Newsdesk Archive

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - The remains of a two-ton dinosaur have lurked in a South African university for over 20 years -- but only now have researchers realized it is the oldest direct ancestor of the largest creatures ever to walk the earth. Scientists said on Thursday that the fossil, dug up in 1981, was the earliest known example of a sauropod, the group of giant plant-eating reptiles that ruled the Jurassic world between 205 and 145 million years ago.

KING: Tonight: What really happened at Roswell, New Mexico, 56 years ago this week? Did the United States military cover up a UFO crash landing, complete with alien bodies? Do UFOs exist? Have they been here? Tonight we return to Roswell with those who were there. Walter Haut -- he was the information officer at Roswell Army Air Field. He wrote the now famous July 8, 1947, press release that said a flying disk had been recovered. Glenn Dennis -- he worked at a Roswell funeral home and says someone claiming to be the airfield's mortuary officer called to ask him about small caskets. Nancy Easley (ph) Johnston -- her father was in charge of security and clean-up at the Roswell site. Jesse Marcel, Jr. -- his father was a Roswell intelligence officer. He says he saw debris samples his father brought home from the crash site.

The next generation of spacecraft propulsion systems could be dead in the water before they are even launched. A physicist is claiming that solar sailing - the idea of using sunlight to blow spacecraft across the solar system - is at odds with the laws of thermal physics. Both NASA and the European Space Agency are developing solar sails and, although never tested, the concept is quite simple. A solar sail is essentially a giant mirror that reflects photons of sunlight back in the direction they came from.

Our universe is a very dusty place. Dust usually shows its presence by blocking out light emitted from stars or nebulae behind it, sometimes creating the illusion of a horse's head or a sombrero hat. But nobody really knows what a typical interstellar dust grain looks like. By studying how dust absorbs, emits, and reflects light, astronomers do know that interstellar dust is much different than the cell and lint based dust found around a typical house. Interstellar dust grains are composed mostly of carbon, silicon, and oxygen and are usually less than about 1/1000 of a millimeter across. (FOLLOW LINK TO SEE IMAGE)

Bhubaneswar: A unique temple dating to the 10th century AD with Nagi sculpture as the presiding deity, has been discovered in Ghasiandhuti village under Balipatana block in Orissa's Khurda district. The temple, popularly known as the Uttarayani temple by local villagers, has Khakhara type design and the villagers worship the deity as 'Uttarayani' little knowing that it was a Nagi image, unknown to historians and archaeologists of the State.

PARIS (AP) - Afghanistan's Bamiyan Valley, home to the fabled Buddha statues destroyed by the Taliban, and the ancient Iraqi city of Ashur were among 24 sites added to UNESCO's World Heritage List on Thursday. Threatened by ongoing civil unrest, the sites in Iraq and Afghanistan also were placed on the organization's endangered list, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization said in a statement.

The world's first bicycle was developed by a Japanese feudal lord in 1732, a model recently created on the basis of a Edo-Period drawing has suggested. Toshio Kajiwara, 60, a former bicycle company technical adviser, analyzed the drawing of a "newly-developed, boat-style ground vehicle," and Kenjiro Kawakami, professor of industrial archeology at Tama University of Arts, created a 1/5 scale model.

South Africa's most well-known Iron Age site, Mapungubwe in Limpopo, was declared a world heritage site by Unesco yesterday. Mapungubwe was among 24 sites inscribed in the United Nations Education, Cultural and Scientific Organisation's World Heritage List by the organisation's World Heritage Committee (Unesco). Jasmini Sopova, Unesco spokeswoman, told Sapa the listing would draw world attention to Mapungubwe near Musina, in the Limpopo River valley.

To look at, it is no more than a common field forming part of the farming landscape in the heart of East Lothian. But the land near East Linton holds a secret beneath its soil. It contains the answer to an early medieval mystery, only solved after the accidental discovery of a 200-year-old map. It pointed to the field being the location of the long-lost settlement of Whittingehame, which dated from the seventh century, but was abandoned nearly 300 years ago.

JERUSALEM (AP) -- A construction crew digging near a major Christian shrine in Nazareth, the boyhood town of Jesus, discovered a cistern that crusaders might have built 1,000 years ago, archaeologists said Friday. Archeologists from the Israel Antiquities Authority plan to excavate the site next week to learn more about the cistern, or underground water reservoir, that was unearthed Wednesday.

The secret of a man's sex appeal may lie in his cheeks, according to a study. Researchers have found evidence to suggest a quick glimpse of a man's cheek is enough to tell women if he is attractive. They also believe a man's complexion may somehow give clues as to whether he has "good" genes, which women unconsciously desire. Researchers at the University of Newcastle, UK, said women had a lot in common with female peahens and mice which also use appearance to size up a male's genetic qualities.

