Bear Down Wildcats

TORONTO (AP) — One of two British explorer ships that disappeared in the Arctic nearly 170 years ago has been found, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced Tuesday.

The HMS Erebus and HMS Terror were last seen in the 1840s. Canada announced in 2008 that it would search for the ships led by British Arctic explorer Sir John Franklin.

Harper, speaking in Ottawa, said it remains unclear which ship has been found, but images show there's enough information to confirm it's one of the pair.

Franklin and 128 hand-picked officers and men vanished on an expedition in 1846 to find the fabled Northwest Passage. Franklin's disappearance prompted one of history's largest and longest rescue searches, from 1848 to 1859, which resulted in the passage's long-sought discovery.

The passage runs from the Atlantic to the Pacific through the Arctic archipelago. European explorers sought the passage as a shorter route to Asia, but found it rendered inhospitable by ice and weather.

"This is truly a historic moment for Canada," said Harper, who was beaming, uncharacteristically. "This has been a great Canadian story and mystery and the subject of scientists, historians, writers and singers so I think we really have an important day in mapping the history of our country."

Harper's government made the search for Franklin's ships a priority as it looked to assert Canada's sovereignty over the Northwest Passage, where melting Arctic ice has unlocked the very shipping route Franklin was after.

Dozens of searches for the ships helped open up parts of the Canadian Arctic for discovery back in the 1800s.

Harper said the ship was found Sunday using a remotely operated underwater vehicle. They found the wreck 11 meters (yards) below the water's surface.

The ship appears to be well-preserved. Ryan Harris, a senior underwater archaeologist and one of the people leading the Parks Canada search, said a sonar image shows some of the deck structures are still intact, including the main mast, which was sheared off by the ice when the ship sank. He said the contents of the ship are most likely in the same good condition.

The discovery comes shortly after a team of archeologists found a tiny fragment from the Franklin expedition. Searchers discovered an iron fitting that once helped support a boat from one of the doomed expedition's ships in the King William Island search area.

Franklin's vessels are among the most sought-after prizes in marine archaeology. Harper said the discovery would shed light on what happened to Franklin's crew.

Tantalizing traces have been found over the years, including the bodies of three crewmen discovered in the 1980s.

The bodies of two English seamen — John Hartnell, 25, and Royal Marine William Braine, 33 — were exhumed in 1986. An expedition uncovered the perfectly preserved remains of a petty officer, John Torrington, 20, in an ice-filled coffin in 1984.

Experts believe the ships were lost in 1848 after they became locked in the ice near King William Island and that the crews abandoned them in a hopeless bid to reach safety.

The search for an Arctic passage to Asia frustrated explorers for centuries, beginning with John Cabot's voyage in 1497. Eventually it became clear that a passage did exist, but was too far north for practical use. Cabot, the Italian-British explorer, died in 1498 while trying to find it and the shortcut eluded other famous explorers including Henry Hudson and Francis Drake.

No sea crossing was successful until Roald Amundsen of Norway completed his trip from 1903-1906.

BERLIN, GERMANY—Science News reports that the remains of two men wearing trousers have been recovered from the Yanghai graveyard in China’s Tarim Basin by Ulrike Beck and Mayke Wagner of the German Archaeological Institute. They say that the trousers are the oldest known examples of their kind. Dated to between 3,300 and 3,000 years ago, the pants have straight-fitting legs and a wide crotch. They were sewn together from three pieces of wool cloth that had been woven on a loom to the correct size, and fashioned with side slits, strings at the waist for fastening, and designs on the legs. One of the men had been buried with a decorated leather bridle and a wooden bit, a battle ax, and a leather bracer for arm protection. The other man was accompanied by a whip, a decorated horse tail, a bow sheath, and a bow. “This new paper [in Quaternary International] definitely supports the idea that trousers were invented for horse riding by mobile pastoralists, and that trousers were brought to the Tarim Basin by horse-riding peoples,” commented Victor Mair of the University of Pennsylvania.

scumdevils86 wrote:They found the wreck 11 meters (yards) below the water's surface.

A newly deciphered letter homedating back around 1,800 years reveals the pleas of a young Egyptian soldier named Aurelius Polion who was serving, probably as a volunteer, in a Roman legion in Europe.

In the letter, written mainly in Greek, Polion tells his family that he is desperate to hear from them and that he is going to request leave to make the long journey home to see them.

Addressed to his mother (a bread seller), sister and brother, part of it reads: "I pray that you are in good health night and day, and I always make obeisance before all the gods on your behalf. I do not cease writing to you, but you do not have me in mind," it reads.

scumdevils86 wrote:

TORONTO (AP) — One of two British explorer ships that disappeared in the Arctic nearly 170 years ago has been found, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced Tuesday.

