Category: Breaking News
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HMS Erebus, which sank in 1846, have been recovered to the surface. This is the second major discovery after the location of the ship itself, which only happened last year. The Erebus was one of two ships that carried Sir John Franklin’s expedition to the Arctic to find a Northwest Passage. The Erebus and its sister ship, the HMS Terror, became stranded in ice near the shores of King William island in the Queen Maud Gulf off the coast of Canada a year after they had left Britain. Both ships eventually sank, with 128 people dying. Franklin himself died on the island a year later, in 1847. The wreck site is at a very remote and climatically hostile location. After the Erebus’ remains were discovered in 2014, the divers sent to examine them had a difficult time, to put it mildly: just to reach the wreck they had to overcome sea ice with a thickness of two metres. The work on the ship was led by underwater archaeologist Ryan Harris, from the Parks Canada Agency, who told LiveScience that just getting all the equipment and professionals needed for the job to the Queen Maud Gulf had been a challenging task. Thankfully, the team could count on logistics support from several government agencies, including the Department of National Defense, the Canadian Royal Navy, and the New York Air National Guard. The first divers went underwater last September and cleared the kelp and other marine flora colonies on the ship, which rests five meters from the seafloor. This April, the divers returned to scan the site with lasers to catalogue what was there. It was during this diving session that they retrieved the artefacts that have now been put on display at the Canadian Museum of History. The objects include three plates, some buttons, a bottle of medicine still holding some of its contents, pieces from the ship’s rigging, and a huge, 300-kg canon. According to Harris, the two ships must have sailed under “a flag of scientific neutrality” but nevertheless thought it wise to be prepared for any eventuality. All of these, however, are nothing but scratching the surface, LiveScience writer Stephanie Pappas notes. There is a huge amount of work yet to be done on the ship’s remains if there is any hope of identifying at least some of the victims of the wreck, establishing what they were doing in those last days, and determining whether they died on the ship or elsewhere. The buttons could be some help, as they may tell the researchers the rank of their owner. The team also hope to find out what caused the wreck or what factors contributed to it, given that both ships were equipped for sailing in the ice-packed Arctic waters. The Erebus wreck features ice channels on the port side, as well as metal plating and a system allowing the propeller to be hoisted onto the deck. The whereabouts of the second ship in the expedition, the Terror, remains unknown. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons user: Piotrus]]>
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Phorcus turbinatus, an edible mollusc that early humans ate, as evidenced by the broken upper shells of the animals. The fossils were uncovered at the Ksar ‘Akil site, where two sets of human remains from the Upper Paleolithic had been discovered previously. Combining the age of the mollusc fossils with that of the human remains, the researchers concluded that modern people lived in the Levant as early as 45,900 years ago, according to a press release by the Max Planck Institute. This is before the time modern humans settled in Europe, so the suggestion that they spread across the continent from the Near East was, according to the researchers, the only logical one. Another important suggestion from the study is the timing of this spread. This has also been subject of debate for a long time, mainly because there is scarce human fossil evidence from the early Upper Paleolithic period, Jean-Jacques Hublin, co-author of the study, said in the press release. Two human fossils, however, were found at the Ksar ‘Akil and have now been dated more accurately. One of the fossils, a man nicknamed Egbert by the team who discovered him, lived in the region around 43,000 years ago, during the early Upper Paleolithic. The other fossil, of a woman dubbed Ethelruda, was older, dated back to 45,900 years ago, a period that researchers call the initial Upper Paleolithic. Both fossils were associated by researchers with tools typical for the Upper Paleolithic and both were older than any Paleolithic human fossils from European archaeological sites. This, says co-author Johannes van der Plicht from the University of Groningen, suggests that modern human’s entry into Europe took place some time between 55,000 and 40,000 years ago. The conclusions of the scientists about the route of dispersal into Europe were supported by radiocarbon dating of the molluscs, an endeavour usually extremely difficult on shell remains. The team, however, used a new approach, as explained by Van der Plicht and another co-author, Marcello Mannino. They combined radiocarbon dating with biochemical datasets for more accurate results, including a technique examining the state of amino acids contained in the shells. What these revealed was a confirmation of the dating of the human fossils: modern humans lived in what is today Lebanon before they ventured northwest into Europe and spread across it, displacing the continent’s former masters, the Neanderthals. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons user: H. Zell]]>
