Newsdesk Archive

THOSE who deny global warming is happening often rely on somewhat error-prone satellite information about our planet. But a proposed probe could dramatically improve the accuracy of such readings and put an end to the climate change debate - at least as far as satellite evidence is concerned.The need for accurate satellite data to quantify climate change is becoming urgent, says Joanna Haigh of the department of space and atmospheric physics at Imperial College London.

PASADENA, Calif. (Reuters) - NASA's Mars rover Opportunity is making tracks across the Martian landscape again, after nearly five weeks stuck in a sand dune, engineers from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena said on Sunday. NASA engineers cheered this weekend when images returned from Mars showed the six-wheeled geological research vehicle was finally freed from the dune and making tracks

The explosion of a star in our cosmic neighbourhood may not sound like good news for life on Earth.But a team of US researchers says that just such a catastrophe could have showered our planet with fertilizer that helped plants to colonize the land about 440 million years ago

Scientists have extracted and decoded the DNA of a cave bear that died 40,000 years ago and plan to unravel the DNA of other extinct species, including our closest ancient relatives, the Neanderthals.Scientists hope to be able to sequence the DNA of ancient humans, which lived at the same time as cave bears, raising the prospect of perhaps one day being able to "build" a Neanderthal from their genetic blueprint.

Thanks to a Spanish bishop and a Russian linguist, among others, scientists are finally reading these ancient textsThis article by 'The Christian Science Monitor'

New finds are bringing added understanding to the way ancient communities in Upper Egypt functioned, and to the importance of commerce and cultural development.Find out about a pre-dynastic funerary complex and new evidence concerning trade with the legendary land of PuntAn Al-Ahram Weekly Online item

From the BBC UK Newsdesk:The US space agency (Nasa) has given the green light to Phoenix, its next mission to land on the surface of Mars.The announcement allows project team members to proceed with preparations for launch of the spacecraft in 2007.

Scientists have confirmed that bones found in the Czech Republic represent the earliest human settlement in Europe. The collection of bones was excavated from the site of Mladec more than a century ago. Scientists have until now failed to date the fossils accurately.

Despite NASA recommendations that astronauts sleep 8 hours a day, they usually don't. Strange sights and sounds, the stress of riding a powerful rocket, the lack of a normal day-night cycle--all these things tend to keep space travelers awake.Studies show that astronauts typically sleep 0.5 to 2.5 hours less than they do on Earth.

Australian and Indonesian scientists reported in Nature magazine last October that they had discovered the bones of seven individuals ranging in age from 13,000 to 95,000 years old.A nearly intact skeleton that the anthropologists said belonged to an adult female who lived as recently as 18,000 years ago yet was only the size of a modern-day 6-year-old.This report from 'TIME' magazine,

The nation's oldest artificial pond created at least 2,600 years ago was found in Andong, North Kyongsang Province. The pond's construction dates back to the Bronze Age.

By 3,000 BC, the Mesopotamians had already invented the wheel, developed writing, and created the world's first cities and monumental architecture.Find out more about the many aspects of Mesopotamia's rich legacy.

Does getting old have to mean worsening memory, slower reactions and fuzzy thinking? Cognitive enhancement pills may be the answer and can keep you alert for 90 hours. Just one of 11 steps to a better brain.

Accurate knowledge of time and direction is crucial in many cultures, and this need has driven people to harness their knowledge of the skies and invent precise instruments to measure and record it.Browse through this BBC gallery of ingenious instruments to discover how people gradually learned where they stood in time and place.

Discover how archaeologists have been able to use carbon dating to pinpoint the time when sites were in use at this BBC website.Radio carbon dating determines the age of ancient objects by means of measuring the amount of carbon-14 there is left in an object. Willard F Libby pioneered it at the University of Chicago in the 50's and in 1960 won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. This is now the most widely used method of age estimation in the field of archaeology.

Vostok base was the site for the coldest recorded temperature on Earth (-89C). Russian scientists have said they will resume drilling into Lake Vostok in the Antarctic, to within 100m of the waters that sit below its ice-cap.Lake Vostok's waters may hold many new species as it is an ecosystem that has been sealed-off from the outside world for millions of years.But will the new drilling contaminate the lake?

Scientists have reported worrying signs that the vast ice sheet over Greenland is melting. If the whole mass of ice disappeared, the world's sea level would rise by about six metres (20ft).David Shukman meets the Nasa team who study the effects of climate change on the ground.