It is called a "splatometer" and conservationists want car drivers in the UK to use it to count numbers of flying insects. The idea is to work out whether anecdotal evidence of declining numbers of insects can be supported. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) says species like tree sparrows and corn bunting are on the decline. It wants to know whether the apparent decline in the number of bees, ladybirds, moths and other insects has anything to do with this.

The first scientific result from a pair of linked telescopes - the mighty Keck twins on Mauna Kea - has been released. It is the observation of a young star surrounded by a disc of dust in which planets may be forming. When the two 10-metre (33 feet) Kecks - sited up a volcano in Hawaii, US - open their eyes on the heavens in tandem, they form what is arguably the world's largest optical telescope system.

It is well known that birds such as homing pigeons use the Sun to find their way home. Now, biologists say they have found the first case of an animal that navigates by the Moon. It is only a humble beetle but the ability to use moonlight as a compass may be widespread in the animal kingdom. Many birds use the Sun, Moon or stars as a marker in the sky. But the African dung beetle seems to have even more remarkable skills. It uses the pattern created when moonlight strikes tiny particles in the atmosphere (polarisation) to orient itself and travel in a straight line.

The 12-metre (40 foot) wide remains of a sea creature found in Chile could be those of a giant octopus, the first washed up on land for over a century. The 13-ton specimen was at first taken for a beached whale when it came ashore a week ago, but experts who have seen it say it appears not to have a backbone.

Egypt and UNESCO are examining the question of placing the old pilgrimage route in Sinai on the international map of human heritage sites. Monuments flank the 230-kilometre road, which was one of the most important routes used by pilgrims from Egypt, north and central Africa, from north Suez through Agroud and Ras Al Naqb and ending at Taba. Archaeologist Abdul Rehim Rihan said that the ongoing development of the old pilgrimage road is still the overland route used by thousands of pilgrims to Mecca.

Red-hot earth beneath the desert sands of Mali is caused by naturally burning peat deposits not volcanoes, a field expedition has found. Soil in the Timbuktu region sporadically seems to bake, fumes spew from glowing-hot holes in the ground and trees and scrub burn from the roots up. French colonial scientists first documented the phenomenon, blaming molten magma just beneath the surface the desert.

The accelerating expansion of the Universe can be explained without invoking a force of dark energy, a group of US physicists is proposing1. Gravity alone might be driving everything apart with ever-increasing speed, they claim. "The fact that the Universe is speeding up might be the biggest mystery in all of science," says Michael Turner of the University of Chicago. "Really big problems require crazy new ideas - and ours is right up there with the craziest." He hopes others will build on the idea, or knock it down.

A US space agency (Nasa) mission to map the world's ice sheets is in trouble. A laser in the satellite's sole scientific instrument is not working and operations have been put on hold for the time being. The flagship US mission was launched six months ago to track changes in the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets.The Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite (Icesat) was sending back promising data before the problem arose. A review panel has been set up to decide how to proceed.

A unique library of medieval manuscripts, devastated by fire during World War II and considered lost by scholars, could be restored using technology developed to study the surface of planets. The medieval library at Chartres, France, was destroyed in an allied bombing raid on the evening of 26 May, 1944. The collection, then housed in an annexe of Chartres town hall, comprised around 2,000 medieval books and parchments, many of which dated to the 12th Century. The library was considered a national treasure and a good proportion of the works were unpublished.

The oldest seed plants known, the cycads, are now among the most threatened on Earth, scientists say. Cycads, plants resembling palms, first appeared in the fossil record about 300 million years ago. But today they face a risk of extinction four times greater than the average for plants. One of the worst threats comes from the trade in wild plants for the horticultural trade.

In 1801, astronomer William Herschall noted a relationship between sunspots and the price of wheat.He saw that the more sunspots there were, the lower the price of wheat. Fewer sunspots and the price rose. The suggestion was that Earth's weather depends on the Sun's natural variability - and 200 years later, scientists are still debating this effect. Though few now dispute that humans are contributing to global warming through car and industrial emissions, there are healthy arguments over just how important this influence is - and whether the Sun's impact may have been underestimated.

When the bodies of Scott of the Antarctic and his party were discovered in 1912, a collection of rocks and fossils were found by their tent. The men had hauled geological specimens weighing 35 pounds (16 kg) back from the South Pole. Observers have since questioned the wisdom of carrying them all that way but Scott and his colleagues were determined that the expedition have a scientific cause.

A Belgian archaeological team from Louvain University has found a cemetery at Deir Al Barsha, 40 kilometres south of El-Minya.Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni said that the team found two tombs intact and the remains of two others. Secretary-General of the Supreme Council for Antiquities (SCA) Dr Zahi Hawas said the tombs date back to the Middle Kingdom (2040-1785 BC) and that some of them were used again in the period between the Middle and New Kingdoms (1785-1550 BC).

