Bulgaria archaeologists discover ancient settlement underwater

[Focus Information Agency]  Archaeologist Dr Ivan Hristov [Associate Professor Dr Ivan Hristov, Deputy Director of the National Museum of History] also discovered a continuation of the fortified wall into the sea. The continuation of the wall surrounds a big mud-bank Southwest of the cape. The fortified wall is preserved to some big height and the team has seen the outlines of a big battle tower of five meters height and three and a half meters width.

New finding: Ancient Antarctic warmer and wetter

[Otago Daily Times]  By examining the remnants of plant leaf wax found in sediment cores taken below the Ross Ice Shelf, scientists from the University of Southern California (USC), Louisiana State University and Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory determined summer temperatures along the Antarctic coast 15-20 million years ago were 11degC warmer than today.

Oldest Neolithic Bow Unearthed in Spain

[Sci-News]  Archaeological research carried out at the Neolithic site of La Draga, near the lake of Banyoles, has yielded the discovery of an item which is unique in the western Mediterranean and Europe. The item is a bow which appeared in a context dating from the period between 5400-5200 BC, corresponding to the earliest period of settlement. It is a unique item given that it is the first bow to be found intact at the site. According to its date, it can be considered chronologically the most ancient bow of the Neolithic period found in Europe.

Did a super volcano extinguish the Neanderthals?

[MSNBC]  A super-eruption of an Italian volcano that may have played a major role in the Neanderthals' fate was apparently even larger than thought, new research suggests. For the new study, scientists investigated the Campi Flegrei caldera volcano in southern Italy. About 39,000 years ago, it experienced the largest volcanic eruption that Europe has seen in the last 200,000 years. This super-eruption may have played a part in wiping out or driving away Neanderthal and modern human populations in the eastern Mediterranean.

Scientists discover a three billion-year-old crater in Greenland

[Wales Online]   Scientists have discovered a three billion-year-old crater in Greenland believed to be the largest and oldest on the planet. Cardiff University scientists were at the heart of a project which discovered the site where a huge asteroid struck – resulting in an apocalyptic fireball engulfing earth.... If the meteor, thought to have been as much as 30 kilometres across, struck today all life would be destroyed.

Oldest ever modern human DNA unearthed in Spain

[Jagran Post]  Scientists claim to have collected the oldest fragment of the modern human genome from the bones of two 7,000-year-old cavemen unearthed in Spain. These findings, published in the journal Current Biology, suggest that the cavemen in that region were not the ancestors of the people found there on Friday, the researchers said. "These are the oldest partial genomes from modern human prehistory," researcher Carles Lalueza-Fox, a paleogeneticist at the Spanish National Research Council, told LiveScience.

Date of Earliest Animal Life Reset by 30 Million Years

[Science Daily]   University of Alberta researchers have uncovered physical proof that animals existed 585 million years ago -- 30 million years earlier than previous records show.

Ancient Hunter-Gatherers Kept in Touch

[ScienceNow]  Until about 8500 years ago, Europe was populated by nomadic hunter-gatherers who hunted, fished, and ate wild plants. Then, the farming way of life swept into the continent from its origins in the Near East, including modern-day Turkey. Within 3000 years most of the hunter-gatherers had disappeared. Little is known about these early Europeans. But a new genetic analysis of two 8000-year-old skeletons from Spain suggests that they might have been a remarkably cohesive population both genetically and culturally.

Ancient Text Confirms Mayan Calendar End Date

[Live Science]  A newly discovered Mayan text reveals the "end date" for the Mayan calendar, becoming only the second known document to do so. But unlike some modern people, ancient Maya did not expect the world to end on that date, researchers said.

Harvard and Boston University researchers find evidence of 20000-year-old pottery

[Boston.com]  After people started farming about 10,000 years ago and were faced with the challenge of cooking plants and grains, pottery was invented. But that explanation has been fraying for years, and now an international team that includes a Harvard University anthropologist and Boston University scientists has pushed back the timeline even further, with evidence of pot shards from a cave in eastern China that date to 10 millennia before agriculture began.

Supernova Could Have Caused Mysterious "Red Crucifix" in the Sky in A.D. 774

[Scientific American]  An eerie "red crucifix" seen in Britain's evening sky in ad 774 may be a previously unrecognized supernova explosion — and could explain a mysterious spike in carbon-14 levels in that year's growth rings in Japanese cedar trees. The link is suggested today in a Nature Correspondence by a US undergraduate student with a broad interdisciplinary background and a curious mind.

Oldest Pearl In World Discovered In United Arab Emirates

[Huffington Post]  Discovered in a grave, the Umm al Quwain pearl — named for the location in the United Arab Emirates where it was found — has been carbon-dated back to the 5500 B.C., during the Neolithic Period, which makes it more than 7,500 years old, Press Trust of India reports. Previously, the oldest known pearl was just over 5,000 years old.

