Archaeologists do it in holes: Tales from the stratigraphy

[The Brain]

[Duque de Bragança]

Nice indeed. 

[jimmy olsen]

Incredible study on Neanderthal childhood via analysis of their teeth.

https://www.google.co.kr/amp/s/relay.nationalgeographic.com/proxy/distribution/public/amp/science/2018/10/news-neanderthal-teeth-nursing-seasons-stress

[Rex Francorum]

A portion of Québec City's first rampart, built between 1690 and 1693, was discovered recently.

https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/fortifications-from-1693-uncovered-in-quebec-city-1.4165689

[Malthus]

That's freaking cool!

[Sophie Scholl]

Nice!  It's interesting to see which words English keeps in terms of fortifications and which it changes from the French original (mostly).

[jimmy olsen]

We need to reboot Jurassic Park with feathered dinosaurs!

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/laelaps/dinosaurs-had-birdlike-lungs/

Dinosaurs Had Birdlike Lungs

A new study proposes that all dinosaurs shared a basic lung anatomy which may have given them an evolutionary edge

By Brian Switek on October 25, 2018
Some of the most fascinating, and contentious, aspects of dinosaur life are the parts we can't see. What I'm talking about are the soft tissues of animals like Tyrannosaurus and Triceratops - the muscles, organs, nerves, and other squishy bits that decayed away long ago. But the wonderful thing about dinosaur bones - dinosaur skeletons - is that they interacted with and supported many of the missing parts we're so curious about. Know what to look for and clues about what rotted away can still be retrieved. As Robert Brocklehurst, Emma Schachner, and William Sellers point out in a new study, it's just this kind of anatomical outline that can tell us a little more about non-avian dinosaur lungs.

Before getting to the ancient bones, however, it's best to start with the present. Birds are living dinosaurs, and we know that they have fantastically complex respiratory systems that involve a system of air sacs as well as lungs and a windpipe. These anatomical balloons often invade and indent bone, and it's exactly this kind of coordination between bodily systems that has allowed paleontologists to identify air sac systems in saurischian dinosaurs (that is, the family that includes theropods like Velociraptor and sauropods such as Apatosaurus). But what about the lungs themselves? Did non-avian dinosaurs have lungs similar to those of modern birds, or does the avian lung have a more recent evolutionary origin?

Here, once again, the present is the key to the past. The researchers studied the pulmonary and surrounding skeletal anatomy of birds and crocodylians with an eye to how the soft and osteological tissues are influenced by each other, and this dataset was compared to skeletal details of non-avian dinosaurs and the protodinosaur Silesaurus. If the anatomy of vertebrae of birds and crocodiles is related to lung anatomy in birds and crocodylians, in other words, then that anatomical connection should allow the lung anatomy of extinct dinosaurs to be reconstructed.

As might be expected given their different modes of life and over 235 million years of separate evolutionary trajectories, bird and crocodile lung anatomy differed significantly. This is a useful finding, given that non-avian dinosaurs could then be categorized as more crocodile-like or as more bird-like in pulmonary anatomy. And what the researchers found was that all the non-avian dinosaurs in the study, as well as Silesaurus, had vertebrae that created a "furrowed" ceiling of the thorax and is associated with a more bird-like lung that's immobile along the top surface. All dinosaurs had lungs that were more bird-like than crocodile-like.

This doesn't mean that all dinosaurs were just big birds. (Very non-bird like dinosaurs like Triceratops were part of this study, as well as those closely related to the origin of birds.) Rather, as the anatomists point out, the results indicate that the ancestral condition for dinosaurs was "a dorsally immobile lung, strongly partitioned into gas-exchanging and ventilatory regions." Modifications from that basic setup - perhaps kept conservative in ornithischian dinosaurs and highly modified with air sac systems in saurischians - allowed for the respiratory diversity that paleontologists are now assessing and studying.

And this might have something to do with the origin of dinosaurs themselves. The physiological consequences of having more bird-like lungs likely made non-avian dinosaurs more efficient at taking up oxygen from the air than other vertebrates, Brocklehurst and colleagues write, an advantage when atmospheric oxygen levels sometimes dropped. Dinosaur lung anatomy may have given them a significant survival advantage, and perhaps could be a key to why the "terrible lizards" emerged triumphant to rule the world through the Jurassic and Cretaceous.

[mongers]

Tim is why we have archaeologists with wide hats in dinosaur movies. 

[Oexmelin]

This looks like the kernels around which Neil Gaiman builds his stories.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/nov/21/body-of-handless-monk-discovered-by-site-of-buried-porpoise-chapelle-dom-hue-near-guernsey?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other&fbclid=IwAR0TTKms4JGnY8zhTd0TPZ73RqF2ms8aGF_kVqdp0A5pM7LbVEk6VGu__1s

Body of handless man discovered by site of buried porpoise

Archaeologists on tiny island of Chapelle Dom Hue puzzling over mysterious finds

Wed 21 Nov 2018 09.53 EST
First published on Wed 21 Nov 2018 08.05 EST

The mystery surrounding a tiny island where a porpoise was apparently carefully buried in a medieval grave has deepened after the remains of a handless figure were unearthed.