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Thanks in part to new spectroscopic technology, researchers have solved a great mystery concerning some of North America's oldest pieces of sculpture. With the use of PIMA -- a non-invasive Portable Infrared Mineral Analyzer -- an interdisciplinary team of scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has identified the source and meaning of "spectacular late prehistoric" figurines found in several locales in the South and the Southeast -- in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Tennessee.

WASHINGTON -- While debate flares over the number of antiquities destroyed or stolen from the Iraqi National Museum in the early days of the Iraq (news - web sites) war, looting from the country's archaeological sites continues unabated, experts warn. At the Fifth World Archaeological Congress here last week, the fate of Iraq's antiquities was a continuing topic of concern, both inside and outside scientific sessions. Conference officials issued a resolution calling for greater action by U.S. military officials to secure Iraqi archaeological sites.

Five years after discovery of the Miami Circle, overseers have decided to rebury the 2,000-year-old archeological landmark, pushing plans for public access still further into the future. "It was decided to cover up the Circle with dirt or other gravel fill to protect it from the elements," said Brenda Swann, archaeology supervisor for the Florida Bureau of Archaeological Research.

They are pictures of people, deer, llamas, crocodiles and even pumas. There are more than 350 stone walls filled with such paintings at Pedra Furada, a prehistoric site in a remote area of Brazil. They also may be the oldest cave paintings ever found in the Americas, and their discovery could radically change scientists' understanding of how and when the first people came to this hemisphere.

Astronomers have found a planetary system similar to ours - a Jupiter-like world circling a Sun-like star in roughly the same orbit that Jupiter follows our Sun. Of the 100 or so other planetary systems known, this one more closely resembles ours than any other. Researchers speculate that this system may contain other worlds, such as smaller rocky planets like Earth, either in orbit around the star or around the Jupiter-like world itself.

Europe's first Mars space craft is suffering from a power glitch. However, controllers believe it will make no difference to the mission itself. Engineers carrying out routine checks on Mars Express as it speeds though space have found it is down to 70% power. A faulty connection between the craft's solar wings and a unit that distributes the electricity generated by the arrays is to blame.

An experiment in the United States has created a mixed-sex human embryo. The team involved insists that the creation of an hermaphrodite human embryo was designed to cure illness, but critics say moral and ethical standards have been breached. The process they used creates what is known as a "chimaera" - a blend of two embryos, each of which would have a distinct genetic identities.

An ancient winepress has been unearthed recently in archaeological excavations in Jaffa, the Antiquities Authority announced yesterday. The large press, which has a mosaic floor and wine storage vats, was found during a dig sponsored by the Tel Aviv municipality and the Israel Government Tourist Corporation, as part of a restoration project in the Jaffa flea market.

The initial Roman occupation of central Scotland was achieved relatively peacefully, perhaps with native consent, and it lasted up to 15 years - much longer than previously thought, according to new research. Recent evidence from the 'Gask frontier' - the earliest land frontier in the Roman Empire - indicates that it was established in the 70s AD rather than the mid-80s, before being abandoned sometime after 86. The frontier consists of a network of forts, fortlets and watchtowers between Stirling and Perth centred on the legionary fortress of Inchtuthil. Its purpose was to control the main route between southern Scotland and the north, where the A9 road runs today.

A burial necklace confiscated by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency here in Houston has been returned to the Peruvian government. It is a string of colored stones that has been dated by experts at around 900 A.D. Customs agents at Bush Intercontinental Airport confiscated the artifact over a year ago and an investigation by the agency determined its origin to be from Peru.

Although the Roman conquest led to the extinction of the Gaulish language 2,000 years ago, a half dozen rare, surviving Gaulish/Latin bilingual inscriptions have enabled scholars to trace the origins of the Celtic language and many other European languages. According to the study, Celtic branched in two directions from an Indo-European mother language around 3200 B.C. One version, Gaulish, which is also called Continental Celtic, stayed within the European mainland. A second, British version, referred to as Insular Celtic, moved in a single wave to Britain.

A replica of the Biblical Ark of the covenant, or tabot, has been taken back to Ethiopia and an Irish doctor was responsible. But Indiana Jones he is not. No chiselled jaw line. No leather whip, no pistol. And this discovery did not require hacking through dense jungle or dodging dangerous rivals. In 1868 British soldiers looted the Maqdala fortress in the north of Ethiopia as part of a campaign to free some hostages. Royal treasures along with some valuable manuscripts and religious artefacts found their way into museums and private collections.

Physicists have discovered a new class of subatomic particle that will provide unexpected insights into the fundamental building blocks of matter. The discovery involves quarks - particles that make up the protons and neutrons usually found in the nuclei of atoms. The new particle is the so-called pentaquark - five quarks in formation. Until now, physicists had only seen quarks packed into two- or three-quark combinations.