Australia is emerging as a missing link in the evolution of giant prehistoric marine reptiles, says a scientist who has discovered what may be a new species of plesiosaur.A team from the University of Adelaide and the South Australian Museum unearthed the remains of the creature in Queensland, at what was once a vast inland ocean.

James Nienhuis (GHMB alias Genesis Veracity) has contributed an article entitled:Great Pyramid and the Astronomical Merry-Go-RoundPrecession numbers are prevalent in ancient legends from around the world, see how they all source from the astronomically-derived dimensions of the Great Pyramid of Giza.You are encouraged to discuss this on the The Mysteries message board

Seismologists are to provide California residents with earthquake predictions alongside local weather forecasts.Models of earthquake activity will determine if an earthquake is big enough to smash their windows within the next 24 hours.

Scientists have used diamagnetism to make wood, strawberries and, famously, a living frog apparently fly. Now British scientists have developed an antigravity machine that can float heavy stones, coins and lumps of metal in mid-air.

A project spanning five continents is aiming to map the history of human migration via DNA.The Genographic Project will collect worldwide DNA samples to help piece together a picture of how the Earth was colonised.

On April 13th (Friday the 13th) 2029, a point of light will be gliding across the sky, faster than many satellites, brighter than most stars. A 320 metre wide asteroid will bend round the earth at only 18,600 miles away

Radiation "is relatively poor at inducing cancer." Chemicals, says Dr. John Dicello of the John Hopkins University School of Medicine, can do far more damage.But for space travelers who are exposed to far more radiation of a different nature, it is a tremendous worry.

Scientists have carried out the first facial reconstructions of Egypt's most famous ancient king, Tutankhamun.French, Egyptian and American forensic artists used scans of his skull to reveal facial details of the young king who died 3,300 years ago as having plump cheeks and a round chin.

Ancient Egyptians Hoarded Crude Oil.New research suggests that oil and its by-products were valued and traded in the Mideast at least 3,000 years ago

The feathered dinosaur (Falcarius utahensis), may represent a missing link between earlier meat-eaters and later plant-eaters.

An excavation in Wiltshire has recently revealed the grave of a Bronze Age archer, buried with a rich array of precious metal goods and a quiver of arrows. Was this the King of Stonehenge? Andrew Fitzpatrick of Wessex Archaeology takes up the story in an eight part series.

The remains of sailors and soldiers who fought alongside Admiral Horatio Nelson in one of his most decisive naval victories over the French have been discovered off the north coast of Egypt.

A nearby gamma-ray burst from space could have doomed many ancient life forms in just 10 seconds.

Dr Richard Leakey told BBC News global warming, combined with decreasing ranges, could make animals extinct. He is calling for the establishment of a new global fund to protect wildlife

According to the experts, the site is a royal necropolis used by several dynasties before the Christian era, and it stretches considerably beyond the perimeter of the present archeological site, at the foot of Mount Saint George and Mount Mariam.

CHENNAI: In a significant development in archaeological terms, a fragmented stone inscription in Tamil, from the eighth century A.D., was this week found in the excavated depth of the garbha griha (sanctum sanctorum) of a collapsed temple close to the Shore Temple at Mamallapuram, not far from here. In February 2005, in the wake of the tsunami-driven waves that hit the coast on December 26, the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) had discovered the remains of a massive temple on the beach, a few hundred metres south of the Shore Temple. The inscription in Tamil with eight characters reads cika malla eti... ma. It evidently formed part of a larger inscription but the stone is broken.

CAIRO (AFP) - Egyptian archaeologists have discovered a number of rare Pharaonic seals of soldiers sent out on desert missions in search of red paint to decorate the pyramids, Egypt's culture minister said. The 26 matchbox-sized seals belonged to Cheops, who ruled from 2551 to 2528 BC, in whose honour the greatest of the great pyramids of Giza southwest of Cairo was built, and show Pharaonic soldiers' ranks, the MENA news agency quoted Faruq Hosni as saying.

Cairo - The discovery outside the Egyptian capital of a particularly well-preserved mummy from the 30th Dynasty was announced on Friday by Egyptian government archaeologists. Zahi Hawwas, head of the antiquities preservation team, said the find was made in Saccara, where a sarcophagus was discovered beneath a layer of sand. Although numerous ceramic amulets were found at the site, they presented no immediate clue to the identity of the deceased. In addition to the mummy from a dynasty that ruled between 380-343 AD, two burial gates were discovered, one in honour of Iu-Ib, an official in a temple dedicated to Pepi II, who ruled from 2245-2180.

