Another great list from Cracked.com…

#2 Carcharodon/Carcharocles megalodon, The Giant Shark

The largest fish in the ocean today (that we know about) is the whale shark, and while the name is certainly impressive, the animal itself is more like the Fat Albert of the sea, benevolently swimming along and wrecking havoc on precisely nothing it encounters.

Much more impressive was Carcharodon megalodon, the largest bony fish in history and the star of more made-for-cable movies than Lorenzo Lamas and Casper Van Dien combined. At 70-feet long, this magnificent bastard was more than three times the size of an average great white shark and large enough to swallow an average sedan.

Why it’s a Good Thing They’re Dead:

We shouldn’t really have to explain this. Between great whites, moray eels and 160-foot long Voltron-jellyfish already in the ocean, it’s scary enough to go swimming without a beast from the Old Testament sniffing around for your blood.

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A hospital in Barcelona has developed technology which allows archaeologists to reconstructed the faces of Egyptian of a 2,000-year-old mummy. I’ve looked everywhere for a photo to accompany this story. If you come across any photos, please post the links in A Forum About History and I’ll replace the image above.

Update: Sybil sent in an image captured from this video. Thanks!

According to a report in the Barcelona Reporter, the presentation of the newly reconstructed face was given by Drs Felix Scales, Xavier Perich and Jordi Clos, president of the Egyptian Museum in Barcelona.

They showed the technological advances used in the facial reconstruction process that so far had not been used for archaeology, and the visible effect on the mummy.

Scales said that the project is quite important because thanks to advances in science, it is now possible to probe the internal structure of a mummy without having to open the shroud.

There is also no need to invade the mummy and destroy the original composition.

“It is very different from analyzing tissue straight out of surgery that one from more than 2,000 years ago,” said Scales.

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The remains of a 150,000-year-old settlement has been found in Arbil, north Iraq. It is, so far, the oldest uncovered settlement found in that part of Mesopotamia.

The archaeologists revealed a high number of items, mainly prehistoric stone tools, about nine metres under the ground in Arbil, capital of the Kurdish autonomous region, said archaeologist Novacek, from the University of West Bohemia in Plzen.

The eight-member expedition returned from Iraq at the end of last year. The team comprised experts from the University of West Bohemia, academic and university institutions in Prague and two companies.

Czech experts have succeeded in finding evidence of the oldest human settlement in the locality as all other finds of American expeditions working there 50 years ago are probably younger.

“We have been the first foreign expedition in this area since the second Gulf War in 2006,” Novacek added.

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Academics are starting to reinvestigate the massacre of Protestants in Ireland, which took place in 1641,by studying documented eye-witness accounts.

University language experts have been given a grant of £334,000 to pore over thousands of witness accounts of massacres following the 1641 rebellion.

The Protestant death toll was most recently put at between 4,000 and 12,000, mainly in Ulster.

However, there have been allegations that accounts of the killings were exaggerated for propaganda purposes.

Four thousand depositions corresponding to about 20,000 pages which have been locked away in Trinity College Dublin (TCD) since 1741, have been transcribed into digital format over the past two years.

The research team will use IBM technology, known as “dirty text” analysis software, to examine and cross-reference names, places, words and phrases.

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Scientists are hoping to launch a full excavation into Vero Beach’s Ice Age history.

The city is one of a few places in the United States where human skeletal remains apparently have been found with bones of now extinct animals — indicating they lived together here from 11,000 to 13,000 years ago, archaeological researcher Tom Stafford of Colorado said during a press conference at the Emerson Center.

Also, an amateur collector found a just-as-old bone near here with an etching of a mammoth on it, said Richard Hulbert, a paleontologist with the Florida Museum of Natural History, Gainesville.

It is presumed to be the oldest known art object of its type found in the New World, the researcher said.

“I’d like to have that (an image of it) flying on a flag outside the museum,” Hulbert said.

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