This is a portrait of Robert Hooke, the British scientist and polymath who died 300 years ago. He was a contemporary and bitter enemy of Sir Isaac Newton and no portrait from the time exists of him because Newton's supporters destroyed the only one after his death. A series of modern portraits has been commissioned to commemorate the tercentenary of Hooke's death and to recall a man who was renowned during his life but quickly forgotten by most thereafter.

Sydney - Australian scientists are calling the discovery of a cave containing scores of rock paintings up to 4 000 years old one of the most significant finds yet of Aboriginal art. The existence of the paintings, only announced on Tuesday, has been a secret for eight years since a hiker stumbled on the cave in rugged national parkland near Sydney in 1995.

Recently a rumor has been racing around the internet that Dutch astrophysicist Dr. Piers van der Meer has announced that the sun is going to explode in six years. This rumor started with an article published on the Weekly World News website, which has since been withdrawn. The article was repeated on Yahoo News, but in the entertainment section. Nevertheless, because it is contributing to additional anxiety in a time when there is already too much of same, we have researched the story, and found the following...

CHINESE archaeologists have unearthed a spectacular tomb thought to be more than 2500 years old, probably belonging to a ruler of the mysterious Ba Kingdom. Along with more than 500 bronze objects, the skeletons of two women and a man were found, face up and pointed east. Archaeologists said they had probably been servants or vassals of a Ba king, buried with him as human sacrifices.

It is the bloodcurdling journal of a sailor shipwrecked on a tropical desert island among tribal warriors who slaughtered the rest of the crew and enslaved him for 15 years. It is the story of a cockney youth forced to herd livestock and fight battles with spears and muskets. It is the ripping yarn of being marooned in Madagascar and escaping back to Britain, which became a publishing sensation.

CAIRO, June 30 (AFP) - Belgian archeologists excavating in south Egypt have found two 4,000-year-old tombs containing terracotta pots used in offerings as well as a gilded human face mask, the head of antiquities said Monday. The finds in the Deir el-Bersha region of Minya governorate, 300 kilometers (180 miles) south of Cairo, date back 2,000 years before Christ, said Zahi Hawas, secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities.

A Confederate Army fort that served as the cornerstone of Mobile defenses during the Civil War has been unearthed at a city park. Experts call the discovery at the city's old Monroe Park, which overlooks Mobile Bay, a rare find. "You don't find too many of those around in the United States today," Ned Harkins, an archivist at the city Municipal Archives told The Mobile Register for a Monday story. Portions of Fort Sidney Johnston were excavated in December, revealing wooden floors, timbers and a brick wall, said Scott Butler, an archaeologist on the project.

Low-level kings were savvy players of Classic Maya politics, easily switching allegiances with powerful overlords. Or so it would appear from a reanalysis of a hieroglyphic stela from Moral-Reforma, a modest Maya capital in Tabasco, Mexico, that thrived between A.D. 600 and 800. The inscription on the stela describes two coronations for King Hawk Skull: one in A.D. 662 in the presence of Yuknoom the Great, king of distant Calakmul; and another 30 years later supervised by King Kan Bahlam, ruler of Palenque.

NEW YORK - New research suggests the Inca, who controlled the largest pre-Columbian empire of the Americas, did have the means to record language despite long being considered a civilization that had failed to develop writing. The hidden history of Inca rule, which extended up and down the Andes for 100 years before the Spanish conquest of 1532, may be contained in the Incas' famous knotted strings, called khipu, the latest research indicates.

WABASSO -- An expedition off Florida's Atlantic Coast has discovered a dime-size gold coin and a wooden rudder, providing evidence of an unsalvaged ship that could be part of a famous 18th-century shipwrecked fleet. Rob Westrick, an archaeologist for Historical Research and Development of Orlando, said he found an escudo Wednesday, a solid gold coin with a jeweled cross on one side and a crown on the other.

Archaeologists have been intrigued by Europe's largest prehistoric mound for centuries. David Field reports on new work that overturns some old ideas Great sites rarely come much greater than Silbury Hill - at least in terms of scale. This giant Neolithic tumulus near Avebury, the largest man-made prehistoric mound in Europe, has been a source of observation, speculation and wishful thinking for hundreds if not thousands of years.

Metaphorically speaking, the dust was blown off Alexandrian poet Callimachus, known for his hymns and epigrams but seriously underrated, at the first literary conference sponsored by Alexandria Creativity Centre (ACC). Callimachus was born in Libya in 310 BC and moved with his parents to Alexandria, where he lived from 305 to 235 BC. Callimachus was the first to catalogue the 700,000 volumes of the Alexandria library.