A newly discovered fragment of the oldest surviving copy of the New Testament indicates that, as far as the Antichrist goes, theologians, scholars, heavy metal groups, and television evangelists have got the wrong number. Instead of 666, it's actually the far less ominous 616. The new fragment from the Book of Revelation, written in ancient Greek and dating from the late third century, is part of a hoard of previously unintelligible manuscripts discovered in historic dumps outside Oxyrhynchus in Egypt. Now a team of expert classicists, using new photographic techniques, are finally deciphering the original writing.

Tuyen Quang (VNA) - A set of human remains, believed to be of a primitive man dating back 10,000-15,000 years, has been found in northern mountainous Tuyen Quang province.

The spectacular ivory-billed woodpecker, which was declared extinct in 1920, has been found alive in North America, Science magazine reports. The news has stunned ornithologists worldwide, with some comparing the discovery to finding the dodo.

It is two years since looters ravaged one of the world's most important museums, in central Baghdad. Saddam Hussein's power had collapsed and the newly arrived US-led coalition forces were unable to prevent a crime against history. Professional smugglers connected to the international antiquities mafia managed to break some of the sealed doors of the Baghdad Museum storage rooms.

Experts have dated the UK's oldest rock art, at Creswell Crags in the midlands, to more than 12,800 years ago. A team from Bristol, Sheffield and Open Universities got the date by measuring traces of radioactive uranium in limestone crusts over the engravings. More than 80 pictures have now been discovered in the caves on the Nottinghamshire-Derbyshire border.

The man in charge of the Hubble space telescope's science missions has appealed to Nasa's new administrator to find the money for one last servicing mission to the observatory. Dr Stephen Beckwith told BBC News that the cost of such a mission would amount to "loose change" for the US space agency and would lead to many important scientific discoveries.

The state of Mississippi halted the construction of the schools after a tip call revealed the land should be marked for an archeological excavation. Preliminary findings proved the tip genuine when scientists found bone fragments, pottery shards and other evidence of a 1200 year old Indian village. The complete excavation process could take some time but a preliminary report will be sent to the state Monday at which point the government will decide whether or not to proceed with the plan.

Scientists say Russia's x-ray vision girl, who claims to be able to see inside the human body, can also spot internal injuries just by looking at a photograph. Natalia Demkina has been undergoing tests in Japan into her apparent x-ray vision which has enabled her to diagnose medical conditions, reports Komsomolskaya Pravda. Previous tests in London and New York led to mixed results. British scientists were convinced but there was doubt in the US where she could only determine the illnesses of four out of seven people. The latest experiments were carried out by Professor Yoshio Machi at Tokyo University, who specialises in studying apparent superpowers in human beings.

A SAMPLE from the bones of a Suffolk woman buried 400 years ago is to be exhumed by scientists seeking to discover more about an English explorer who is the unsung founding father of America. Archaeologists are to crosscheck DNA from remains they believe belong to the explorer Bartholomew Gosnold with samples from his sister, who was thought to have been buried in a Suffolk churchyard in the 1600s.

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- A human skeleton found by three kids in Salt Lake City's Harvard/Yale neighborhood appears to be American Indian. Clayton Middle School students, Scott Paulsen, Alex Baker and Hayden Schofield were digging a fort when their shovels struck a bone. Paulsen said they thought it was just an animal and kept digging. The boys, all age 14, uncovered a portion of a rib cage and what appeared to be the back of a skull.

Archaeologists say they have found the largest funerary complex yet dating from the earliest era of ancient Egypt, more than 5,000 years ago. The necropolis was discovered by a joint US and Egyptian team in the Kom al-Ahmar region, around 600km (370 miles) south of the capital, Cairo. Inside the tombs, the archaeologists found a cow's head carved from flint and the remains of seven people.

A team of scientists from Bristol, The Open and Sheffield Universities have proved the engravings at Creswell Crags to be greater than 12,800 years old, making them Britain's oldest rock art. Creswell Crags which straddles the Nottinghamshire-Derbyshire border is riddled with caves which have preserved evidence of human activity during the last Ice Age. Recently, engravings on the walls and ceiling were found by archaeologists.

