Trove of Dinosaur Fossils Found in Utah

Four of These

A newly discovered batch of well-preserved dinosaur bones, petrified trees and even freshwater clams in southeastern Utah could provide new clues about life in the region some 150 million years ago.

The Bureau of Land Management announced the find Monday, calling the quarry near Hanksville "a major dinosaur fossil discovery."

An excavation revealed at least four sauropods, which are long-necked, long-tailed plant-eating dinosaurs, and two carnivorous ones, according to the bureau. It may have also uncovered an herbivorous stegosaurus.

Animal burrows and petrified tree trunks 6 feet in diameter were found nearby. The site doesn't contain any new species but offers scientists the chance to learn more about the ecology of that time, said Scott Foss, a BLM paleontologist.

The fossilized dinosaurs are from the same late Jurassic period as those at Dinosaur National Monument, which straddles the Utah-Colorado state line, and the Cleveland-Lloyd quarry near Price.

It could be a decade or so before the full importance of the Hanksville quarry is known, Foss said. "It does have the potential to match the other major quarries in Utah," he said.

The site, roughly 50 yards wide by 200 yards long, was excavated by a team from the Burpee Museum of Natural History in Rockford, Ill. Museum officials visited the site for about a week last summer and returned this year for a three-week excavation.

The area has long been known to locals and BLM officials as a dinosaur haven. But no one knew of the site's magnitude until excavation began.

The bones were found in a sandstone channel of an ancient river.

"The preservation of these dinosaurs is excellent," Foss said.

The mix of dinosaurs, trees and other species in the area may help scientists piece together what life was like 145 million years to 150 million years ago, including details about the ancient climate, Foss said.

BLM plans to close the site to conduct an environmental assessment for continued work in the area. The agency isn't disclosing the exact location of the find because of security concerns.

Coils of Ancient Egyptian Rope Found in Cave

- The ancient Egyptian's secret to making the strongest of all rigging ropes lies in a tangle of cord coils in a cave at the Red Sea coast, according to preliminary study results presented at the recent congress of Egyptologists in Rhodes.

Discovered three years ago by archaeologists Rodolfo Fattovich of the Oriental Studies University of Naples and Kathryn Bard of Boston University, the ropes offer an unprecedented look at seafaring activities in ancient Egypt.

"No ropes on this scale and this old have been so well preserved in their original context -- in Egypt or elsewhere," Bard told Discovery News.

Carefully wrapped in coils by ancient Egyptian sailors almost 4,000 years ago, the ropes were found in a hand-hewn cave at the ancient Red Sea port of Marsa Gawasis, 23 kilometers (14 miles) south of Safaga.

"The cave is really spectacular. Over 30 coils of ropes lie on the ground as if they had just been left there. Amazingly, these ropes were stored in the same way as nowadays sailors store their shipping cords -- just coiling and tighting them in the middle," archaeologist and rope analyst Andre Veldmeijer told Discovery News.

Most of the coils were recovered from the back of the cave. There are at least two layers of ropes. In their report, Veldmeijer and colleague Chiara Zazzaro of the University of Naples, estimated that more than 60 complete coils of cords are stored in the long, deep cave.

"Each cord is about 30 meters (98 feet) long and is very thick. No doubt these ropes were made for strong, heavy duties, Veldmeijer said. "Basically, they were hauling truss components. They ran above the deck, secured at the bow and at the stern, to produce structural cohesion for the ship,"

The theory is supported by the fact that the estimated length of the Egyptian ships is about 10 meters (33 feet) shorter than the ropes' lengths. This shows that sailors had five meters (16 feet) at both ends to tie the ropes.

The researchers are still puzzling over the material the ancient Egyptians used to make such a strong cordage.

Shipwreck Yields World's Oldest Salad Dressing

Ancient Condiment

- Olive oil infused with fragrant herbs has been identified in an ancient Greek ceramic transport jar known as an amphora, along with another container of what could be the world's oldest retsina-type wine, according to a recent Journal of Archaeological Science paper.