Most visitors to the world's largest Buddhist temple, the Borobudur stupa in central Java, probably never notice the five intricate stone engravings of eighth-century ocean-going ships. Scattered among the monument's 1,460 weather-beaten stone relief panels that narrate tales from Buddhist scriptures, the largest is only about 50cm high and 70cm wide. But these illustrations have inspired a London fund manager to realise a decades-old dream and re-enact how Indonesian mariners established trading routes with eastern, and possibly also western, Africa more than 1,200 years ago.

Japanese researchers have observed mice behaving strangely after being exposed to electric and magnetic fields similar to those sometimes detected before earthquakes. The levels of exposure were far smaller than humans are capable of perceiving. Professor Takeshi Yagi of Osaka University says he first noticed the unusual behaviour in mice in his laboratory eight years ago, the day before the Kobe earthquake.

The proposed building of a massive dam to supply electricity for Namibia has met with fierce resistance from both environmental groups and local tribes. The proposed Epupa dam project - to be built on the Kunene river in the north-west of the country - would dramatically alter the environment by flooding a vast expanse of the region.

Egyptian and German archeologists in southern Egypt said they had found the dwellings of priests who officiated at the necropolis of Thoth, the god of wisdom. "The immense building of dwellings for the priests of the necropolis of sacred animals who symbolized the god Thoth was found in the area of Tuna Al Gebel and has 50 rooms," the Egyptian head of mission, Abdel Halim Nur Eddine, said.

Artisans throwing pots in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Umbria were practising an early form of nanotechnology, Italian researchers have found. Coloured glazes in pottery samples from the Umbrian town of Deruta exploit the reflective properties of minute metal grains to give them a rich lustre, Bruno Brunetti of the University of Perugia and colleagues find.

Since I established grahamhancock.com in 1999 the site has expanded rapidly and now attracts more than 5 million page downloads per annum. As it has grown it has also attracted the attention and hostility of orthodox historians and archaeologists and become the focus of a proliferating "debunking" industry in cyberspace. A number of the more coherent sceptical and pseudo-sceptical "debunking" sites are listed on our Links page. Amongst these, one in particular -- In the Hall of Ma'at -- stands out for the relative intelligence of its regular contributors and also for the vehemence and dedication of its attacks (primarily on me and my colleague Robert Bauval). It is my opinion that a great many of these attacks have been grossly unfair.

(click on link to see full image)This dense cloud of gas and dust is being deleted. Likely, within a few million years, the intense light from bright stars will have boiled it away completely. Stars not yet formed in the molecular cloud's interior will then stop growing. The cloud has broken off of part of the greater Carina Nebula, a star forming region about 8000 light years away. Newly formed stars are visible nearby, their images reddened by blue light being preferentially scattered by the pervasive dust. This unusually-colored image spans about two light years and was taken by the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope in 1999

he Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) has released a comparison of House Bill H.R. 2009 and Senate Bill S. 1291, both regarding the protection of Iraqi archaeological and cultural material. The AIA concludes that the Senate bill is much weaker than the House bill and would afford insufficient protections. Based on its concerns, the AIA is endorsing only the House bill and has called for public support of H.R. 2009, while suggesting that the Senate should consider a bill that "tracks" H.R. 2009 rather than S. 1291 as it is currently written. The comparison of the bills is presented in full below:

A TEAM of archaeologists searching for a Roman road believe they have discovered the remains of a settlement. The remains of a quarry and building materials used in the fourth century were found during the first fortnight of a five-week excavation. The dig, at Firhill Playing Fields, Bellingham, is being carried out by Birbeck College, University of London, before the site is transformed into modern sports playing fields.

A unique archaeological discovery, a silver amulet dating back to the 12th century was made at a building site in the Moscow region where the DON-Stroi construction company is building a new house for the Moscow regional administration. The rare amulet was found by workers of the Archaeology Institute. The DON-Stroi press-service reported on Monday that a scene of Christ's baptizing in the Jordan River is coined on the face of a round plate of 4 centimeters in diameter. On the reverse side, there is a fantastic creature with woman's body and 11 snakes growing out of her legs.

The US space agency Nasa has postponed the launch of its latest probe to Mars. The roving vehicle - named Opportunity - was due to blast off at 2356 local time (0356 GMT on Sunday), but the mission was delayed for 24 hours because of high winds at Cape Canaveral in Florida. Opportunity is the second vehicle built to roam Mars' rocky surface on a three-month mission to explore the Red Planet. The probe will fly into space on a Boeing Delta II rocket.

A future generation of anti-aircraft missiles could be made far harder to dodge by a guidance system inspired by the flight of dragonflies and hoverflies. The missiles will mimic a strategy called motion camouflage, which predatory insects use to trick prey into thinking they are stationary. Insects that use this technique sneak up on their prey in a way that makes them seem stationary even though they are in fact moving closer. They do this by keeping themselves positioned between a fixed point in the landscape and their prey.