When Kathryn Bard reached through the small hole that opened in a hillside along Egypt's Red Sea coast, her hand touched nearly 4,000 years of history. The opening that Bard, an associate professor of archaeology at Boston University, and her team's co-leader Rodolfo Fattovich, a professor of archaeology at Italy's University of Naples "L'Orientale," discovered was the entrance to a large, man-made cave. Two days later at a site about 30 meters beyond this cave, the team removed sand covering the entrance to a second cave, one that held the well-preserved cedar timbers of an ancient Egyptian sea-faring vessel. The timbers, together with limestone block-anchors, curved cedar steering oars, rigging ropes, and other items, are from ancient Egyptian ships. In addition to the nautical items in the second cave, and the two antechambers discovered to branch from it, the archaeologists found limestone tablets with hieroglyphic inscriptions that detail long-ago trade expeditions to the Red Sea region known as Punt.

Cairo - An American palaeontologist and a team of Egyptians have found the most complete fossilised skeleton of the primitive whale Basilosaurus isis in Egypt's Western Desert, a university spokesperson said on Monday. Philip Gingerich of the University of Michigan excavated the well-preserved skeleton, which is about 40 million years old, in a desert valley known as Wadi Hitan (the Valley of the Whales) south-west of Cairo, spokesperson Karl Bates said.

A vast array of previously unintelligible manuscripts from ancient Greece and Rome are being read for the first time thanks to infra-red light, in a breakthrough hailed as the classical equivalent of finding the holy grail. The technique could see the number of accounted-for ancient manuscripts increase by one fifth, and may even lead to the unveiling of some lost Christian gospels. A team at Oxford University is using the technology to bring back into view faded ink on thousands of papyrus scrolls salvaged from an ancient rubbish dump in the 19th century.

Working on a hunch and intuition, a team from the University of Cincinnati has discovered a monumental temple in Albania that may be one of the earliest ever found in the region.

The residents of Sanchankot village in Uttar Pradesh on the banks on Sai river never knew they were sitting on an archeological goldmine. Excavations in the mounds here have revealed proof of civilizations of four different periods. The oldest being the Painted Grey Ware period dating from 1400 to 800 BC and the latest the Gupta period of the 4-6th century AD. A 10th century temple of the Pratihar dynasty has also been found during the excavations.

NANCHANG, April 19 (Xinhuanet) -- High-tech will be used to further explore a 3,000-year-old bronze culture at Xingan County in east China's Jiangxi Province. The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the Archaeological Institute of Jiangxi Province will work together to carry out excavation on the ancient bronze culture with advanced archaeological remote sensing devices in China, according to local government. In 1989, more than 470 pieces of bronzeware were unearthed froma grave dating back to the Shang Dynasty (16 B.C.-11 B.C.) at Xingan County in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River.It proved that a developed bronze culture along the Yangtze coexisted with a bronze culture at the Yellow River. The discoveryrewrites Chinese history of ancient civilization and is regarded as one of China's 100 key archaeological findings in 20th century.

In the long, long history of humanity's shift from tiny clans of hunter-gatherers to settled societies of crowded city dwellers, no step was more momentous than the emergence of the first clustered towns and the sophisticated cultures their inhabitants created. Intriguing evidence of early urbanization is now emerging at one of the largest and most significant digs in the history of archaeology, a 26-acre site in Turkey's Anatolian plain known as Çatalhöyük.

Physicists say they have created a new state of hot, dense matter by crashing together the nuclei of gold atoms. The high-energy collisions prised open the nuclei to reveal their most basic particles, known as quarks and gluons. The researchers, at the US Brookhaven National Laboratory, say these particles were seen to behave as an almost perfect "liquid".

A photograph taken from space appears to confirm that China's Great Wall can be seen with the naked eye after all. China's schoolchildren have long been taught that the ancient fortification is one of the few man-made structures that can be picked out from orbit. However, last year, China's first man in space disappointed the nation when he said he had failed to spot it. Now, an official newspaper has run a picture taken by a Chinese-American astronaut showing the wall. Leroy Chiao took what the state-run China Daily newspaper says is the first photographic evidence using commercially available equipment.

A 500-square-meter mosaic depicting an intricate design of flamingos, peacocks, ducks and other animals that adorned the floor of a fifth-century C.E. villa, was unearthed recently on a hill overlooking the Mediterranean near Caesarea.

