Archaeology & Paleontology – Page 4

Posted on May 30, 2012 by Guest Blogger

A “BABY” BIGFOOT?

The hunt for Bigfoot shall never end, not as long as curious and adventurous humans are out there, slogging through the mud and rain, climbing up the biggest hills and traversing desert plains, all in the name of science!

A few of these adventurers have found crypto-gold in the form of a set of well preserved foot and hand prints, all of a juvenile Bigfoot and an older one, possibly a parent, that left behind a few tracks as well!

Who knows if anything more comes of this or even if they ever catch the elusive ‘squatch. Either way, I’m more than happy to follow along with the rest of the world, eyes wide open, waiting for the next sign of a mysterious creature lurking in our lands.

What do you think is out there?

David Claerr at Yahoo Voices writes:

The vast ecosystem formed by the Red River watershed on the borders of Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana affords a habitat comprised of many micro-climates with an incredible diversity and richness of plant and animal life. In many of the deep ravines where the creeks and waterways have cut through the the limestone cap rock, the vegetation has a nearly tropical aspect. Towering, ancient cypress trees form a canopy above the underbrush and thick hanging vines. These ravines are like a primordial oasis, seldom traversed by humans. Often in remote wildernesses, surrounded by thousands of acres of temperate woodlands and meadows. The ravines are a favored living quarters for the Sasquatch or “Bigfoot”

From one of these ravines, a very significant group of footprints of a “Baby Bigfoot” were cast in plaster, along with a hand- and footprints from a more mature Sasquatch, most likely the juvenile’s older sibling or mother. The prints, pressed into the fine clay of the creek bed are rare specimens, since not only are they from a rarely documented young juvenile, but the casts also retain detailed anatomical features that are not generally preserved in other types of soil.

THE FAMOUS ‘EASTER ISLAND HEADS’ HAVE BODIES

Who knew the Heads of Easter Island had entire bodies? On second thought, how did they not know?

Ever heard the phrase “dig a little deeper”?

Well apparently, throughout the hundreds of people that have visited, investigated, done research at, and along with the thousands of whom saw pictures of the famous ‘Heads of Easter Island’, no one thought about that little old phrase, until now.

Fox News writes:

New photographs reveal what lies beneath the surface of Easter Island, one of the most remote places in the world — the carved bodies of the island’s 887 famous guardians.

Most people think of the 63-square-mile Pacific island’s silent stone sentinels as simple heads. But the heads all have bodies — and a backstory that’s only now being pieced together, explained Jo Anne Van Tilburg, director of the Easter Island Statue Project.

“Those statues which are the most photographed are standing in the quarry. They’re buried up to mid-torso level. So it’s understandable that the general public didn’t have a clue that those statues had bodies,” she told FoxNews.com.

Current belief is that the statues were carved between A.D.1100 up until the 1800s, when an influx of Westerners transformed the culture. Van Tilburg, a fellow with The Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at the University of California, Los Angeles, has only been coming to Easter Island (called Rapa Nui) to do research for twenty years, since 1992. But she first came more than thirty years ago — and stayed for one clear reason. “I fell in love with the statues,” she said simply.

“I came to Easter Island in 1981. I was impressed with the number of statues and that they seemed accessible to me, they were on the surface. I wanted to know what was below the surface.”

First Van Tilburg documented the island’s statues and those that have been removed to museums; there are 887 inventoried, though she says the number is closer to 1,000. Then she began the next phase of work to reveal what lay beneath the ground — covered up not intentionally by men, but through centuries of exposure to the environment.

That process has taken 12 years so far, and may take a lifetime of work.

MYSTERY TRIBE LEAVES BEHIND BODY-FILLED JARS

Human remains nside a log coffin at Phnom Pel. Photograph courtesy Nancy Beavan

A research team has been uncovering burial sights of a mysterious tribe that vanished a long time ago, since 2003. Even though they found up to 10 such spots in the Cardamom Mountains of Cambodia, some with humans remains that date back almost 4,000 years, there’s still little information on the ones who left the creepy, bone-filled jars made from wood, behind.

National Geographic writes:

Perched in some cases on precarious cliff ledges, centuries-old log coffins—such as this one, pictured alongside researcher Nancy Beavan—and “body jars” are the only known traces of an unknown Cambodian tribe. Now new dating studies are beginning to assure the unnamed culture a place in history.

Ten such burial spots have been found in the Cardamom Mountains since 2003, and at least one is at least 160 feet high (50 meters)—the intention apparently being that “anyone trying to disturb the burials would break their neck,” said Beavan, who led the new study.

Beavan’s team has radiocarbon-dated wood, teeth, and bones from four of the sites to between A.D. 1395 and 1650, placing them smack-dab in the decline of the Khmer Empire, based in Angkor. However it’s unclear what, if any, influence the empire had on these mountain people, said Beavan, of the University of Otago’s Department of Anatomy in New Zealand. “Until now, experts had no idea when the sites had been established or how long they’d been in use.”

