archaeology

Mummies Around the World

By Dr Joann Fletcher

The mummy is associated with the legends of Egypt, but archaeologists have excavated preserved human remains the world over. Dr Joann Fletcher explores the fascinating and varied history of mummification across continents.

21st dynasty mummmy case for an Egyptian priest

Beyond the Hype

Although the recent discovery of a 2500-year-old Persian mummy has proved to be a fake, the word ‘mummy’ is generally believed to derive from a Persian word, mummiya, meaning ‘bitumen’, used to describe the blackened state of ancient Egyptian bodies. The term is now generally applied to all human remains which retain their soft tissue, either by natural means or artificial preservation.
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From New Scientist

At 8 metres long, it had to be hauled out of the ground with a hydraulic lift normally reserved for dinosaurs. But this fossil formed around 385 million years ago - long before dinosaurs even existed.

It’s a tree from the Gilboa fossil forest, New York. The site - which contains the oldest trees in the fossil record - is well known to palaeontologists, who until now had only uncovered fossil tree stumps, leaving them guessing about the appearance of the tree tops.

Now they know: the trunk had large branches, with fronds similar to a modern-day tree fern - although they were unrelated to tree ferns. The fossil tree has been assigned to a group of plants known as cladoxylopsids (Nature, vol 446, p 904).

A forest of such trees would have provided a rich habitat for other organisms, as well as boosting ancient Earth’s biodiversity, says team member Chris Berry of Cardiff University, UK. Indeed, fossils of millipede-like detritivores were found at the site. (more…)

by Andy Coghlan 

It is perhaps the most striking example of how global warming is turning up the heat on the world’s wildlife. Across the UK, wild mushrooms are reproducing twice a year instead of the usual once, the first time climate change has been reported to affect the life cycle of any organism in this way.

Many fungus species spend their lives in the soil as a fibrous mat called a mycelium. Once a year they reproduce, forming the fruiting bodies that are the familiar caps and stools that speckle forest floors. In the UK, this used to happen around September, during the onset of the British autumn. Now all that has changed.

Sulphur tuft is a fungus that has started to fruit twice a year, but in spring, the perils of late snow falls are still evident. (Image: Science).

Within just 50 years, many fungi have doubled the length of their breeding season from 33 days on average to 74, according to a survey of 315 species conducted by Alan Gange at Royal Holloway, University of London, UK, and colleagues. Species now appear above ground in July, mainly as a result of warmer temperatures, and the scarcity of frosts means they keep breeding into December. (more…)

by Catherine Brahic

Scientists have identified the Godzilla of fungi - a giant, prehistoric fossil that has evaded classification for more than a century.

This is what Prototaxites might have looked like in their prehistoric landscape. (illustration: Elsevier/ Hueber.

A chemical analysis has shown that the 6-metre-tall organism with a tree-like trunk was a fungus that became extinct more than 350 million years ago.

Known as Prototaxites, the giant fungus has intrigued scientists, who originally thought it was a conifer. In 2001, Francis Hueber at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC, US, first suggested it may be a fungus, based on an analysis of the fossil’s internal structure. But he had no conclusive proof.

"No matter what argument you put forth, people say it’s crazy," says C. Kevin Boyce, a geophysicist at the University of Chicago in Illinois, US. "A 6-metre-fungus doesn’t make any sense, but here’s the fossil." (more…)

Written by  C. David Kreger

Introduction

One of the most important erectus specimen is the Nariokotome Boy, KNM-WT 15000. This specimen was discovered by a team led by R. Leakey and A. Walker at Nariokotome, Kenya, in 1984. This is the most complete early human skeleton ever discovered.

    Throughout the early years of paleoanthropology, there were only two different species that were attributed to the genus Homo. These included the Neanderthals, and Homo erectus. In the early 1960s, this began to change, and human ancestry seemed to be populated by many different players. Accordingly, erectus is one of the better-known members of genus Homo, especially in terms of its well-established place in paleoanthropology. This has begun to change, however, and now some question its place in human evolution.

    Some (e.g., M. Wolpoff) claim that erectus is an invalid taxon, though few accept this interpretation at this point in time. Others believe that the material previously attributed to erectus should be split into several different taxons: Asian and later African material remaining as erectus (with erectus not contributing to modern humans), early African material as ergaster, and European material as heidelbergensis. In this description of the species, the material that has been attributed as ergaster and erectus in the above splitting scenario will be covered, with the heidelbergensis material discussed under the page dedicated to that species.

Karina Arifin, Deputy Professor of Archaeology University of Indonesia,
22 September - 24 September 2003

Due to the instable and fast changing situation of the Sangiran Early Man site a First Reactive Monitoring Mission to Sangiran was organized and undertaken by Karina Arifin, Deputy Professor of Archaeology University of Indonesia.This Mission aimed to document the current situation of the site, to identify the attitude and awareness of the local communities living on the site, evaluate the overall situation and conditions in terms of archaeological research as well as in terms of management issues and to examine future activities. Thus this mission included visits of governmental departments as well as talks to local people living on the site.

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