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.
A pre-Aztec civilization used human bones to make various tools and utensils.
The discovery comes from a new analysis of 5,000 bone fragments found in the ancient city of Teotihuacan, a large archaeological site about 30 miles (48 kilometers) northeast of Mexico City (see map).
Femurs (thigh bones), tibias (shinbones), and human skulls were transformed into household items shortly after death, noted team leader Abigail Meza Peñaloza of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).
“The Teotihuacanos used different stones as knives to finely remove the flesh and muscles from the bones,” Meza Peñaloza said. The bodies had to be as fresh as possible, she added, because after a person dies, his or her bone quickly becomes too fragile to sculpt.
Rebecca Storey, a Teotihuacan expert at the University of Houston, said that making utensils out of human bone fits with the ancient culture.
A foot bone found in a cave in the Philippines is rewriting Filipino history.
Archaeologists have found a foot bone that could prove the Philippines was first settled by humans 67,000 years ago, thousands of years earlier than previously thought, the National Museum said Tuesday.
The bone, found in an extensive cave network, predates the 47,000-year-old Tabon Man that is previously known as the first human to have lived in the country, said Taj Vitales, a researcher with the museum’s archaeology section.
“This would make it the oldest human remains ever found in the Philippines,” Vitales told AFP.
Archaeologists from the University of the Philippines and the National Museum dug up the third metatarsal bone of the right foot in 2007 in the Callao caves near Penablanca, about 335 kilometres (210 miles) north of Manila.
Mednikova and her colleagues believe that “compared to anatomically modern humans, (both male and female Neanderthals) had a larger muscle mass and experienced a higher loading on the upper extremity than did Homo sapiens.” Also, “they differed from modern humans by a greater functional difference between the sexes in the use of the right arm.”
Neanderthal males had Popeye-type right arms, while Neanderthal females had arms that were more evenly matched and not nearly as muscular.
Mednikova and her team analyzed a fossil humerus (long bone that extends from the shoulder to the elbow) for what they believe was an Neanderthal male that might have lived around 100,000 years ago in what is now Khvalynsk, Russia. The bone was put through computerized tomography, X-rays and other analysis.
The fossil displays an unusual mixture of thickened walls with narrow bone marrow region cavities. This, according to the scientists, suggests “intense mineralization” provided for the strong, sturdy bone structure, with the inner narrowness “based on a stronger shaft architecture requiring much less mineralization.”
75-million-year-old bite marks from mammals have been found on the skeletons of dinosaurs.
The bite marks are about 75 million years old from near the end of the age of dinosaurs. They are the oldest mammalian tooth marks found yet. Though small mammals existed in the dinosaur era, it was the fall of dinosaurs that spurred the rise of large mammals, theory holds.
Scientists discovered the marks during fieldwork in Canada, as well as during analyses of university and museum bone collections there.
“The marks stood out for me, because I remember seeing the gnaw marks on the antlers of a deer my father brought home when I was young,” said researcher Nicholas Longrich, a vertebrate paleontologist at Yale University in New Haven, Conn. “So when I saw it in the fossils, it was something I paid attention to.”
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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, palaeontology 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.
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