http://phys.org/science-news/archaeology-fossils/ en-us PhysOrg Team Phys.Org provides the latest news on archaeology, fossils, archaeological sciences and archaeological technology. An international team of researchers has announced the discovery of Afrasia djijidae, a new fossil primate from Myanmar that illuminates a critical step in the evolution of early anthropoids—the group that includes humans, apes, and monkeys. The 37-million-year-old Afrasia closely resembles another early anthropoid, Afrotarsius libycus, recently discovered at a site of similar age in the Sahara Desert of Libya. The close similarity between Afrasia and Afrotarsius indicates that early anthropoids colonized Africa only shortly before the time when these animals lived. The colonization of Africa by early anthropoids was a pivotal step in primate and human evolution, because it set the stage for the later evolution of more advanced apes and humans there. The scientific paper describing the discovery appears today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. http://phys.org/news258035946.html Other Sciences - Archaeology & Fossils 2012-06-04T15:00:01-07:00 Archaeologists in the eastern Mediterranean region have been unearthing spherical jugs, used by the ancients for storing and trading oil, wine, and other valuable commodities. Because we're used to the metric system, which defines units of volume based on the cube, modern archaeologists believed that the merchants of antiquity could only approximately assess the capacity of these round jugs, says Prof. Itzhak Benenson of Tel Aviv University's Department of Geography. http://phys.org/news258029856.html Other Sciences - Archaeology & Fossils 2012-06-04T11:58:02-07:00 (Phys.org) -- Another look at a nearly 80-year-old pottery collection at the Arizona State Museum is yielding new information about migrants who abandoned the Four Corners region. http://phys.org/news258015221.html Other Sciences - Archaeology & Fossils 2012-06-04T07:54:03-07:00 Many ancient human teeth, including specimens tens of thousands of years old, still hold onto tiny pieces of food -- and even bacteria. Anthropologists are studying the tartar attached to ancient human teeth to learn more about the plants people ate and the pathogens they carried long ago. http://phys.org/news257674622.html Other Sciences - Archaeology & Fossils 2012-05-31T09:50:02-07:00 (Phys.org) -- A new study comparing birds’ wishbones has found prehistoric birds that disappeared 65 million years ago may have employed different flight styles to their modern-day counterparts. http://phys.org/news257674278.html Other Sciences - Archaeology & Fossils 2012-05-31T09:40:26-07:00 Researchers at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) have discovered the remains of newborn twin girls in the archaeological site of Olèrdola in Barcelona. They date back to between the middle of the 4th century B.C. to the beginning of the 2nd century B.C. The findings are the first bone remains of twins to be recorded. http://phys.org/news257613258.html Other Sciences - Archaeology & Fossils 2012-05-30T16:14:34-07:00 (AP) — Two Roman-era shipwrecks have been found in deep water off a western Greek island, challenging the conventional theory that ancient shipmasters stuck to coastal routes rather than risking the open sea, an official said Tuesday. http://phys.org/news257531241.html Other Sciences - Archaeology & Fossils 2012-05-29T17:40:01-07:00 The discovery of a mummified Korean child with relatively preserved organs enabled an Israeli-South Korean scientific team to conduct a genetic analysis on a liver biopsy which revealed a unique hepatitis B virus (HBV) genotype C2 sequence common in Southeast Asia. http://phys.org/news257515758.html Other Sciences - Archaeology & Fossils 2012-05-29T13:09:24-07:00 The remains of the world's oldest musical instruments and human figurines suggest that music and artistic depictions of the human form may have first developed in Germany around 40,000 years ago, say researchers. http://phys.org/news257497129.html Other Sciences - Archaeology & Fossils 2012-05-29T08:40:02-07:00 During the 2005 field season, Paleontologists from Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP), Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Paleontological Institute of Shenyang Normal University, collected a partial postcranial skeleton of a new enantiornithine bird from the Lower Cretaceous Jiufotang Formation at the Dapingfang Locality, Chaoyang County, western Liaoning, China, and described it to a new enantiornithine bird, Xiangornis shenmi, gen. et sp. nov., which exhibits some features normally present in derived ornithurines, further blurring the distinctness of the two major avian groups. http://phys.org/news257496230.html Other Sciences - Archaeology & Fossils 2012-05-29T07:44:03-07:00 Archaeological excavations have provided the first substantiation that a farmland estate in Sicily boasts a history which reaches back over a thousand years. Numerous finds demonstrate the continuous use of the land complex as a nexus of settlement and economic and religious life between the 5th and 16th century. The findings are the result of two projects of the Austrian Science Fund FWF which comprise the first in-depth archaeological exploration of Sicily's Byzantine period. The projects' findings are now accessible to the public in the Krahuletz Museum in Eggenburg, Austria. http://phys.org/news257495842.html Other Sciences - Archaeology & Fossils 2012-05-29T07:41:13-07:00 Hereditary inequality began over 7,000 years ago in the early Neolithic era, with new evidence showing that farmers buried with tools had access to better land than those buried without. http://phys.org/news257415590.html Other Sciences - Archaeology & Fossils 2012-05-28T15:00:14-07:00 A team of Australian and New Zealand researchers have discovered fresh evidence that could finally unravel the mystery of what killed Tasmania's giant marsupials over 40,000 years ago. http://phys.org/news257413145.html Other Sciences - Archaeology & Fossils 2012-05-28T08:40:03-07:00 At first glance, it's hard to see how a common house sparrow and a Tyrannosaurus