Tag Archives: ancient

‘Planet Nine’ Might Be an Ancient Black Hole We tend to think of the solar system as our little corner of the universe, but there are still a lot of things we don’t know about it. For example, what’s perturbing the orbits of small space rocks out past the orbit …

Three Ancient Roman Boats Reconstructed in 3D A team of researchers from Italy and France has made realistic 3D reconstructions of three wooden boats from the ancient Roman port of Ostia. 3D reconstructions of the three boat types found at Ostia: a fishing boat (left), a small sailboat (center) and …

Archaeologists Use Ground-Penetrating Radar to Map Ancient Roman City of Falerii Novi The first high-resolution ground-penetrating radar survey of a complete ancient Roman town — Falerii Novi, in Lazio, Italy — has revealed previously unrecorded public buildings, such as a temple, a macellum or market building, a bath complex, and …

Crystallization of Moon’s liquid metallic core may have driven its now-lost magnetic field approximately 3 billion years ago, according to new research published in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters. Ancient Moon generated a dynamo magnetic field in its liquid metallic core; this dynamo may have been driven by …

Viruses reproduce by infiltrating living cells and taking over the biological machinery inside. It’s an insidious process that can leave the host with a life-threatening illness, a mild fever, or no ill effects at all. Recent advances in medical science have allowed humans to combat viruses like never before, but …

According to a new analysis of nuclear DNA from ancient individuals, many of today’s indigenous peoples living in southern Alaska and coastal British Columbia are descendants of the first humans to make their home in northwest North America more than 10,000 years ago (early Holocene epoch). A study by John …

Israeli archaeologists excavating near the city of Beit Shemesh have unearthed an extensive complex of ritual baths and underground refuges used by Bar Kokhba’s rebels. An underground chamber near the city of Beit Shemesh, Israel. Image credit: Assaf Peretz / Israel Antiquities Authority. The newly-discovered settlement, whose ancient name is …

Exceptionally well-preserved specimens unearthed in Early Cretaceous sediments of Mongolia belong to an ancient, dinosaur-era relative of the living plant Ginkgo biloba (today is native only to China). Reconstruction of Umaltolepis mongoliensis showing four seed-bearing structures and attached Pseudotorellia resinosa leaves. Note that three seed-bearing organs have split at the …

A prehistoric monster worm that terrorized the Devonian seas some 400 million years ago has been identified by an international team of paleontologists from the University of Bristol, Lund University and the Royal Ontario Museum. This is an artistic reconstruction showing Websteroprion armstrongi attacking a fish in the Devonian sea. …

The fossilized leg bones of a giant penguin that lived 61 million years ago have been discovered in New Zealand. Artist’s impression of a group of Waimanu penguins on a beach in Paleocene Canterbury. Image credit: Chris Gaskin, Geology Museum, University of Otago. The fossil was found by amateur fossil …