Scientists begin to unlock the secrets of papyrus scraps bearing long-lost words by the literary giants of Greece and Rome

(AFP) Swedish archeologists have discovered a Stone Age settlement covered in ash under the ruins of the ancient city of Pompei, indicating that the volcano Vesuvius engulfed the area in lava more than 3,500 years before the famous 79 AD eruption. The archeologists recently found burnt wood and grains of emmer wheat in the earth under Pompei, Anne-Marie Leander Touati, a professor of archeology at Stockholm University who led the team, told AFP.

BEIJING, April 15 -- The biggest ever repair programme at two palaces belonging to the Dalai Lamas and at an ancient lamasery in the Tibet Autonomous Region are in full swing and are expected to be finished next year. The 330-million-yuan (US$40 million) renovation programme, which was started in 2002, will help prevent the 1,300-year-old Potala Palace, the Winter Palace of the Dalai Lamas, from being eroded by wind and eaten by worms and rats.

MACHU PICCHU, Peru (AFP) - Overrun by tourists in past years, the legendary Inca citadel of Machu Picchu has been so damaged that the United Nations has threatened to list it as one of the world's most endangered monuments if the Peruvian government does move to protect it. Forty years ago a visitor could climb up to the 15th century sanctuary 2,430 meters (7,972 feet) high in the Peruvian Andes by taxi, where a sleepy guard would lift a bamboo-and-string barrier allowing tourists a private visit.

Jerusalem, Israel, Apr. 15 (UPI) -- Archaeologists sifting through piles of rubble discarded by Islamic officials from the Temple Mount have found rare artifacts dating to 3,000 years ago. The artifacts were found in the last five months in a city garbage dump used by Islamic officials six years ago when they built a mosque at an underground area of the Temple Mount, the Jerusalem Post said Friday. In the process they trashed more than 10,000 tons of rubble in a construction project that the head of Israel's Antiquities Authority called "an unprecedented archaeological crime." Bar Ilan University archeology professor Gabriel Barkay gained private funding last year to sift through 68 truckloads of the rubble from the garbage dump. Although Barkay and his volunteers have only sifted about 15 percent of the rubble, they already have uncovered scores of history-rich artifacts, from the First Temple Period to more recent times.

The latest excavations in the archaeological site of Burnt City, in Sistan-Baluchistan has led to the discovery of a five-thousand-year old female skeleton which shows traces of macrocephaly. This is the first example of such illness found in the ancient site. According to head of the anthropology team in the Burnt City, Farzad Forouzanfar, the discovered skull has a very thick shell, which shows that the woman has died of macrocephaly. However, since it is badly damaged, no more information has been obtained from it. Studies on the skull show that the woman has died young due to the disease.

The remains of a 2,000-year-old rabbit - found at an early Roman settlement at Lynford, Norfolk - may be the earliest example of rabbit remains in Britain. The bones - which show evidence the animal had been butchered and buried - are similar to those of a small Spanish rabbit, common in Roman times. It is thought rabbits were introduced to Britain following the Roman invasion in AD43.

A dinosaur that died just before it was about to lay two eggs has been found by an international team of scientists. The creature, which lived 65-98 million years ago, was discovered in China's Jiangxi Province. The fossilised remains comprise little more than a pelvis with the shelled eggs still viewable in the body cavity. Tamaki Sato and colleagues tell Science magazine the dinosaur's reproductive system shares similarities with both primitive reptiles and modern birds.

At the age of 100 most people would think about winding down rather than downloading - but not Sidney Platt. Mr Platt has embarked on his latest information technology course - at Havering College, east London - so he can better manage his finances. A former fencer and tennis player, he piloted a plane when he was 92.

Indigenous people around the world will be asked to supply a cheek swab to help geneticists answer the question of how humanity spread from Africa. The National Geographic Society and IBM hope to sample 100,000 people or more and look for ancient clues buried in living DNA to calculate who came from where and when. For $US100, anyone who wants to can supply his or her own cheek swab for a personalised analysis and perhaps to contribute to the research.

Sometimes an archaeological site is more interesting for what is not there than for what is. The small open-air museum at Tel Basta near Zagazig, where a large statue of Ramses II's consort (discovered some years ago) is soon to be erected, contains no more than a dozen or so objects; even a century ago the area was so ruined that guide books -- including Baedeker's -- wrote that it was a waste of time to go there when there were so many more worthwhile places to visit. The fact is that the history of the devastation of Tel Basta -- ancient Basta, classical Bubastis -- situated where the Pelusiac and Tannic branches of the Nile join the Wadi Tumilat in the eastern Delta -- is more interesting than its surviving objects. But let us first recall the greatness that was.