Wreckage of World War II battleship found near Sardinia

[Washington Post]  The Italian navy says the wreckage of the World War II battleship Roma, sunk by German planes 69 years ago with the loss of 1,352 lives, has been located north of Sardinia. The navy says the wreckage was located Thursday some 3,280 feet under the sea by a company using a deep-sea diving robot.

World's oldest purse may have been found in Germany

[National Geographic]  Excavators at a site near Leipzig (map) uncovered more than a hundred dog teeth arranged close together in a grave dated to between 2,500 and 2,200 B.C. According to archaeologist Susanne Friederich, the teeth were likely decorations for the outer flap of a handbag."Over the years the leather or fabric disappeared, and all that's left is the teeth. They're all pointing in the same direction, so it looks a lot like a modern handbag flap," said Friederich, of the Sachsen-Anhalt State Archaeology and Preservation Office.

Dinosaurs may have been warm-blooded

[BBC]  One of the strongest lines of evidence that dinosaurs were cold-blooded, like modern reptiles, has been knocked down. The idea that dinosaurs are cold-blooded, or ectothermic, goes back to the 19th Century. But a number of discoveries 1960s have been challenging that notion.

Early humans shared the Earth with a winged and toothed giant

[Brisbane Times]  The ancient feathered creatures, known as bony-toothed birds for the sharp, teeth-like serrations along their beak, were the largest flying animal to exist on Earth after the extinction of pterosaurs, a flying reptile that lived during the time of the dinosaurs, 65 million years ago.''The wing span of these birds was as great as the height of a giraffe,'' Dr Fitzgerald said.

Some Prehumans Feasted on Bark Instead of Grasses

[NY Times]  Almost two million years after their last meals, two members of a prehuman species in southern Africa left traces in their teeth of what they had eaten then, as well as over a lifetime of foraging. Scientists were surprised to find that these hominins apparently lived almost exclusively on a diet of leaves, fruits, wood and bark.

Astronomers may have discovered the oldest galaxy in the universe

[io9]  The galaxy's "oldest-ever" status ultimately boils down to whether other recent discoveries are as accurate as claimed. In 2010, French astronomers used Hubble Telescope to observe a galaxy they determined to be 13.1 billion light years away. Last year, a team of California astronomers used Hubble again to obseve a galaxy said to be 13.2 billion light years away. But these findings have yet to be verified to many researchers' satisfaction.

Remains of five Ice Age mammoths discovered at Serbian coal mine

[Scotsman]  Serbian archaeologists have discovered a rare mammoth field containing the remains of at least five of the giant beasts that lived tens of thousands of years ago. The discovery at the Kostolac coal mine, east of the Serbian capital of Belgrade, is the first of its kind in the region. It could offer important insight into the Ice Age in the Balkans

Asia's oldest known farming site discovered

[Washington Post]  On South Korea’s east coast, the site may be up to 5,600 years old. That’s more than 2,000 years older than what is now the second-oldest known site, which also is in South Korea.

16th Century Treasure Trove Found on Danish island

[Naharnet]  Some 400 coins had been recovered but many more are expected to be unearthed from the field where an unnamed man found them using a metal detector.The find has been dated back to the time of the so-called Count's Feud which took place between 1534 and 1536. The Feud was named after Count Christopher of Oldenburg, who sparked a civil war over who should be king of Denmark.The museum says it expects the Moen trove will be larger and more important than the last major find, of 1,545 coins in 1927.

Why was Ancient Roman jewelry in a 5th century Japanese tomb?

[The Japan Daily Press]  This discovery opens up a whole new set of questions on the influence of the Roman Empire and its extent.

Mysterious 10,000-year-old ruins found in Syrian desert

[Fox News]  Bits of tools Mason found nearby suggest the mystery he discovered in the desert...may date to the Neolithic Period or early Bronze Age, 6,000 to 10,000 years ago, the Gazette said. Egypt’s oldest pyramid, the Great Pyramid of Giza, was built about 4,500 years ago.

Prehistoric 'giant wombats' discovered

[UPI]  Remains of about 50 diprotodons, the largest marsupial that ever lived, were found in Queensland and are believed to be between 100,000 and 200,000 years old, researchers said.

Early Theater of Shakespeare Is Unearthed in London

[NY Times]  Archaeologists who delved into the dirt in London have found what they say is a momentous site from that playwright’s career: the theater where Shakespeare plays, including “Romeo and Juliet” and possibly “Henry V,” were originally performed.

New evidence tells of Amelia Earhart's last days on a Pacific atoll

[Christian Science Monitor]  The tale hints at lost opportunities to locate and rescue the pair in the first crucial days after they went down, vital information dismissed as inconsequential or a hoax, the failure to connect important dots regarding physical evidence