It is the first time DNA has been extracted from shipwrecked artifacts -- the two large jars were recovered from a 2,400-year-old wrecked vessel off the Greek island of Chios. If the second jar indeed contained a retsina-like wine, which is preserved and flavored with a tree resin known as mastic, then the find would push back the known origins of mastic cultivation by 200 years.

"This (study) opens new possibilities for archaeologists -- now perhaps we can figure out what was carried in almost every 'empty' jar we find in land excavations or shipwrecks," researcher Brendan Foley of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution told Discovery News.

"Maybe we can even go back to the amphorae, jars and cooking pots previously excavated and now sitting in museum storerooms around the world and ask new questions of each artifact," he added.

The discoveries resulted from an international collaboration involving Foley, Swedish scientist Maria Hansson, and Greek archaeologists Dimitris Kourkoumelis and Theotokis Theodoulou of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture, overseen by Calliopi Preka-Alexandri and Vivi Vassilopoulou.

For the study, Hansson and Foley swabbed the jars with a chemical that allowed them to collect any genetic material inside. They then amplified and sequenced the DNA, comparing it to known DNA "signatures" from a database.

Since these signatures are unique for all plants and animals, they let researchers identify the source of the material in question.

Neanderthal, Human Ancestor Could Chat

Chatty Ancestor?

- Language and associated activities, such as singing, likely emerged well before the first modern humans set foot on Earth, concludes a new study that found a Neanderthal relative possessed hearing consistent with individuals that communicate by speaking.

If they had the equipment, then they must have put it to use, suggests the research team, which was led by geologist Ignacio Martinez Mendizabal of Spain's Alcala University.

"We do believe that language must have appeared at least in the last common ancestor of both the Neanderthals and the Homo sapiens lineages," Mendizabal told Discovery News.

The ancestor was Homo antecessor, who lived around 800,000 to 1,000,000 years ago.

For their study, Mendizabal and his colleagues focused on a more recent member of the family of man, Homo heidelbergensis, which dates to at least 530,000 years ago and predates both Neanderthals and people. This strapping hominid was tall, measuring six feet on average, and had a big head, along with a more muscular physique than modern humans.

The researchers analyzed bones from five such individuals that lived at Sima de los Huesos, a cave in Atapuerca, Spain. Using skull bones, they created very detailed three-dimensional computerized tomography (CT) reconstructions of the cave dwellers' outer and middle ear. CT involves multiple X-ray-like images that serve as thin slices, which gradually build whole body parts or other structures.

The comprehensive model revealed that the Atapuerca human-ish residents had a heightened sensitivity to sounds falling between one and five kilohertz, a range linked to listening to speech that other primates seem to lack.

Early Aussie Tattoos Match Rock Art

Cultural Clue

- Body art was all the rage in early Australia, as it was in many other parts of the ancient world, and now a new study reports that elaborate and distinctive designs on the skin of indigenous Aussies repeated characters and motifs found on rock art and all sorts of portable objects, ranging from toys to pipes.

The study not only illustrates the link between body art, such as tattoos and intentional scarring, with cultural identity, but it also suggests that study of this imagery may help to unravel mysteries about where certain groups traveled in the past, what their values and rituals were, and how they related to other cultures.

"Distinctive design conventions can be considered markers of social interaction so, in a way (they are) a cultural signature of sorts that archaeologists can use to understand ways people were interacting in the past," author Liam Brady of Monash University's Center for Australian Indigenous Studies, told Discovery News.

For the study, published in the latest issue of the journal Antiquity, Brady documented rock art drawings; images found on early turtle shell, stone and wood objects, such as bamboo tobacco pipes and drums; and images that were etched onto the human body through a process called scarification.

"In a way, a scarred design could be interpreted as a tattoo," Brady said. "It was definitely a distinctive form of body ornamentation and it was permanent since the design was cut into the skin."

"Evidence for scarification is primarily via (19th century) anthropologists -- mainly A.C. Haddon -- who took black and white photographs of some designs, as well as drawing others into his notebooks in the late 1800's," he added.