Read more at news.nationalgeographic.com

Posted on May 19, 2012 by Guest Blogger

WOMAN EATS AN ‘EARTHY’ DIET, OF ROCKS!

Teresa Widener, 45, eats rocks off the ground.

A woman from Bedford, Virginia who enjoys eating rocks, was recently featured on an episode of 20/20 delving into the world of medical mysteries.

Teresa Widener, who by all accounts is an average, healthy 45 year old woman, has a not-so-healthy habit.

Daily Mail writes:

A woman has told of how she eats rocks that have been picked up off the ground.

For more than 20 years, Teresa Widener, a 45-year-old woman from Bedford, Virginia, has regularly sucked the dirt off rocks before crunching them between her teeth.

The mother of two, who works with special needs children, suffers from pica which is a disorder that causes people to eat inedible objects.

She told ABC that she has been able to break rocks in her mouth ‘pretty easily’ for more than 20 years.

‘I like that it has an earthy flavour’, she said. ‘If I know I have some at my house I feel better, just knowing they’re there…they’re there for me when I’m upset or whatever.

‘Mmm-hmm, yeah. They crunch on my teeth.’

Sometimes, she neglects to wash the natural objects because she craves the dirt that is attached to them.

NEW TV SHOW LOOKING FOR WEIRD AND UNIQUE HOMES

A new show is coming out soon and is looking for weird, strange, and unique homes to feature on television.

Do you have a unique home or maybe know someone who does?

If so, click the link below to head on over the AMS Website where you’ll find all the info and contact information to submit.

From the AMS Pictures website:

Home Strange Home

Join our host, Chuck Nice, as he explores some of the most structurally fabulous, uniquely decorated and just downright strange homes in America!

Each one-hour episode of Home, Strange Home will showcase the most unique and breathtakingly beautiful homes our country has to offer. You’ll see homes of all shapes and sizes, from houses that spin to off-the-grid abodes, as we travel across America to meet home owners who threw conventionalism to the wind to build a one-of-a-kind creation.

Posted on May 12, 2012 by Guest Blogger

MAYAN CALENDAR EXTENDS WELL BEYOND 2012

The Mayan Calendar doesn't end in 2012 after all.

Have no fear, for the end is not-so-near!

Scientists and researchers have made another fascinating discovery recently. It seems the Mayan Calendar that predicts the end of the world in 2012 doesn’t, in-fact, predict anything another than over another 7,000 years of exactly the same thing that’s been going on; boring ,old, everyday life.

BBC News writes:

… Perhaps most intriguing among the finds were several finds related to astronomical tables, including four long numbers on the east wall that represent a cycle lasting up to 2.5 million days.

The east wall is mostly covered by tabulations of black symbols or “glyphs” that map out various astronomical cycles: that of Mars and Venus and the lunar eclipses.

The wall also features red marks that appear to be notes and corrections to the calculations; Dr Saturno said that the scribes “seem to be using it like a blackboard”. The Xultun find is the first place that all of the cycles have been found tied mathematically together in one place, representing a calendar that stretches more than 7,000 years into the future. The Mayan numbering system for dates is a complex one in base-18 and base-20 numbers that, in modern-day terms, would “turn over” at the end of 2012.

But Dr Saturno points out that the new finds serve to further undermine the fallacy that this is tantamount to a prediction of the end of the world. “The ancient Maya predicted the world would continue, that 7,000 years from now, things would be exactly like this,” he said. “We keep looking for endings. The Maya were looking for a guarantee that nothing would change. It’s an entirely different mindset.”

MAN FINDS METEORITES FROM GIANT FIREBALL OVER CALIFORNIA

Robert Ward holds up two pieces of a meteorite he found in Lotus, California.

A man in California has made an amazing find after a huge fireball was seen hurling in through the sky from Sacremento, CA to Las Vegas, NV.

Robert Ward of Prescott, Arizona, who’s been hunting down meteorites for over 20 years now as he travels around the world, decided he was going to find out exactly where the mysterious object that blazed through the night sky went to and amazingly enough, he actually did!

The Telegraph writes:

The rocks each weighed about 10 grams, or the weight of two nickels, said John T Wasson, a longtime professor and expert in meteorites at UCLA’s Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics.

Experts say the flaming meteor, dating to the early formation of the solar system 4 to 5 billion years ago, was probably about the size of a minivan when it entered the Earth’s atmosphere with a loud boom early Sunday. It was seen from Sacramento, California, to Las Vegas and parts of northern Nevada.

An event of that size might happen once a year around the world, said Don Yeomans of Nasa’s Near-Earth Object Program Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. But most of them occur over the ocean or an uninhabited area, he said.

“Getting to see one is something special,” he said. He added, “Most meteors you see in the night’s sky are the size of tiny stones or even grains of sand, and their trail lasts all of a second or two.”

The meteor probably weighed about 70,000 kilograms, said Bill Cooke, a specialist in meteors at Nasa’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. At the time of disintegration, he said, it probably released energy equivalent to a 5-kiloton explosion. The Hiroshima bomb was 15 kilotons.