Sexual suicide, cannibalism and necrophilia are all involved in a macabre study that adds a new twist to the mating behaviour of spiders. Researchers found that for male orb-weaving spiders of the species Argiope aurantia completing copulation leads to certain death. The deceased suitor's corpse is then trapped in the female genitalia. This may be a strategy to prevent other males from subsequently mating with the female, say the scientists.

Cloud-to-Earth lightning bolts are a well-known natural electrical occurrence. Now scientists have discovered and photographed for the first time enormous, 90-kilometer-high (55-mile), luminous, electric discharges that deliver large quantities of current from thunderstorms to the edges of the Earth's atmosphere. The flashes, described in a letter published in the current issue of the journal Nature, is believed to be a type of phenomenon known by atmospheric physicists as a "transient luminous event."

CHAPEL HILL -- Using centuries-old records, trowels, spoons and other tools -- and generating much sweat equity in the process -- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill archaeologists and students have discovered what they say are two of the most important Indian settlements in the early history of the United States. Their team has unearthed remnants of cabins that Catawba Indians collectively called Old Town and New Town on hills sloping up from the Catawba River in rural Lancaster County, S.C., just south of Charlotte. During their painstaking work, they found thousands of artifacts discarded at the sites, ranging from shards of English, American and Catawba pottery and snaffle bits for horses' bridles to coins and broken Jews' harps -- small instruments that produced musical tones when held in the mouth and plucked.

As soon as the performances for Musical July come to an end, work will begin on restoring the little theater at Epidaurus to some of its former glory. Research work on the site has revealed the successive building phases of the monument and the different uses to which it was put in antiquity. The theater was apparently in operation for several centuries, undergoing many changes. It was not just a theater, but also a place where meetings and ceremonies were held.

For anyone concerned about archaeological heritage, these are troubled times. Looted antiquities are regularly traded on the world's art markets, and even major museums are still displaying unprovenanced artefacts. Renowned archaeologist Colin Renfrew, who alerted the British government to the dangers of archaeological theft in Iraq but was ignored, is outraged. Maggie McDonald talked to him about looting, prehistory and the intriguing relationship between contemporary art and archaeology, the subject of his new book

The River Trent snakes through the East Midlands for 280km, starting in Staffordshire and ending in north Lincolnshire. Many of its benefits are clear - it provides water, natural beauty and its valley is a rich source of gravel. Other treasures are not so evident, often buried beneath metres of soil. But for those who know what they are looking for, those treasures can be the most fascinating.

For the second time in a week, the 18th-dynasty queen, Nefertiti, has been making headlines, and has again been the subject of much discussion. After the incident in the Berlin Museum, in which the famous painted limestone bust of the queen was placed on top of a modern bronze female statue, Joanne Fletcher, a mummification expert from the University of York in England, announced that she and her team may have identified the actual mummy of the queen.

Opportunity - the second of two roving vehicles built to explore the surface of Mars - is all set for launch. The probe will fly into space on a Boeing Delta II rocket from Florida, US, on Saturday. Blast-off is scheduled for 2356 local time (0356 GMT Sunday). Flight controllers say the weather conditions look reasonable and the rocket should get off on time. The US space agency (Nasa) mission should have gone earlier in the week but Boeing insisted on changing some cork insulation tiling on the rocket's second stage which appeared not to be stuck down properly.

A Taiwanese company has created a genetically modified (GM) ornamental fish that glows in the dark. The Taikong Corporation took DNA from a jellyfish and inserted it into a zebra fish to make it shine a yellow-green colour. GM animals are frequently used in labs and flocks of GM sheep make valuable proteins in their milk, but the "Night Pearl" zebra fish is the first gene-altered pet to go on sale to the public.

A telescopic tour of the constellation Sagittarius offers the many bright clusters and nebulae of dimensioned space in a starscape surrounding the galactic center. This gorgeous color deep-sky photograph visits two such lovely sights, cataloged by the 18th century cosmic tourist Charles Messier as M8 and M20. M20 (click on link to see images), the Trifid Nebula, presents a striking contrast in red/blue colors and dark dust lanes.

WASHINGTON -- Images from space are providing scientists with new clues about the mysterious collapse of the Mayan civilization of Central America and some hints about the fates of other ancient civilizations that tried, and failed, to manipulate their environments with massive public works projects. Analyses of satellite images by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center and others suggest that, at least in the Petén region of northern Guatemala, the Maya made major ecological mistakes. Those, in turn, led to the collapse of what, around 800 A.D., was one of the most densely populated regions of the New World.

"Our ceilings are not very tight," says Abdel Haidara of the houses in his native Mali. He's talking in Arabic at a Monday afternoon lecture at the Library of Congress in one of the library's more ceremonial rooms. Curiously, there is sign of what looks like a little water damage above an arch window behind him.

