The 10,000-year-old remains of a child have been found in an underwater cave in Mexico.

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A website has been set up by the Getty Conversation Institute in Los Angeles that allows archaeologists to gain access to decades worth of records about Jordanian sites. [Thanks @john_larkin]

The system is scheduled to open in September, but only to authorized users. Many archaeologists say they hope it will eventually become open to a much broader group of scholars and conservators around the world to view and add to, or comment upon, the information in the database.

“It’s a kind of openness that is still a very new concept in parts of the Middle East,” Mr. Whalen said.

Ziad al-Saad, the recently named director general of the Jordanian Department of Antiquities, said in a telephone interview from Amman that the country — where security and access to official information are touchy topics — was actively considering making the system freely accessible. “We want to be able to share what we have here with everyone,” he said.

He added that he considered the system an important step forward in how antiquities-rich countries like his will safeguard their treasures. “Tourism is a prime sector of our economy, and our archaeological sites are key to that,” he said. “We like to call Jordan an open museum. You find antiquities wherever you go here.”

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A new study is suggesting that the Isle of Wight is home to the one of the richest sources of “pick’n'mix” dinosaurs remains in the world.

Weather conditions 130 million years ago have been suggested as one reason why thousands of small teeth and bones lie buried alongside bigger fossils.

Portsmouth University palaeontologist Dr Steve Sweetman and Dr Allan Insole from Bristol University led the study.

Dr Sweetman said remains were “unique” to the island.

The research has been published in the journal Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology.

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A 17th century scrap of paper may contain traces of a lost South American language.

“It’s a little piece of paper with a big story to tell,” says Dr. Jeffrey Quilter, who has conducted investigations in Peru for more than three decades, and is director of the archaeological project at Magdalena de Cao Viejo in the El Brujo Archaeological Complex, where the paper was excavated in 2008. Quilter explains this simple list offers “a glimpse of the peoples of ancient and early colonial Peru who spoke a language lost to us until this discovery.”

The writing is a set of translations from Spanish names of numbers (uno, dos, and tres) and Arabic numerals (4–10, 21, 30, 100, and 200) to the unknown language. Some of the translated numbers have never been seen before, while others may have been borrowed from Quechua or a related language. Quechua is still spoken today in Peru, along with Spanish, but in the early 17th century, many languages were spoken in the region, such as Quingnam and Pescadora. Information about them today is limited. Even so, the archaeologists were able to deduce that the lost language speakers used a decimal system like our own.

“The find is significant because it offers the first glimpse of a previously unknown language and number system,” says Quilter. “It also points to the great diversity of Peru’s cultural heritage in the early Colonial Period. The interactions between natives and Spanish were far more complex than previously thought.”

The name of the lost language is still a mystery. The American-Peruvian research team was able to eliminate Mochica, spoken on the North Coast into the Colonial Period but now extinct, and point to Quingnam and Pescadora as possible candidates. Neither Quingnam nor Pescadora, however, have been documented beyond their names. There is even a possibility that Quingnam and Pescadora are the same language but they were identified as separate tongues in early Colonial Spanish writings, so a definitive connection remains impossible to establish.

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Archaeologists in Greece has found the ruins of a three-level palace which they say matches the description of Odysseus’ palace in Homer’s Odyssey.

Greek archaeologists have claimed they have found the palace of Odysseus during excavations on the Ithaca island in the Ionian Sea.

On Tuesday, the archaeologist, Thanasis Papadopulos, who has been leading the excavation team on Odysseus’ home island for 16 years, said that he knew the right place of the remains since 2006.

“We found the ruins of a three-level palace with a staircase carved into the rock,” Papadopulos said, adding that they also found a well, dating back to 13th century BC, when the Trojan War is believed to have taken place.

According to the archaeologist, the discoveries are identical to the ones described in Homer’s Odyssey, presumably written about 8th century BC.

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