FOUND: LOST PAGES FROM EGYPTS’ ANCIENT BOOK OF THE DEAD

The mummy of Hunefer, shown supported by the god Anubis (or a priest wearing a jackal mask). Hunefer's wife mourns, and two priests perform rituals.

An unexpected find by Egyptologist, John Taylor, has made a remarkable impact on the piecing together of the entire, original manuscript of the ancient Egyptian tome, the Book Of The Dead.

Wikipedia says about the book:

The Book of the Dead is made up of a number of individual texts and their accompanying illustrations. Most sub-texts begin with the word ro, which can mean mouth, speech, a chapter of a book, spell, utterance, or incantation. This ambiguity reflects the similarity in Egyptian thought between ritual speech and magical power. In the context of the Book of the Dead, it is typically translated as either “chapter” or “spell”. In this article, the word “spell” is used.

At present, some 192 spells are known,though no single manuscript contains them all. They served a range of purposes. Some are intended to give the deceased mystical knowledge in the afterlife, or perhaps to identify them with the gods: for instance, Spell 17, an obscure and lengthy description of the god Atum. Others are incantations to ensure the different elements of the dead person’s being were preserved and reunited, and to give the deceased control over the world around him. Still others protect the deceased from various hostile forces, or guide him through the underworld past various obstacles. Famously, two spells also deal with the judgement of the deceased in the Weighing of the Heart ritual.

CBC News writes:

Papyrus fragments from an Egyptian funerary text known as a Book of the Dead have been discovered in the archives of the Queensland Museum in Brisbane, Australia.

“We are incredibly surprised that we had such a significant object in our collection,” museum CEO Ian Galloway told Australian press.

The discovery was made recently during a visit to the museum by British Museum Egyptologist John Taylor.

While on a tour of the Australian venue’s Egyptian collection ahead of its new exhibit Mummy: Secrets of the Tomb (which opened Thursday), Taylor noticed a familiar name — Amenhotep, a well-known ancient Egyptian head of builders — on a fragile piece of papyrus long ago conserved by Queensland Museum curators.

Upon further examination of the collection, he confirmed that the ancient scraps were from The Book of the Dead of Amenhotep, an ancient Egyptian official from approximately 1420 B.C.

DOES SWEDEN HAVE ITS’ VERY OWN STONEHENGE?

A little fishing village in Sweden is used to getting a bit of attention for its’ unusual set of monolithic stones that were placed in the outline of a ship on it’s beautiful, bright green coast 1,ooo years ago. Some recent investigations on the other-hand, have discovered the stones may actually date back quite a bit older than originally thought, from 1,000 years old to 2,500 years old.

Live Science writes:

Ancient Scandinavians dragged 59 boulders to a seaside cliff near what is now the Swedish fishing village of Kåseberga. They carefully arranged the massive stones — each weighing up to 4,000 pounds (1,800 kilograms) — in the outline of a 220-foot-long (67-meter) ship overlooking the Baltic Sea.

Archaeologists generally agree this megalithic structure, known as Ales Stenar (“Ale’s Stones”), was assembled about 1,000 years ago, near the end of the Iron Age, as a burial monument. But a team of researchers now argues it’s really 2,500 years old, dating from the Scandinavian Bronze Age, and was built as an astronomical calendar with the same underlying geometry as England’s Stonehenge.

EXPEDITION LOOKS FOR LIVING DINOSAURS IN THE CONGO

Does the vastly unexplored Congo of Africa hide the legendary Mokele-mbembe?

An adventurous man and some friends of his have decided they are going on a mission. A mission that involves traveling to the most remote, dense, and dangerous part of the Republic of Congo’s very own jungle to discover and catalog hundreds of new species of insects, plant life, and oh yeah… to hunt for a living dinosaur that eats hippos. You know, everyday stuff.

According to the legends and stories told be natives, he shouldn’t have much trouble. They tell of a creature that resembles the species of dinosaurs known as Sauropods, with short legs, long necks, and even longer tails.

Yahoo News writes:

A young Missouri man has turned to the Internet in search of investors for his expedition into the remote jungles of Africa seeking to document undiscovered flora and fauna. That is not so unusual, but one of the creatures he hopes to find is: a living dinosaur.

The region Stephen McCullah, the organizer of the expedition, has chosen to explore is the reputed home of the Mokèlé-mbèmbé, a dinosaur-like creature said to be up to 35 feet long (11 meters), with brownish-gray skin and a long, flexible neck. Many locals believe that it lives in the caves it digs in riverbanks, and that the beast feeds on elephants, hippos and crocodiles.

McCullah posted his pitch on Kickstarter.com asking for $27,000 in donations so that he and his friends can launch the Newmac Expedition, “one of the first expeditions in this century with the goal of categorizing plant and animal species in the vastly unexplored Republic of the Congo.” The preliminary four-man venture is slated to launch June 26.