A QUEST for a missing wedding ring has helped uncover a collection of ancient treasures dating back up to 4,000 years.

In a major success, archaeologists in Mahabalipuram district have discovered remains of a 4th century Hindu temple built by the kings of the majestic Pallava dynasty. Archaeologists say the uncovering is the result of the December 26 tsunami that destroyed the beaches of various South Asian countries and claimed thousands of lives. The archaeologists inform that the newly discovered temple is a complex by itself.

For tens of thousands of years, humans have been making their marks on rock faces, leaving behind often puzzling testimonials to their lifeways and thought. Found throughout the world in every human cultural area, rock art is a unique window into the early human mind, but a huge challenge to interpret. A renowned leader in rock art research, Dr. Jean Clottes has spent a lifetime examining rock art panels in France and throughout the world. In July 2003, as a featured speaker for The Archaeology Channel International Film and Video Festival in Eugene, Oregon, Dr. Clottes shared some remarkable images and intriguing interpretations with the Festival audience and agreed to a one-on-one interview with ALI Executive Director Rick Pettigrew. In this interview, he addressed some fundamental questions about what rock art tells us about our distant ancestors and their ways of thinking.

A newly found ancient tablet, alleged to be the nation's oldest written historic record, is stirring controversy in academia over its authenticity. The Korea Land Corporation's museum on Monday announced that it had found a clay tablet, estimated to date to the third century during the Koguryo Kingdom (37 B.C. A.D. 668). The museum claimed that the tablet, with 290 Chinese characters on historic accounts, was made around 150 years earlier than the Kwanggaetodaewangbi Monument , believed to be Korea 's oldest historical record. The monument was built in 414.

A project spanning five continents is aiming to map the history of human migration via DNA. The Genographic Project will collect DNA samples from over 100,000 people worldwide to help piece together a picture of how the Earth was colonised. Samples gathered from indigenous people and the general public will be subjected to lab and computer analysis to extract the valuable genetic data.

Each time an ancient vase disintegrates, a ceramic tile crumbles or a painting cracks and fades, another link with our past is lost and we understand just a little less about where we came from and, ultimately, who we are. Anthropology master's student Ned Gaines demonstrated flint knapping, a method for making stone tools, during a lab in MSE 257, one of the classes in the new Heritage Conservation Science Curriculum.

SANTA ANA, Calif. - This much experts know: One was a priest from a wealthy family. Another was a young girl who sang during religious rituals. A third was a child, buried in a finely carved wooden coffin. But there is much more to learn about the six Egyptian mummies that were wrapped and buried in strips of resin-encrusted linen thousands of years ago to protect them from the elements.

Discovery of a campsite used by ancient hunters has delayed work on a stretch of the Heartland Expressway for at least a year. The site, along a creek bed between Buffalo Gap and Maverick Junction, was found last year during a routine cultural-resources survey that preceded construction of the Heartland Expressway. Archaeologists estimated the site at 9,000 to 12,000 years old. The Heartland project is turning S.D. Highway 79 into a four-lane road from Rapid City to at least Maverick Junction and perhaps all the way to the Nebraska border.

A marble floor dating from the first century CE was unearthed during this season's excavations of ancient Tiberias. According to archaeologist Professor Yizhar Hirschfeld, director of the three-week dig that ended yesterday, the floor is apparently a remnant of a pavement in the palace of Herod Antipas, son of Herod the Great, who ruled the Galilee from 4 BCE to 38 CE.

The temple discovered by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), a few hundred metres to the south of the Shore Temple at Mamallapuram, near Chennai, must have been as big or even bigger than the Shore Temple, said archaeologists conducting the excavation there. The ASI had discovered massive remains of a temple on the shore, close to the Shore Temple during the excavations it had conducted in February and March. While continuing the excavation, it discovered a subsidiary shrine adjacent to the remains of a square garbha graham (sanctum sanctorum) of the newly- discovered temple.

In northern Ethiopia, in the once-great city of Axum, final preparations are under way for the return of one of Africa's most remarkable archaeological treasures. The Axum obelisk, a 1,700-year-old stone monolith, measuring 24-metres (78 feet) high and weighing 180 tons, is returning home after more than six decades adorning a square in the Italian capital, Rome.