Archaeologists digging at a religious island retreat have been puzzling over the porpoise find for months, and the discovery of the figure, possibly a monk or drowned person, has added to the sense of wonder over what was taking place there half a millennium ago.

Results of tests on the porpoise have recently come back and suggest it was buried on the island of Chapelle Dom Hue, off the west coast of Guernsey, in the 15th century.

While the tests were being done, archaeologists spotted a human toe bone exposed in a cliff edge about 10 metres from the porpoise site. When they went back again, a foot had begun to appear as wind and rain eroded the cliff.

They began to dig and found a near-complete human skeleton. Philip de Jersey, a States of Guernsey archaeologist, said the body could be that of a monk as it was believed the island was used by residents from a nearby monastery seeking solitude.

De Jersey said the body was oriented roughly east to west, suggesting a Christian burial. Copper and bone buttons were found, possibly indicating that the person was probably clothed when buried.

The man was just 5ft and his skull was badly damaged. But the most intriguing detail is the lack of hands. De Jersey said: "He is lacking hands and wrist bones, which is mysterious. There are medical reasons a person could lose their hands such as leprosy but the toes are in such good condition it seems unlikely."

It is also possible that the body was not formally buried but is that of a drowned person, possibly a sailor, that may have washed up on the island centuries ago and by chance been buried. De Jersey said: "It may be that it was a body that had been floating around and the hands had been nibbled. The feet might have had footwear on and so be protected."

The bones would be analysed next year to try to find out more about the person – and any possible link to the porpoise, he said.

Quite why the porpoise was buried so carefully on the island is a mystery. The marine creatures were eaten in medieval times but it would have been easier to dispose of the remains in the sea, which is only a few metres from the site.

De Jersey said it was possible that a monk hid the body of the porpoise because he was not supposed to have it, or that the body was placed in the hole in salt to preserve it and had been forgotten.

Another intriguing theory is that the animal had some sort of religious significance to the people who used the island.

[Syt]

I wonder what the porpoise behind all this is 

[Oexmelin]

The Staffordshire hoard has a great website. I can't seem to post picture, but have a look, it's spectacular.

https://www.staffordshirehoard.org.uk/?fbclid=IwAR0XGlwPnwhXQe0guq3-WBMqudjjcAVIhOKpFY5K_CZ5vyol6ahWqaAmvAk

[Malthus]

The Staffordshire hoard has a great website. I can't seem to post picture, but have a look, it's spectacular.

https://www.staffordshirehoard.org.uk/?fbclid=IwAR0XGlwPnwhXQe0guq3-WBMqudjjcAVIhOKpFY5K_CZ5vyol6ahWqaAmvAk

Indeed a great site.

I've always been fascinated by this, since it was discovered.

Of course, it invites speculation as to how it happened to be collected and buried.

My pure speculation: it was the horde collected by a non-Christian warlord, who had won a significant battle against a Christian Anglo-Saxon monarch, and was about to fight another such battle - which he lost, spectacularly badly.

Reason:

1 - the horde is, as noted, mostly gold stripped from military gear. No feminine jewelry at all. This suggests gold taken in battle. 

2 - most of the gold was stripped from swords. This suggests depersonalizing these weapons, perhaps to distribute the swords, minus the gold, to a war-band's followers. The gold could then be used by the leader to attract more followers.

3 - among the gold were Christian objects - crosses and what may be a Bible cover. These had been treated purely as loot, the crosses crumpled up, the Bible cover ripped off. This suggests that the losers were Christian (an army accompanied by a priest carrying crosses and a Bible, perhaps). This also suggests that the winners were not Christian, as they would, if Christian, be more likely to treat Christian treasures more respectfully.

4 - Obviously, the collecter of the hoard must have won at least one major battle, to have access to the equipment of lots of high ranking warriors - presumably looted from their dead bodies. The loot is way more than an individual warrior could have collected. This suggests the leader of a war-band.

5 - Why was the loot buried and not collected again? Perhaps it was buried in secret on the eve of another battle, so it would not be lost if the owner had to make a run for it. That it was never collected suggests that the owner lost the battle, and was killed - together with everyone who knew where the loot was buried (otherwise it would have been dug up again).

[jimmy olsen]

Pretty strong evidence that early Homo was present in N. Africa 2.4 million years ago.

Nice long article here
https://gizmodo.com/the-human-origin-story-has-changed-again-thanks-to-new-1830747304/amp

[jimmy olsen]

Plague DNA found in 4,900 year old Swedish burials.

It now seems likely that plague may have been responsible for the collapse of Europe's first farming communities around 5,400 years ago.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07673-7

[The Brain]

But he doesn't see how long-distance trading networks could have propelled its spread. "If you get the plague, you don't go and travel a few hundred kilometres. You die."

I would love some elaboration here.