A nail dating from the time of Christ’s crucifixion has been found off the coast of Madeira, alongside the bodies of three Templar knights.

Bryn Walters, an archaeologist, said the iron nail’s remarkable condition suggested it had been handed with extreme care, as if it was a relic.

“It dates from the first to second centuries,” he told the Daily Mirror.

While one would expect the surface to be “pitted and rough” he said on this nail the surface was smooth.

That suggested that many people had handled it over the centuries, with the acid on their hands giving it a “peculiar finish”.

Christopher Macklin of the Knights Templar of Britannia said the discovery was “momentous”.

He said the original Knights Templar may have thought it was one of the nails used in Christ’s crucifixion.

The nail was found together with three skeletons and three swords.

One of the swords had the Knight Templar’s cross inscribed on it.

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Wooden covers set up to protect the stairways of Persepolis have actually caused more damage.

Humidity and lack of planning for removal of garbage dumped by visitors at the site have created ideal conditions for growth of various types of fungus, lichen, and plants under the wooden covers, the Persian service of the Mehr News Agency reported on Sunday.

These elements ruin the stones used in construction of the stairways at the palaces of Sad-Sotun and Apadana in Persepolis.

The wooden covers were made by the Parsa and Pasargadae Research Center (PPRC) in 2006 to protect the stones of the stairs from erosion caused by visitors at the palaces.

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A 67-million-year-old snake fossil has been found, eating baby dinosaurs.

Scientists have found a 67 million-year-old fossil of a snake coiled around dinosaur eggs and a hatchling. This is the first evidence of snakes eating dinosaurs.

“It’s a stunning, once-in-a-lifetime find,” said paleontologist Paul Sereno of the University of Chicago, who was not involved in the study. “We’ve caught one of the rarest moments in the fossil record, which is prey and predator, together.”

Geologist Dhanajay Mohabey of the Indian Geological Survey first unearthed the fossil 26 years ago in a rocky, limestone outcropping in the northwestern Indian village of Dholi Dungri. He thought all the bones at the site were those of dinosaur hatchlings.

But in 2001, University of Michigan paleontologist Jeff Wilson, took a second look at the fossils. The team then recognized they had actually found a snake coiled around a broken egg, with a hatchling and two other eggs nearby. The findings appeared Mar. 1 in Public Library of Science Biology.

The newly discovered species of snake, Sanajeh indicus, measures about 11.5 feet long. The hatchlings, part of a group called titanosaurs, measured about a foot and a half long. Titanosaurs were the largest animal to ever walk on land, with adults that could reach up to 100 feet long.

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The palace of Sextus Tarquinius, the prince who sparked the revolt that led to the foundation of the Roman empire may have been found 12 miles from Rome.

The remains of what might have been the residence of the Etruscan prince Sextus Tarquinius, son of the last legendary king of Rome Tarquinius Superbus (Tarquin the Proud), have been found on the slopes of an extinct volcanic crater about 12 miles from Rome, Italian archaeologists have announced.

The palace was discovered on the site of the ancient acropolis of Gabii, where, according to legend, Rome’s mythical founders, Romulus and Remus, were educated. The building dates to the sixth century B.C and boasts the highest intact walls from the period ever found in Italy, standing at around 6.56 feet high.

“The dig has shown that the richly decorated monumental roof was dismantled, and the building filled with rubble. This has been a blessing, since it has allowed the palace to remain virtually intact,” archaeologist Marco Fabbri of Rome’s Tor Vergata University, told Discovery News.

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In what is shaping up to be an incredible find, neolithic stone circles, alignments and possible tombs have been discovered in the Syrian Desert. [Thx Saturn]

Dr. Mason explains that he “went for a walk” into the eastern perimeter of the site – an area that hasn’t been explored by archaeologists. What he discovered is an ancient landscape of stone circles, stone alignments and what appear to be corbelled roof tombs. From stone tools found at the site, it’s likely that the features date to some point in the Middle East’s Neolithic Period – a broad stretch of time between roughly 8500 BC – 4300 BC.

It is thought that in Western Europe megalithic construction involving the use of stone only dates back as far as ca. 4500 BC. This means that the Syrian site could well be older than anything seen in Europe.

At a recent colloquium in Toronto, Canada, Mason described his shock at discovering the apparent tombs, stone circles and stone alignments: “I was standing up there thinking, oh dear me, I’ve wandered onto Salisbury Plain,”

At the southern end of the landscape there are three apparent tombs. They are about eight metres in diameter and each of them “actually has a chamber in the middle”. The roof is corbelled which suggests that beneath them is “something you would want to seal in.” Each of these corbelled structures had a stone circle beside it, which is about two meters in diameter.

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