A huge cosmic explosion could have caused a mass extinction on Earth 450 million years ago, according to an analysis by scientists in the US. A gamma ray burst could have caused the Ordovician extinction, killing 60% of marine invertebrates at a time when life was largely confined to the sea. These cosmic blasts are the most powerful explosions in the Universe.

Stone-age figurines depicting what could be the oldest pornographic scene in the world have been unearthed in Germany. Archaeologists have discovered what they believe to be the 7,200-year-old remnants of a man having intercourse with a woman. The extraordinary find, at an archaeological dig in Saxony, shatters the belief that sex was a taboo subject in that era. Until now, the oldest representations of sexual scenes were frescos from about 2,000 years ago.

Helmut Ziegert returned to the coast of Libya last year to follow up on a tantalizing discovery. In September 2000, his colleague Marliese Wendowski was excavating what she thought was a large farmhouse when, 12 feet deep in the sandy soil, she came across a floor covered with a stunning glass-and-stone mosaic of an exhausted gladiator staring at a slain opponent.

Almost nine years after the 9,300-year-old remains were found on the banks of the Columbia River and a fierce legal battle, federal courts agreed unequivocally scientists should be able to study Kennewick Man. However, U.S. Sen. John McCain has colluded with those who want to stifle the stories of similar old bones and the light they can shed on the earliest Americans and where they came from. The Arizona Republican, who is chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, supported a sweeping policy change in Senate Bill 536, which is billed erroneously as a technical corrections bill. At the risk of invoking our former president's imbroglio, the issue really does boil down to what the definition of "is" is.

Ancient hominids from the Caucasus may have fed and cared for their elderly, a new fossil find has indicated. The 1.77 million-year-old specimen, which is described in Nature magazine, was completely toothless and well over 40; a grand old age at the time. This may suggest that the creature lived in a complex society which was capable of showing compassion.

Astronomers have discovered a loop-like structure some 20 light-years across close to the centre of the Milky Way. And the team that found it believes the vast, bizarre structure could be some form of cosmic particle accelerator. The loop may produce sub-atomic particles with a thousand times more energy than those in man-made accelerators. Details were presented at the National Astronomy Meeting in Birmingham.

Astronomers are shedding light on the phenomena known as "fossil" galaxies. These are isolated giant galaxies that have grown over time - the result of mergers between galaxies in a group. Their creation may begin in the close encounter of two large galaxies which spiral together and then pull in all the smaller satellites around them.

BEIJING, April 4 -- A 300-year-old, 40-ton stone stele, which is a flat stone with carvings on it, has been discovered in Beijing. The stone was carved with two articles written by Emperor Qianlong of the Qing Dynasty in both the Chinese and Manchurian languages. All the characters and decorations on the stele are well preserved.

To the casual observer the piles of rocks at Goodman Point are merely rubble, but a village is buried beneath those stones and in May the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center will begin to unearth it. In partnership with the Southeast Utah Group National Park Service, Crow Canyon will begin excavating one of the best-preserved archaeological landscapes in the Mesa Verde region - the Goodman Point Ruins Group Unit of Hovenweep National Monument. The two-phase research project is set to begin Monday. Senior research archaeologist Kristin Kuckelman, joined by two assistants, will begin creating a detailed map of the 142-acre site, and then they will plot digging areas.

Ancient Egyptians believed in properly equipping a body for the afterlife, and not just through mummification. A new study reveals that King Tutankhamun eased his arduous journey with a stash of red wine.

The Olmec, a complex society that arose in the lowlands of Mexico's Gulf Coast about 1200 B.C. have often been called Mesoamerica's first civilization. As such, the Olmec, best known for their enigmatic giant stone heads, figuratively stand at the head of the array of later Mesoamerican civilizations--Toltec, Maya, Aztec, and others. Archaeologists have, since the nineteenth century, identified "cultures" or "people" or "folk" in the past based on recurring groupings of artifact types, building methods, funerary rituals, and artistic styles. This is convenient for discussing finds, especially in terms of geographical distribution or changes over the course of time. But in using this approach, there is a risk of identifying pots with people--that the appearance of a particular type of pot or tool or burial custom in an area means that people from elsewhere have brought that with them. The "movement" of pots can equally be explained as from trade, from the spread of manufacturing techniques, and the like, as from the movement of people.

