The discovery of a 4th century skeleton found at the Roman town of Venta Icenorum (present-day Caistor St. Edmund, just outside of Norwich, England), is puzzling archaeologists due to the position it was buried in.

“This one has been seemingly put sideways into a shallow pit and the ground surface would have barely covered it. It’s folded up and at first sight it seems to be a very strange-looking individual.

“The question is whether we are in a cemetery area of the town or if we are looking at something stranger. None of us who have worked on Roman cemeteries in the past have ever come across anything like this.

“It could be that they were executed as a criminal, murdered and shoved into a pit or it was someone who was deemed abnormal in some way so the body was not accorded the normal burial.”

Jarrod Burks explains how radar technology has changed the way archaeologists dig in the dirt.

“Instead of throwing a dart into the middle of 40 acres, this accurately says ‘Here’s a bulls-eye,’ ” said Rick Perkins, chief ranger at the Hopewell Cultural National Park.

Outside his office at Ohio Valley Archeology on Sinclair Road, Burks recently demonstrated the technology. He peered down at a screen on a radar machine that he slowly rolled over a stretch of blacktop.

A black arch appeared – a pipe, he said, about 3 feet below the surface.

Back in the 19th century, explorer Henry Harrison traveled the globe, taking photographs along the way and meticulously colouring them in by hand. The collection is set to hit the auction block and someone is going to take home an amazing collection.

Harrison travelled the globe with his trusty camera and even recorded the grisly early stages of the Boxer Rebellion in China in the late 1890s.

Other locations depicted include the pyramids at Giza, India, Venice, Pompeii, Tonga and the West Indies.

One of the never before seen slides is labelled: “An English party ascending the Great Pyramid.”  There are pictures of snake charmers, huge cannon being unloaded, ships along the Suez Canal and images of HMS Victory and the Royal Yacht “Victoria and Albert”.

He clearly spent time in the Holy Land and there are colour pictures of the Tomb of David, Garden of Gethsemane, the Wailing Wall, Nazareth and Jericho.

Sudanese warriors, Egyptian crocodile catchers, Indian mahouts, fighting Sikhs, Bengali lancers and even a Whirling Dervish – described as a Howling Dervish – are all recorded.

The world’s oldest living plant, a tree species known as King’s Lomatia, has been cloned in an effort to save it from a deadly fungus.

RTBG horticulturist botanist Natalie Tapson said that unlike many plants which reproduce from seed, King’s Lomatia is a sterile clone which reproduces new plants by suckering in the wild.

“Fossil leaves of the plant found in the south west were dated at 43,600 years old and given that the species is a clone, it is possibly the oldest living plant in the world,” Natalie said.

Palaeontologists who have studied the biomechanics of Velociraptor claws say they were used to cling to prey and climb trees.

Phil Manning of the University of Manchester, UK, and colleagues previously showed that Velociraptor’s sharp-tipped foot claw could puncture skin and help the dinosaur cling to wounded prey but was not sharp enough to rip the skin open. Now an analysis of the biomechanics of the hand claw suggests it could have supported the dinosaur’s weight when it was climbing.

Manning suggests Velociraptor used its climbing ability to perch in trees and pounce on prey from above, with its claws puncturing the skin so it could cling to its victim’s body while biting and subduing it.