London," said Jay Carver, Crossrail lead archaeologist.
Nick Elsden, a project manager from Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA), said: "There are up to six meters of archaeology on site in what is one of the oldest areas of the city, so we stand to learn a great deal".
Crossrail is one of Europe's biggest construction projects and the company said that more than 10,000 artifacts have been uncovered so far in multiple excavations at some 40 sites.
Preliminary excavations at Liverpool Street in 2013 and 2014 uncovered more than 400 skeletons.
http://news.discovery.com/history/archaeology/3000-skeletons-recovered-at-london-train-station-site-150410.htm#mkcpgn=rssnws1
Monday, March 9, 2015
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Saturday, March 7, 2015
Friday, March 6, 2015
The first known human lived in Ethiopia 2.8 million years ago, according to two remarkable new studies that also reveal the conditions under which the earliest humans evolved.
Prior to this research, which is published in the journal Science, the earliest known member of our genus was dated to around 2.3-2.4 million years ago, so the new remains push back the history of humanity by approximately 400,000 years.
"Prior to 3 million years, humans were relatively ape-like and partially arboreal, partially bipedal," Brian Villmoare, who led the research on the fossil remains, told Discovery News. "They lived in the forest, had small brains, and did not eat meat or use tools."
Photos: Faces of Our Ancestors
"After 2 million years," he continued, "humans have large brains, stone tools, and eat meat, so this transitional period is very important in terms of human evolution."
The 2.8-million-year old remains consist of a fossil lower jaw and teeth. They were unearthed at the Ledi-Geraru research area at Afar Regional State, Ethiopia.
Villmoare, a researcher at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, and his colleagues do not name the individual's species, but it likely is the common ancestor of at least two separate human lineages that split at around 2.3 million years ago, with one remaining in Ethiopia and the other going to Tanzania.
Since only a jaw bone with teeth are all that's believed to be left of the first known human, the scientists cannot say much about what this individual's body looked like.
"But," Villmoare quickly added, "there does appear to have been a general reduction in skeletal and dental elements in this jaw, which is consistent with the transition to the Homo adaptive pattern."
As humans likely evolved from the more ape-like Australopithecus, represented by the famous "Lucy" remains, we started to lose features evolved for a past life in trees and to gain characteristics associated more with modern humans, such as shorter arms.
Photos: Are You Related to Neanderthals?
In a separate study led by Erin DiMaggio of Pennsylvania State University, the ecosystem where the first known human was found is described. Clearly, this individual had a lot of company.
"We found a large number of fossils of grazing animals, similar to modern wildebeests and zebras, which show that early Homo lived in an area of grasslands, similar to the modern Serengeti Plains in Tanzania, except that this habitat had rivers and lakes as we have fish, hippos, and crocodiles, as well as antelope that lived near grasses inundated with water," co-author Kaye Reed of the Institute of Human Origins and School of Human Evolution and Social Change, told Discovery News. "There were very few trees, however, except possibly a few near the water sources."
Reed added that she and her colleagues also recovered saber-toothed cats and hyenas, two types of warthogs and a very large baboon that is related to the modern gelada baboon seen today in the Ethiopian highlands.
http://news.discovery.com/human/evolution/remains-of-first-known-human-found-in-ethiopia-150304.htm#mkcpgn=rssnws1
Scientists have long suspected that Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt, had an underground layer of ice, the result of an ancient ocean that froze eons ago. But last month, as NASA’s Dawn spacecraft neared the end of its 7.5-year journey to the dwarf planet, they were startled to find that something bright -- ice or salt perhaps -- was glinting on the surface.
"There's likely something that is highly reflective, or at least more highly reflective on the surface than the rest of the surrounding area," Mike Miller, vice president for science programs with satellite manufacturer Orbital ATK, told Discovery News.
"This could be fresh material that's just recently been brought to the surface, or it could have been an impact that brought certain chemicals to that particular crater," add Joe Makowski, Orbital's Dawn program manager.
VIDEO: Pluto Flyby and Black Holes: Top Space Events for 2015
Extrapolating from Ceres’ round shape and relatively low density, computer models indicate Ceres has a rocky core and icy mantle, covered by a layer of dust, clays and deposits.
“Ceres is lighter than the rocky planets, meaning that it retained a lot of water and light volatile elements that were present in the solar nebula when Ceres was formed ... In contrast, bodies like the moon and (the asteroid) Vesta, have melted and boiled off the water and the light elements, leaving them dry and rocky,” said Carol Raymond, Dawn deputy lead scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
That makes Ceres a lot like Europa and Enceladus, two of Jupiter’s icy moons that are believed to harbor underground oceans.
NEWS: Hunt for Dwarf Planet Ceres' Mysterious Water Begins
With moderate heating from the decay of naturally occurring radioactive elements, “we expect that in the past that there was ocean in Ceres in contact with the rock beneath an ice cap,” Raymond said.
And that raises the prospect that Ceres had conditions and chemistry suitable for microbial life to evolve.
“We expect that (Ceres) had astrobiological potential,” Raymond told Discovery News.
http://news.discovery.com/space/alien-life-exoplanets/mysterious-dwarf-planet-ceres-may-be-ripe-for-life-150305.htm#mkcpgn=rssnws1
Thursday, March 5, 2015
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