Both Haddon and Brady focused their attention on a region called the Torres Strait. This is a collection of islands in tropical far northeastern Queensland. The islands lie between Australia and the Melanesian island of New Guinea.

Although people were living in the Torres Strait as early as 9,000 years ago, when sea levels were lower and a land bridge connected Australia with New Guinea, archaeological exploration of the area only really began with Haddon's 19th century work. Since body art, rock art, wooden objects and other tangible items have a relatively short shelf life, Haddon's collections and data represent some of the earliest confirmed findings for the region.

Brady determined that within the body art, rock art and objects, four primary motifs often repeated: a fish headdress, a snake, a four-pointed star, and triangle variants. The fish headdress, usually made of a turtle shell decorated with feathers and rattles, was worn during ceremonies and has, in at least one instance, been linked to a "cult of the dead."

The triangular designs, on the other hand, were often scarred onto women's skin and likely indicated these individuals were in mourning.

Analysis of the materials found that two basic groups -- horticulturalists and hunter-gatherers -- inhabited the Torres Strait during its early history. Aboriginal people at Cape York, a peninsula close to Australia, had "a different artistic system in operation, which did not incorporate many designs from Papua New Guinea," Brady said.

Grisly Human Sacrifice Revealed at Syria Dig

History Preserved

- Around 2300 B.C., an acrobat was killed during a bizarre sacrificial ceremony in what is now northeastern Syria, according to a new study published in the current issue of the journal Antiquity.

Gory evidence of the entertainer's death -- along with the remains of several rare horse-like animals which appear to have been sacrificed as well -- was found in the remains of a building at a site called Tell Brak, which was once the ancient city of Nagar. The findings suggest some ancient cultures may have sacrificed well-known public figures, as well as animals of great personal and monetary worth.

Joan Oates, lead author of the paper, and her colleagues were struck by the arrangement of three human bodies in the reception and main office portion of the ancient building. They describe the skeletal layout as "unusual, indeed strange."

One skeleton belonged to the acrobat, while another could have been the driver of a cart pulled by the animals. The third individual remains unidentified.

"It's the skeletons of the humans that are strange because they were not 'buried' in the usual sense of below ground level, and the heads were missing," said Oates, of Cambridge University's McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.

"They were simply lying on a surface, on which the outline of the body itself was still visible -- that is, they were not buried, but the room was rapidly filled in after their deposition," she added.

Fine silver jewelry, the remains of a dog along with its water bowl, and other animal remains were also found in the building.

The researchers think some kind of natural disaster may have led to a brief abandonment of the area before it was ritualistically closed with the sacrifices and "some propitiation of the gods."

In Stone Age Caves, Art and Music Mixed

Acoustically Inspired?

- At least 12,000 years ago, the most popular musical events might have taken place in torch-lit caves next to walls covered in art, according to new archaeological research in France.

Stone Age-era caves there bear paintings located in the most acoustically resonant places, where sound lingers or echoes.

The first cathedrals, theaters and concert halls, researchers now theorize, may have been inspired by musical performances held in caves.

Iegor Reznikoff of the University of Paris told Discovery News that he stumbled upon the Stone Age art and music connection.

"I am a specialist of the resonance of buildings and spaces, particularly of the resonance of Romanesque churches," Reznikoff explained. "The first time I happened to be in a prehistoric cave, I tried the resonance in various parts of the cave, and quickly the question arose: Is there a relation between resonance and locations of the paintings?"

To test his question, Reznikoff sang and hummed within various parts of well-known French caves containing prehistoric art. These included Niaux and Le Portel in Ariege, as well as Arcy-sur-Cure in Burgandy.

He drew three key conclusions from the "sound checks." First, most pictures were located in, or very near to, resonant locations. Second, the density of the pictures in these areas is proportional to the intensity of that spot's resonance. Finally, resonant areas where painting would be difficult, such as narrow passageways, appear to have been marked with red lines.

The latter finding suggests cave dwellers first scoped out caves for their musicality before any painting commenced.

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