Rex might have anything in common. After all, one is a bird that weighs less than an ounce, and the other is a dinosaur that was the size of a school bus and tipped the scales at more than eight tons. http://phys.org/news257316386.html Other Sciences - Archaeology & Fossils 2012-05-27T13:00:02-07:00 German archaeologists of the Friedrich Schiller University Jena found one of the oldest archaeological evidence so far of Jewish Culture on the Iberian Peninsula at an excavation site in the south of Portugal, close to the city of Silves. http://phys.org/news257162889.html Other Sciences - Archaeology & Fossils 2012-05-25T11:08:55-07:00 The first modern humans in Europe were playing musical instruments and showing artistic creativity as early as 40,000 years ago, according to new research from Oxford and Tübingen universities. http://phys.org/news257151977.html Other Sciences - Archaeology & Fossils 2012-05-25T08:30:01-07:00 Argentine experts have discovered the near-complete remains of a new species of Jurassic-era dinosaur that stood on its rear legs and had tiny arms, according to a leading paleontologist. http://phys.org/news257133644.html Other Sciences - Archaeology & Fossils 2012-05-25T03:01:02-07:00 New dates from Geißenklösterle Cave in Southwest Germany document the early arrival of modern humans and early appearance of art and music. http://phys.org/news257104075.html Other Sciences - Archaeology & Fossils 2012-05-24T18:51:32-07:00 The French media like to call him the "Indiana Jones of the graveyards", but perhaps a better tag would be the Sherlock Holmes of forensic science. http://phys.org/news257050776.html Other Sciences - Archaeology & Fossils 2012-05-24T04:00:02-07:00 Palaeontology has gone high-tech: no more wax and plaster-cast models. Instead, 3D data from computed tomography (CT) scans is overturning long-held views of how the earliest land animals moved. http://phys.org/news257014818.html Other Sciences - Archaeology & Fossils 2012-05-23T18:00:38-07:00 Israeli archaeologists have discovered a 2,700-year-old seal that bears the inscription "Bethlehem," the Israel Antiquities Authority announced Wednesday, in what experts believe to be the oldest artifact with the name of Jesus' traditional birthplace. http://phys.org/news257013964.html Other Sciences - Archaeology & Fossils 2012-05-23T17:46:21-07:00 Shifts in exchange patterns provide a new perspective on the fall of inland Maya centers in Mesoamerica approximately 1,000 years ago. This major historical process, sometimes referred to as the "Maya collapse" has puzzled archaeologists, history buffs, and the news media for decades. The new research was published online today in the journal Antiquity. http://phys.org/news256998034.html Other Sciences - Archaeology & Fossils 2012-05-23T13:23:59-07:00 More than ten thousands of bone fragments were recovered from the Lingjing site, Henan Province during 2005 and 2006. By taking statistical analyses of the skeletal elements of the two predominant species in this assemblage, aurochs (Bos primigenius) and horse (Equus caballus), scientists from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP), Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Henan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, found that hominids at this site have already practiced sophisticated hunting techniques and subsistence strategies and may be quite familiar with the ecological and anatomical characteristics and nutritional values of the large-sized prey animals and can accordingly take different processing and handling strategies at the hunting site, as reported in the journal of Science China Earth Sciences, 2012, 55 (2). http://phys.org/news256988782.html Other Sciences - Archaeology & Fossils 2012-05-23T10:47:43-07:00 The stubby arms of Tyrannosaurus rex obviously weren't designed for hand-to-hand combat. However, the abelisaurids of the Southern hemisphere were even less well equipped in that department–and upper limb reduction began very early in their evolution. http://phys.org/news256965600.html Other Sciences - Archaeology & Fossils 2012-05-23T04:21:20-07:00 (AP) -- Pups in her womb, a large eye visible behind the rib cage, one baby stuck in the birth canal: all fossilized evidence that this ancient marine beast, the Ichthyosaur, died in childbirth. http://phys.org/news256893306.html Other Sciences - Archaeology & Fossils 2012-05-22T08:15:16-07:00 (Phys.org) -- An international team of scientists in the University of Leicester’s Department of Geology has found a solution to a research problem involving fossils right next door - in the University’s Chemistry Department. http://phys.org/news256891293.html Other Sciences - Archaeology & Fossils 2012-05-22T07:49:22-07:00 (Phys.org) -- An international team of researchers, including a University of Virginia professor, has found that two ink sacs from 160-million-year-old giant squid fossils discovered two years ago in England contain the pigment melanin, and that it is essentially identical to the melanin found in the ink sacs of modern-day squid. http://phys.org/news256814781.html Other Sciences - Archaeology & Fossils 2012-05-21T15:00:07-07:00 Researchers from Tel Aviv University have recently discovered a collection of gold and silver jewelry, dated from around 1100 B.C., hidden in a vessel at the archaeological site of Tel Megiddo in the Jezreel Valley in northern Israel. One piece — a gold earring decorated with molded ibexes, or wild goats — is "without parallel," they believe. http://phys.org/news256820749.html Other Sciences - Archaeology & Fossils 2012-05-21T12:06:04-07:00 (AP) -- A fossil of a fearsome T. Rex relative has been auctioned in New York City despite the Mongolian government's objections and a judge's order blocking the sale. http://phys.org/news256809526.html Other Sciences - Archaeology & Fossils 2012-05-21T08:58:56-07:00 (Phys.org) -- Large clusters of rock art spanning thousands of years but located at the same site may hold key to detecting massive cultural changes in prehistoric hunter-gatherers of the north. http://phys.org/news256797610.html Other Sciences - Archaeology & Fossils 2012-05-21T05:40:32-07:00