Scientists have decoded the genome of Ötzi the Iceman, the 5,000-year-old mummy found in the Italian Alps.

“We now have access to the complete genetic profile of this world famous mummy. As a result the path is clear for an imminent solution to many of the puzzles surrounding the Iceman,” the Bolzano-based European Academy (Eurac) said in a statement.

Nicknamed Oetzi, the 5 000-year-old mummy is housed in the South Tyrol Archaeology Museum in Bolzano. He is believed to have died aged 46 after being shot with an arrow.

Scientists from Eurac, the University of Tbingen and experts in bioinformatics at Heidelberg, Germany, used the latest technologies to study Oetzi’s DNA – a process that began with the extraction of a bone sample from the pelvis of the ice mummy.

“It was a sensationally fast result,” Albert Zink, head of Eurac’s Institute for Mummies and the Iceman, told the German Press Agency. The process had been completed in two to three months when in the past “years” were required for such genome studies, Zink said.

The scientists now aim to process the “enormous quantity” of bio-data which has become available to them.

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The ancient Egyptians made a lot of references to a place called the Land of Punt, which was their source for a variety of exotic animals and other valuable goods. Now scientists are analyzing the hairs of baboon mummies in order to try and pinpoint the location of this lost land.

From there they brought back perfumes, panther skins, electrum, and, yes, live baboons to keep as pets. The voyages started as early as the Old Kingdom, ca. 4,500 years ago, and continued until just after the collapse of the New Kingdom 3,000 years ago.

Egyptologists have long argued about the location of Punt. The presence of perfumes suggests that it was located somewhere in Arabia, such as Yemen. However the depiction of a giraffe, at a temple built by Queen Hatshepsut, tells archaeologists that Punt is likely somewhere in Africa – perhaps around Ethiopia, Eritrea or Somalia.

There are even suggestions that it could be further south on the African coastline, perhaps as far as Mozambique.

The surviving Egyptian texts give only vague references to its location. An example below records a voyage sponsored by the Pharaoh Ramesses III. Author Pierre Grandet wrote:

I built great ships … which were equipped with countless crewmen. Laden with products beyond number from Egypt … (and then) sent to the great Sea of Muqed, they reached the mountains of Punt without any misfortune befalling them.

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Scientists have developed a new way to date ancient artifacts without damaging them.

Scientists today described development of a new method to determine the age of ancient mummies, old artwork, and other relics without causing damage to these treasures of global cultural heritage. Reporting at the 239th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS), they said it could allow scientific analysis of hundreds of artifacts that until now were off limits because museums and private collectors did not want the objects damaged.

“This technique stands to revolutionize radiocarbon dating,” said Marvin Rowe, Ph.D., who led the research team. “It expands the possibility for analyzing extensive museum collections that have previously been off limits because of their rarity or intrinsic value and the destructive nature of the current method of radiocarbon dating. In theory, it could even be used to date the Shroud of Turin.”

Rowe explained that the new method is a form of radiocarbon dating, the archaeologist’s standard tool to estimate the age of an object by measuring its content of naturally-occurring radioactive carbon. A professor emeritus at Texas A&M University College Station, Rowe teaches at a branch of the university in Qatar. Traditional carbon dating involves removing and burning small samples of the object. Although it sometimes requires taking minute samples of an object, even that damage may be unacceptable for some artifacts. The new method does not involve removing a sample of the object.

Conventional carbon dating estimates the age of an artifact based on its content of carbon-14 (C-14), a naturally occurring, radioactive form of carbon. Comparing the C-14 levels in the object to levels of C-14 expected in the atmosphere for a particular historic period allows scientists to estimate the age of an artifact. Both the conventional and new carbon dating methods can determine the age of objects as far back as 45,000 to 50,000 years, Rowe said.

In conventional dating methods, scientists remove a small sample from an object, such as a cloth or bone fragment. Then they treat the sample with a strong acid and a strong base and finally burn the sample in a small glass chamber to produce carbon dioxide gas to analyze its C-14 content.

Rowe’s new method, called “non-destructive carbon dating,” eliminates sampling, the destructive acid-base washes, and burning. In the new method, scientists place an entire artifact in a special chamber with a plasma, an electrically charged gas similar to gases used in big-screen plasma television displays. The gas slowly and gently oxidizes the surface of the object to produce carbon dioxide for C-14 analysis without damaging the surface, he said.

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In what I think is an amazing discovery, the colour of a dinosaur, Sinosauroopteryx, has been determined to be yellow and white stripes.

“In particular, it helps to resolve a long-standing debate about the original function of feathers – whether they were used for flight, insulation, or display.

“We now know that feathers came before wings, so feathers did not originate as flight structures.

“We therefore suggest that feathers first arose as agents for colour display and only later in their evolutionary history did they become useful for flight and insulation.”

The team of palaeontologists involved with the research, published in the journal Nature, report two kinds of “melanosomes”, parts of proteins that provide the colour found in the feathers of numerous birds and dinosaurs from the Jehol beds of north east China.

They are buried within the structure of feathers and hair in modern birds and mammals, giving black, grey, and rufous tones such as orange and brown.

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Scientists in Italy are hoping to bring back the Auroch, a type of giant cattle, which has been extinct since 1627.

The huge cattle with sweeping horns which once roamed the forests of Europe have not been seen for nearly 400 years.

Now Italian scientists are hoping to use genetic expertise and selective breeding of modern-day wild cattle to recreate the fearsome beasts which weighed around 2,200lb and stood 6.5 feet at the shoulder.

Breeds of large cattle which most closely resemble Bos primigenius, such as Highland cattle and the white Maremma breed from Italy, are being bred with each other in a technique known as “back-breeding”.

At the same time, scientists say they have for the first time created a map of the auroch’s genome, so that they know precisely what type of animal they are trying to replicate.

“We were able to analyse auroch DNA from preserved bone material and create a rough map of its genome that should allow us to breed animals nearly identical to aurochs,” said team leader Donato Matassino, head of the Consortium for Experimental Biotechnology in Benevento, in the southern Campania region.

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