KIBRIS (25/06/03) reports that an ancient tomb of a very important archaeological value was discovered at the occupied village of Galatia. As the paper reports the tomb is dated on the 8th century B.C and belongs to the Geometric Period. Inside the tomb the following archaeological items were found: 1 crater, 2 urns, 3 wine jugs, 2 bowls, 1 small cup, 1 oil lamb in the shape of the cover of an oyster and 1 big decorated wine amphora. Along with these items a turquoise scarab was discovered.

OKINAWA: An ancient blade of a keris found recently at the royal Enkakuji Temple grounds near the 15th century Shurijo Castle might unravel the ties the Malay world had with these southwestern islands of Japan. As the war-ravaged Enkakuji Temple was being restored, construction workers stumbled upon a protruding porcelain pot handle at a spot where offerings were made to the gods.

Barely a year ago, Mars Odyssey found signs that the planet has reservoirs of underground ice near the south pole. Scientists at the US space agency (Nasa) estimated there was enough ice to fill Lake Michigan twice. They said it might be merely the tip of the iceberg and it seems they were right. New observations by Mars Odyssey and Mars Global Surveyor (another Nasa probe that is mapping Mars) suggest the planet's north pole has about one third more underground ice than the south.

New satellite information from Brazil has revealed a sharp increase in the rate of destruction of the Amazonian rainforest. The information, collated from satellite data, shows the speed of deforestation increased by 40% between 2001 and 2002 to reach its highest rate since 1995. Figures from the National Institute for Space Research (INPE) show more than 25,000 square kilometres of forest were cleared in a year - mainly for farming.

Countries which exploit their oil and mineral wealth are likelier to save their forests, researchers say. The more money they make from drilling and mining, the argument runs, the less temptation there is to clear the forests. The researchers say the real message is that economics have a marked effect on the environment. They believe cheap oil could be devastating for many tropical forests.

Being exposed to the smell of a sweaty male armpit can make a woman feel calmer, according to a new study by a U.S. research team. Male sweat contains one or more chemical signalling compounds, known as pheromones, that can affect both a woman's state of mind and her reproductive hormone levels, according to a study by Dr George Preti, of the Monell Chemical Senses Centre in Philadelphia, and colleagues.

Here is factual, critical information on the unethical attacks (including the concealing of corroborating supportive evidence) by CSICOP (Committe for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal) against the statistician Michel Gauquelin, discoverer of the controversial "Mars Effect" planetary influence upon human behavior, who eventually committed suicide after years of outrageous harassment by the organized skeptics. The skeptics had not only wilfully misrepresented his research findings, but went after Gauquelin personally in a publc manner which eventually left him unemployed and despondent; the article was written by Dennis Rawlins, who also details how CSICOP willfully concealed positive evidence supporting Gauquelin.

The ancient jasper mines of South Mountain are no secret. Archaeologists and historians have long known that prehistoric peoples valued the flint-like rock for tools and weapons. But a monthlong dig on the site of a pending housing development in Lower Milford Township unearthed indications that one quarry may have been much more significant than believed.

Work to rebuild Kobe Eiko Church, which was destroyed in the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake, has been put on hold after slivers of ancient earthenware were discovered at the site. Researchers from the Kobe Municipal Board of Education will conduct an archeological excavation of a 730-square-meter section of the 1,200-square-meter plot from July 7. The church, in Chuo Ward, will not be ready in time for its original opening date of June next year.

An information technology project funded by the Greek government has enabled archaeologists and the wider public to take an online tour of the complete Parthenon frieze, whose blocks themselves are held in three separate museums in Greece, the UK and France. The Greek Ministry of Culture, together with the national documentation centre and first ephorate of prehistoric and classical antiquities, decided to digitalise the frieze on account of its cultural importance, and exploited new technologies in order to maximise the projects appeal and impact.

Egyptian and German experts have found the remains of a huge building in the southern district of Minya dating back to the Ptolemic era around 300BC, the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) has announced. The SCA said in a statement that the building was used by priests and their families. The priests were responsible for performing various religious rites inside and outside the Tuna al-Gabal cemetery for sacred animals and birds, which represented the god Gohty.

ROME (Reuters) - Italian art restorers struggling to save one of the world's biggest cycles of medieval frescoes have found an unexpected ally in a culture of greedy bacteria. After a glue used in a bungled earlier restoration attempt clouded one of the 14th and 15th century paintings in the Camposanto cemetery fresco cycle in Pisa, scientists turned to a bacteria called Pseudomonas Stutzeri -- with spectacular results.

The plot of land near Eva Bandman Park off River Road looks unspectacular: a grassy shoulder whose main purpose is to be mowed. But, under the layers of dirt and clay, archaeologists from the University of Kentucky discovered an ancient garbage dump that is revealing secrets about the people who lived in Louisville centuries before Europeans wandered through and claimed the area as their own.