The HMS Erebus and HMS Terror were last seen in the 1840s. Canada announced in 2008 that it would search for the ships led by British Arctic explorer Sir John Franklin.

Harper, speaking in Ottawa, said it remains unclear which ship has been found, but images show there's enough information to confirm it's one of the pair.

Franklin and 128 hand-picked officers and men vanished on an expedition in 1846 to find the fabled Northwest Passage. Franklin's disappearance prompted one of history's largest and longest rescue searches, from 1848 to 1859, which resulted in the passage's long-sought discovery.

The passage runs from the Atlantic to the Pacific through the Arctic archipelago. European explorers sought the passage as a shorter route to Asia, but found it rendered inhospitable by ice and weather.

"This is truly a historic moment for Canada," said Harper, who was beaming, uncharacteristically. "This has been a great Canadian story and mystery and the subject of scientists, historians, writers and singers so I think we really have an important day in mapping the history of our country."

Harper's government made the search for Franklin's ships a priority as it looked to assert Canada's sovereignty over the Northwest Passage, where melting Arctic ice has unlocked the very shipping route Franklin was after.

Dozens of searches for the ships helped open up parts of the Canadian Arctic for discovery back in the 1800s.

Harper said the ship was found Sunday using a remotely operated underwater vehicle. They found the wreck 11 meters (yards) below the water's surface.

The ship appears to be well-preserved. Ryan Harris, a senior underwater archaeologist and one of the people leading the Parks Canada search, said a sonar image shows some of the deck structures are still intact, including the main mast, which was sheared off by the ice when the ship sank. He said the contents of the ship are most likely in the same good condition.

The discovery comes shortly after a team of archeologists found a tiny fragment from the Franklin expedition. Searchers discovered an iron fitting that once helped support a boat from one of the doomed expedition's ships in the King William Island search area.

Franklin's vessels are among the most sought-after prizes in marine archaeology. Harper said the discovery would shed light on what happened to Franklin's crew.

Tantalizing traces have been found over the years, including the bodies of three crewmen discovered in the 1980s.

The bodies of two English seamen — John Hartnell, 25, and Royal Marine William Braine, 33 — were exhumed in 1986. An expedition uncovered the perfectly preserved remains of a petty officer, John Torrington, 20, in an ice-filled coffin in 1984.

Experts believe the ships were lost in 1848 after they became locked in the ice near King William Island and that the crews abandoned them in a hopeless bid to reach safety.

The search for an Arctic passage to Asia frustrated explorers for centuries, beginning with John Cabot's voyage in 1497. Eventually it became clear that a passage did exist, but was too far north for practical use. Cabot, the Italian-British explorer, died in 1498 while trying to find it and the shortcut eluded other famous explorers including Henry Hudson and Francis Drake.

No sea crossing was successful until Roald Amundsen of Norway completed his trip from 1903-1906.

Jefe wrote:Caught some of this special on "Sue" the T-Rex over the weekend:

http://wgntv.com/2014/12/11/tyrannosaur ... cumentary/

Longhorned wrote:Okay I admit I totally don't get it. Why don't dinosaurs have anything to do with archaeology?

Longhorned wrote:Okay I admit I totally don't get it. Why don't dinosaurs have anything to do with archaeology?

scumdevils86 wrote:lol guys...Longhorned is a professor of antiquities and ancient history or what not at Illinois..or he was at some point.

Longhorned wrote:

scumdevils86 wrote:lol guys...Longhorned is a professor of antiquities and ancient history or what not at Illinois..or he was at some point.

Yes, I'm an archaeologist still at this point.

ASUHATER! wrote:

Longhorned wrote:

scumdevils86 wrote:lol guys...Longhorned is a professor of antiquities and ancient history or what not at Illinois..or he was at some point.

Yes, I'm an archaeologist still at this point.

What area(s) do you mostly work in?

Longhorned wrote:

ASUHATER! wrote:

Longhorned wrote:

scumdevils86 wrote:lol guys...Longhorned is a professor of antiquities and ancient history or what not at Illinois..or he was at some point.

Yes, I'm an archaeologist still at this point.

What area(s) do you mostly work in?

Ancient Greek, Roman, and Near Eastern art and architecture. I don't overlap with paleontologists on site, but I do share a home base with them in Ankara, and they overlap with my other archaeology and zooarchaeology colleagues from U of A at their respective sites. The history of excavations and collections humans and dinosaurs, but not in the U.S. unless it's at the crazy Creationism Museum or whatever it's called. But in Mexico, you've got the INAH, where it's all under the same umbrella, and where there's some degree of collaboration even today on dinosaur excavations, as far as I know. In my own area, there's some interest now in the ancient collection, study, and general awareness of "monsters." I work on the shared origins of architecture and religion.