Jewish History. Pavin argues that the religious leaders of the Italian Jewish community ultimately came to identify with the Italian nationalistic cause unconditionally. Messages communicated through wartime propaganda were incorporated into the rabbis’ sermons without much critical questioning. With the outbreak of war, Italian rabbis pledged their full-fledged support for the cause. Patriotic enthusiasm is clearly visible in rabbis’ sermons, Pavin argues. The sacrifice made by Italian Jews who laid down their lives for their country was portrayed as something to aspire to. Based on these sermons, it appears that Jewish communities in Italy had fully assimilated with the Italian patriotic identity. Interestingly, a clear Jewish identity, separate and distinct from Italian Christians, remained intact. “The perception and self-representation of Jews as a distinct minority at both a religious and an ethnic level did not conflict with their sense of identification with and loyalty to their country,” Pavin argued, “and thus did not prevent the rabbis— as can be seen in their sermons—from fully supporting the Italian war effort.” Pavin makes some interesting arguments and draws some fascinating conclusions. Precisely how the rabbis’ messages were received, however, still needs further investigation. Pavin notes that the rabbis’ war was very different from the average Jewish soldier as it was free of blood and death, he suggests this disconnect as a possible explanation for why many Jewish soldiers did not seek serious support from their religious leaders. For more information: www.link.springer.com Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons user: File Upload Bot (Magnus Manske)]]>
Science. In this new paper D’Emic says the idea that dinosaurs were “mesotherms,” a term the older study authors coined to describe a dinosaur’s metabolism as somewhere between cold blooded and warm blooded, couldn’t be further from the truth. While D’Emic praised the original paper for gathering an “unprecedented” amount of information on metabolism and growth through the lens of living modern animals, he remarked that “upon re-analysis, it was apparent that dinosaurs weren’t just somewhat like living mammals in their physiology.” Instead, D’Emic says that the massive, extinct reptilian creatures “fit right within our understanding of what it means to be a ‘warm-blooded’ mammal.” D’Emic’s research methods included a close study of growth rings present in the bones of several fossilized skeletons. Similar to the rings present in trees that provide a way to determine their approximate age, these rings indicate changes in growth that could represent seasonal changes or periods of stress in a given specimen, D’Emic contends. The paleontologist criticized the original study authors for not taking these growth rings into account, especially in light of how modern species can undergo slowdowns or pauses in their growth as a result of stressful seasons that might be colder, more arid, or with less plentiful food sources than usual. The paleontologist also re-analyzed the initial study through the lens of comparison with living avian creatures. Living birds are considered to be the closest descendants of dinosaurs living today – one key similarity, D’Emic claims, is that they are both warm blooded creatures. “Separating what we commonly think of as ‘dinosaurs’ from birds in a statistical analysis is generally inappropriate,” according to the scientist, because birds are “just the dinosaurs that haven’t gone extinct.” A re-analysis of the data with dinosaurs as avian stand-ins provides additional support that dinosaurs weren’t mesotherms but truly warm blooded creatures, added D’Emic. The scientific community is understandably split on D’Emic’s new claims. Biologist John Grady, one of the authors of the original study D’Emic takes issue with, responded on behalf of his fellow researchers by stating that “We disagree with his central criticisms, and we emphasize that all of our original conclusions stand.” Grady disputed D’Emic’s hypothesis, remarking that “Comparing dinosaur growth with the observed growth rate of living vertebrates clearly shows that non-avian dinosaurs were mesotherms.” Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons user: Peng ]]>
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