The ancient North American city of Cahokia had as its focal point a feature now known as Monks Mound, a giant earthwork surrounded on its north, south, east and west by large rectangular open areas. These flat zones, called plazas by archaeologists since the early 1960s, were thought to serve as communal areas that served…
Read More “North ‘plaza’ in Cahokia was likely inundated year-round, study finds” »
An analysis of ancient DNA from a 100,000-year-old polar bear has revealed that extensive hybridization between polar bears and brown bears occurred during the last warm interglacial period in the Pleistocene, leaving a surprising amount of polar bear ancestry in the genomes of all living brown bears. The skull of an ancient polar bear, nicknamed…
Read More “100,000-year-old polar bear genome reveals ancient hybridization with brown bears” »
Around 13,200 years ago, a roving male mastodon died in a bloody mating-season battle with a rival in what today is northeast Indiana, nearly 100 miles from his home territory, according to the first study to document the annual migration of an individual animal from an extinct species. A mounted skeleton of the Buesching mastodon,…
A partial skull that was discovered last summer by two kayakers in Minnesota will be returned to Native American officials after investigations determined it was about 8,000 years old. The skull was recently carbon-dated to between 5,500 and 6,000 BC [Credit: Renville County Sheriff’s Office] The kayakers found the skull in the drought-depleted Minnesota River…
Read More “Nearly 8,000-year-old human skull found by kayakers in Minnesota river” »
Archaeological excavations led by Wyoming’s state archaeologist and involving University of Wyoming researchers have confirmed that an ancient mine in eastern Wyoming was used by humans to produce red ocher starting nearly 13,000 years ago. This complete Clovis point was recovered from the Powars II site [Credit: Spencer Pelton] That makes the Powars II site…
Read More “Research confirms eastern Wyoming Paleoindian site as Americas’ oldest mine” »
Did the world’s largest prehistoric shark need an orthodontist, or did it just have a bad lunch Researchers from North Carolina State University and the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences examined a deformed tooth from an Otodus megalodon shark in a search for the root cause: was it developmental, or related to feeding? The…
Read More “What caused this megatooth shark’s massive toothache?” »
A new University of Michigan study that used fossil oyster shells as paleothermometers found the shallow sea that covered much of western North America 95 million years ago was as warm as today’s tropics. Cretaceous oysters of the genus Pycnodonte investigated in the new study. These specimens were collected in San Miguel County, Colorado (top left),…
Read More “Fossils reveal tropically hot North America 95 million years ago” »
New details of our past are coming to light, hiding in the nooks and crannies of the world, as we refine our techniques to go looking for them. Most lauded is the reconstruction of the evolution of humanity since our African origins around 300,000 years ago, by analyzing our living and fossil DNA. Replete with…
Read More “Ancient cave art: How new hi-tech archaeology is revealing the ghosts of human history” »
Sometime around 14,000 years ago, the first humans crossed the Bering Strait to North America with canines, domesticated dogs they used for hunting, by their side. This painting at the San Diego Natural History Museum by William Stout shows what the Archeocyon canid, center, would have looked like during the Oligocene era in what’s now San…
Read More “Rare fossil of ancient dog species discovered by paleontologists” »
A warehouse along the Savannah River is holding historical treasures that evidence suggests remained lost for more than 240 years—a cache of 19 cannons that researchers suspect came from British ships scuttled to the river bottom during the American Revolution. Revolutionary War cannon raised from Savannah River in January 2022 [Credit: Michael Jordan/US Army Corps…
Read More “Revolutionary find: 19 cannons in river likely sunk in 1779” »
