The tools, which had been sharpened like knives, date from the Middle Palaeolithic period, according to Kazuto Matsufuji, a professor at Kyoto’s Doshisha University, the newspaper said. The oldest stone tools previously found in Japan were less than 100,000 years old, the Yomiuri said.
In 2000, archeologist Shinichi Fujimura claimed he had found artifacts as old as 700,000 years old in the northern prefecture of Miyagi. He later confessed he fabricated the discovery.
Thwarted by the difficulty of obtaining a well-preserved sample of DNA, they took material from the bones and soft tissues and tested it with liquid chromatography, analysing it for chemical telltales.
The signatures point to biomarkers of the cell wall of Mycobacterium tuberculosis — the germ which causes TB. It was found in the lung tissue, pleura, diaphragm and femur.
The fat, interspersed with skeletal muscle, that had been noted in 1825 and 1994 is consistent with a protracted, terminal illness like TB, in which a patient literally withers away, say the authors.
A number of ancient Roman statues might lie beneath the turquoise waters of the Blue Grotto on the island of Capri in southern Italy, according to an underwater survey of the sea cave.
Dating to the 1st century A.D., the cave was used as a swimming pool by the Emperor Tiberius (42 B.C. – 37 A.D.), and the statues are probably depictions of sea gods.
The lighthouse has been dated to around A.D. 60 because the name of Nero, the Roman emperor at the time, was found on significant remnants of the circular inscription that surrounded the structure.
Havva I??k, professor of the archaeology department of the faculty of arts and sciences at Akdeniz University, headed the team that discovered the lighthouse, and called on the authorities in late July to allocate money to save the lighthouse. She said the ancient building could be the new symbol of Antalya.
The team came across the ruins of the historical lighthouse, which stands 60 meters from the sea today, during excavation work done in Patara in 2005. “It was covered under an 11-meter high sand dune,” I??k told daily Milliyet at the time. “We had to remove approximately 3,000 truck loads of sand to uncover it. But it should be restored, or we will lose it forever.”
New research has shown that lesions on the famous Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton known as “Sue” were not caused by bites from another T. Rex, but rather were made by an ancient version of trichomonosis, a parasite that infects modern birds.
In birds, trichomonosis causes inflammation in the beak and upper digestive tract, which makes feeding and even breathing very difficult.
Birds’ bodies react by sealing off infected tissue, but over time byproducts from this immune response can damage bone, creating lesions.
Sue had about ten such lesions on her jaw, some of them large enough for a human adult to poke a finger through.
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This is a blog about history. It is edited by me, Sevaan Franks, and features news articles and links to interesting anthropology, archaeology, geology, paleontology and other general history-related items from around the world. If you have a story you would like to see featured on this site, please drop me a line.
