Archeology

August 9, 2024

Divers Find 3,000-Year-Old Statue With Human Fingerprints on It at Bottom of Lake in Italy

The volcano-rich area of Gran Carro di Bolsena in Aiola, Italy, is somewhat shrouded in mystery—one that researchers only began to unravel in recent decades. And now, they found a piece that could offer a little more insight into those who once populated this region. During work at the underwater archaeological site, divers found an ancient clay figurine from the Iron Age.

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July 23, 2024

Stegosaurus Worth $45M Becomes the Most Expensive Dinosaur Fossil Ever Sold at Auction

The first Stegosaurus fossil to be presented at auction was just sold for a record-breaking $44.6 million. For more than 15 minutes, prospective buyers at Sotheby's in New York increased their bids to nearly 11 times the fossil's estimated value of $6 million. In the end, the Stegosaurus sold for the highest price of any dinosaur skeleton in history, beating the record of $31.8 million set by Stan the Tyrannosaurus Rex in 2020.

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July 13, 2024

Explore the Oldest Existing World Map, Carved in Clay 2,600 Years Ago

How a society records the world, depicting its known boundaries and contents, says a lot about belief systems, science, and more. For example, the ancient Hereford Mappa Mundi was drawn in 1300 and depicts the world through a medieval Biblical lens. Or there is a surprisingly accurate crowd-sourced world map created by a Venetian monk in the 15th century. There are also the 12th-century renditions of Muhammad al-Idrisi, an intrepid scholar and traveler.

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July 5, 2024

Neanderthal Child With Down’s Syndrome Reveals Signs of Caregiving Among Ancient Humans

In 1989, excavations at a Paleolithic cave site known as Cova Negra in Valencia, Spain, turned up the remains of a Neanderthal child. The fossilized bones might at first seem little more than evidence of skull formation among these early human relatives; however, examination by scientists has revealed congenital differences in the inner ear that are indicative of Down's syndrome.

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