The high-speed impact of a piece of foam insulation hitting Columbia's left wing is the likely cause of the space shuttle's destruction and the deaths of its seven astronauts, say investigators. The foam impact caused a crack in the wing that allowed destructive superhot gas into the shuttle during re-entry on 1 February.

He was perhaps the most prolific collector of all time - with a passion bordering on obsession. On Thursday, many of his most fascinating finds go on display for the first time to the public. Henry Wellcome, a Victorian entrepreneur and philanthropist, amassed more than a million objects from around the world, creating a collection which, at its height, was five times the size of the Louvre's.

A book about asymmetry has won the prestigious Aventis Prize for the best popular science publication in 2003. Right Hand, Left Hand by Chris McManus was honoured in a gala dinner at London's Science Museum on Wednesday.

A key committee of the Japanese government has given its approval for a space mission to the planet Mercury. The mission, scheduled for launch in about seven years' time, will be a joint venture between the Japanese and European Space Agencies and will be the first to attempt a landing on the planet.

WASHINGTON - The chaotic aftermath of war continues to obscure the extent of Iraq's missing antiquities -- including how many artifacts were lost, looted or tucked away for safekeeping. In the most detailed public accounting yet of the pillage of Baghdad's Iraqi National Museum, -- one Iraqi-American archaeologist said several thousand museum pieces are still missing, but warned that the exact number won't be known for months, until a detailed inventory of the museum holdings is completed.

CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY-- City Hall officials have allowed a construction firm to bulldoze portions of the site of what is believed to be Cagayan de Oro's first settlement, permanently damaging the place that continues to yield archaeological artifacts to this day. Local historians have protested the ongoing construction at the "Huluga Site" in sitio Taguanao, Barangay Indahag, saying the project contractor, UKC Builders, has damaged it greatly.

Some age-old ballads are still popular among the Tujia ethnic group in the mountains of the Three Gorges area. In fact, it is said that they have been passed down from the ancient Ba people. The belligerent but courageous Ba people sang their songs during fights with the neighboring Chu State. The songs were later spread to the central plains. They used a pass in the Qutang Gorge to confront and escape from the Chu soldiers.

A recent archaeological discovery suggests that a barbarian tribe known to the Chinese as the "Gold Teeth" may have acquired its name quite literally. Farmers in Halin, a first-millenium A.D. walled city 40 miles north of Mandalay, Myanmar (Burma), discovered a skeleton with eight upper teeth decorated with gold. Chinese historical records mention a "Gold Teeth" tribe living in the area between Burma and what is now the Chinese province of Yunnan over a thousand years ago.

At least seven species new to science have been found in the mountains of Bolivia by a university expedition. The students found two frog species, two snakes, two toads and a lizard. In a largely unexplored valley, they also found an owl not recorded before in Bolivia. Experts say their discoveries suggest the country's overall variety of species may be greater than previously thought.

New species of underwater life, including a giant sea spider and armoured shrimps, have been discovered by a expedition trawling in deep water northwest of New Zealand. Researchers on a joint NZ and Australian voyage also found deep-sea sponges and a prickly shark. The scientists have just returned from four weeks aboard the Research Vessel Tangaroa collecting and photographing species at depths up to 2.1 kilometres (1.3 miles).

An anomaly with a key computer memory unit aboard Europe's Mars Express, currently speeding towards the red planet, has interrupted remote testing of the spacecraft, the European Space Agency revealed on Tuesday. "These kinds of events are considered routine in a space mission," a statement from ESA says. "But engineers would like to understand the causes before re-starting the instrument tests." Mars Express carries seven scientific instruments that will conduct a top-to-bottom search for water on the planet.

Female virtual characters suffer from sexual inequality in financial matters, just like their real-world counterparts, according to a new study of the online game EverQuest. EverQuest is inhabited by tens of thousands of internet gamers at any one time. Players choose a character to represent them in the role-playing world. These avatars can be male or female and one of many fantasy races such as elf or ogre. Once a character has built up experience and skills, some players then sell them for real cash through the internet auction site eBay.

The theft and testing of an individual's DNA is set to become a criminal offence in the UK, as part of a raft of proposed government measures aimed at embracing the potential of genetic technology in medicine, while protecting the rights of individuals. The UK's Department of Health announced on Tuesday that it will spend £50 million over the next three years to advance the use of genetics in treating patients of the National Health System.

A parent's request that Roseville high schools teach ideas that rebut Darwin's theory of evolution could set the stage for debate over what critics call the newest version of creationism. When Roseville Joint Union High School District trustees took the first step toward approving a new biology textbook earlier this month, parent Larry Caldwell asked that supplementary materials be taught in conjunction with the text, which, like most biology books, presents the theory of evolution to explain the origins of life.