Longhorned wrote:

ASUHATER! wrote:

Longhorned wrote:

scumdevils86 wrote:lol guys...Longhorned is a professor of antiquities and ancient history or what not at Illinois..or he was at some point.

Yes, I'm an archaeologist still at this point.

What area(s) do you mostly work in?

Ancient Greek, Roman, and Near Eastern art and architecture. I don't overlap with paleontologists on site, but I do share a home base with them in Ankara, and they overlap with my other archaeology and zooarchaeology colleagues from U of A at their respective sites. The history of excavations and collections humans and dinosaurs, but not in the U.S. unless it's at the crazy Creationism Museum or whatever it's called. But in Mexico, you've got the INAH, where it's all under the same umbrella, and where there's some degree of collaboration even today on dinosaur excavations, as far as I know. In my own area, there's some interest now in the ancient collection, study, and general awareness of "monsters." I work on the shared origins of architecture and religion.

An ancient skull found in a cave in northern Israel has cast light on the migration of modern humans out of Africa and the dawn of humanity’s colonisation of the world.

For most palaeontologists that might be enough for a single fossil, but the braincase has offered much more: a likely location where the first prehistoric trysts resulted in modern humans having sex with their heavy-browed Neanderthal cousins .

Discovered in a cave in western Galilee, the partial skull belonged to an individual, probably a woman, who lived and died in the region about 55,000 years ago, placing modern humans there and then for the first time ever...

His search for a sewage pipe, which began in 2000, became one family’s tale of obsession and discovery. He found a subterranean world tracing back before the birth of Jesus: a Messapian tomb, a Roman granary, a Franciscan chapel and even etchings from the Knights Templar. His trattoria instead became a museum, where relics still turn up today.

The 4,500-year-old stones, some measuring 15ft (4.5m) in length, were discovered under 3ft of earth at Durrington Walls "superhenge".
The monument was on "an extraordinary scale" and unique, researchers said.
The Stonehenge Hidden Landscapes team has been creating an underground map of the area in a five-year project.
Remote sensing and geophysical imaging technology has been used to reveal evidence of nearly 100 stones without the need for excavation.
The monument is just under two miles (3km) from Stonehenge, Wiltshire, and is thought to have been a Neolithic ritual site.
Experts think it may have surrounded traces of springs and a dry valley leading into the River Avon.

The fossils were found at the end of a series of chambers and tight squeezes deep underground, some 90 meters (100 yards) from the cave entrance. To get there, scientists would have to squeeze through a 7-inch wide cave opening.

Deep in the cave, Tucker and Hunter worked their way through a constriction called Superman’s Crawl—because most people can fit through only by holding one arm tightly against the body and extending the other above the head, like the Man of Steel in flight. Crossing a large chamber, they climbed a jagged wall of rock called the Dragon’s Back. At the top they found themselves in a pretty little cavity decorated with stalactites. Hunter got out his video camera, and to remove himself from the frame, Tucker eased himself into a fissure in the cave floor. His foot found a finger of rock, then another below it, then—empty space. Dropping down, he found himself in a narrow, vertical chute, in some places less than eight inches wide. He called to Hunter to follow him. Both men have hyper-slender frames, all bone and wiry muscle. Had their torsos been just a little bigger, they would not have fit in the chute, and what is arguably the most astonishing human fossil discovery in half a century—and undoubtedly the most perplexing—would not have occurred.

Large circular wooden houses built on stilts collapsed in a dramatic fire 3,000 years ago and plunged into a river, preserving their contents in astonishing detail. Archaeologists say the excavations have revealed the best-preserved Bronze Age dwellings ever found in Britain.

Archaeologists have revealed exceptionally well-preserved Bronze Age dwellings during an excavation at Must Farm quarry in the East Anglian fens that is providing an extraordinary insight into domestic life 3,000 years ago. The settlement, dating to the end of the Bronze Age (1200-800 BC), would have been home to several families who lived in a number of wooden houses on stilts above water.

The settlement was destroyed by fire that caused the dwellings to collapse into the river, preserving the contents in situ. The result is an extraordinary time capsule containing exceptional textiles made from plant fibres such as lime tree bark, rare small cups, bowls and jars complete with past meals still inside. Also found are exotic glass beads forming part of an elaborate necklace, hinting at a sophistication not usually associated with the British Bronze Age.

The exposed structures are believed to be the best-preserved Bronze Age dwellings ever found in Britain and the finds, taken together, provide a fuller picture of prehistoric life than we have ever had before.

- See more at: http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/bron ... UN5cC.dpuf" target="_blank

Merkin wrote:Did the ROMANS discover America? Radical theory claims sword found on Oak Island suggests ancient mariners set foot on the New World before Columbus