CHENNAI, APRIL 2. In an important discovery, the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), Chennai Circle, has located the habitational site of the Iron Age people who were buried in big urns at Adichanallur, 24 km from Tirunelveli town in Tamil Nadu. Although several urn burial sites such as at Amirthamangalam and Perumbair, both near Chengalpattu, have been discovered in the State, this is the first time the place where these people lived has been found.

It comprises a computer chip that sits in the back of the individual's eye, linked up to a mini video camera built into glasses that they wear. Images captured by the camera are beamed to the chip, which translates them into impulses that the brain can interpret. The device has been designed by Professor Gislin Dagnelie at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore.

British researchers are more confident than ever that there are "Earths" out there waiting to be discovered. The scientists say perhaps a half of all the known planetary systems today could be harbouring habitable worlds. It must be said most of these systems are strange places where supergiant planets orbit close in to their stars.

(SPACE.com) -- After a few close calls, astronomers have finally obtained the first photograph of a planet beyond our solar system, SPACE.com has learned. The planet is thought to be one to two times as massive as Jupiter. It orbits a star similar to a young version of our sun. The star, GQ Lupi, has been observed by a team of European astronomers since 1999. They have made three images using the Very Large Telescope (VLT) of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile.

A major review last week of servicing the Hubble Space Telescope has led NASA officials to a "deorbit only" position. That's an outcome from an intensive preliminary design review held last week at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. That appraisal involved volumes of technical data, with over 200 experts from NASA and aerospace industry contractor teams attending. The assessment backs an earlier decision by the White House to scuttle the Hubble. A robotically-controlled liquid-fueled motor would eventually be docked to the telescope. Once ignited, the engine would push the huge observatory into a controlled nose-dive into a remote ocean spot.

Many animals may have their own forms of laughter, says a US researcher writing in the magazine Science. Professor Jaak Panksepp says that animals other than humans exhibit play sounds that resemble human laughs. These include the panting sounds made by chimps and dogs when they play and chirping sounds observed in rats.

Five hundred historical artifacts from the Roman Era have been unveiled during excavations in the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline. Archaeologists and academics intervened immediately when they learnt of the archeological discoveries and the route of the pipeline has been changed. The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) Crude Oil Pipeline Project has uncovered lost history. Seventeen excavations, 10 of them planned and seven of them by chance, have been made in the route of the BTC pipeline. A total of 550 artifacts, primarily human and animal remains from the Roman Era and tools from the Iron Age, have been found during the diggings. The arts will be exhibited by BOTAS, the state-owned Turkish pipeline monopoly, in the context of the agreement signed between BOTAS and the Culture and Nature Museum Administration. The project has been its first to respect the cultural heritage and international standards. The 76 km corridor from Ardahan to Adana has been examined in terms of historical and archaeological context with the contribution of Culture Ministry, the BTC Project Directorship and Gazi University.

It is a familiar story: Whether the location is a pyramid in Egypt, a museum in Iraq or a Native American burial ground in Montana, looters, art lovers or any combination of the two have stripped the sites bare of their artifacts, leaving little for scholars to study and a gap in what can be learned about a particular group of people in a particular period of time. Fragments of history are carted away, often taken thousands of miles from their place of origin, never to be returned.

DHAKA: A professor of archaeology at the Jahangirnagar University has stirred a controversy with misleading claims about and un authorized excavation at an archaeological site. Professor Sufi Mustafizur Rahman, who led the excavation of an 18 by 16 metre area at Owari-Bateshwar in Belabo upazila of Narsingdi, claimed in April last year that the excavation had led to the discovery of a road, a citadel and a raft of artefacts that dated back to 450BC. Sufi told the media that his findings indicated to the oldest civilization to have been discovered so far, and would redefine the history of eastern India and substantiate the theory of the Brahmaputra civilization. While his claims have sparked a debate among historians and archaeologists who maintain that such a conclusion is premature at this stage of excavation and examination, his go-it-alone approach has enraged the Department of Archaeology under the cultural affairs ministry.

A paralysed man in the US has become the first person to benefit from a brain chip that reads his mind. Matthew Nagle, 25, was left paralysed from the neck down and confined to a wheelchair after a knife attack in 2001. The pioneering surgery at New England Sinai Hospital, Massachusetts, last summer means he can now control everyday objects by thought alone. The brain chip reads his mind and sends the thoughts to a computer to decipher.