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Construction workers in California's Santa Cruz mountains were subject to a surprise delay last week when a team of archaeologists took over the site to remove an ancient whale fossil. The project site was expected to have a high potential for archaeological finds, so a monitor was assigned to the Scotts Valley development and found the fossil amid construction vehicles on Sept. 4. This project site is not the only one in California with fossils ... Since the 19th century, paleontologists have been studying the “Sharktooth Hill Bone Bed” near Bakersfield, California, where fossils and bones of ancient whales, seals,...

Aerial Image of the foundation of a Roman stone building. Length of the leveling staff (White) at the upper edge of the Picture: 5 meters. Credit: Dennis Braks ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- During their first Gernsheim dig last year, Frankfurt University archaeologists suspected that a small Roman settlement must have also existed here in the Hessian Ried. Now they have discovered clear relics of a Roman village, built in part on the foundations of the fort after the soldiers left. This probably occurred around 120 AD. At the time the cohort (about 500 soldiers) was transferred from the Rhine to the Limes, and...

Archaeologists in Israel have uncovered evidence of early cereal cultivation at a 23,000-year-old site in Galilee, effectively doubling the timespan humans are believed to have practiced farming.

An archaeological team excavating the ancient site of Alacahöyük, one of the most significant centers of the ancient Hittite civilization, cooked pastries belonging to Hittite cuisine that dates back 4,000 years. The foods found on Hittite tablets were cooked without modern technology or equipment. The 4,000-year-old Hittite cuisine was cooked in Alacahöyük, an important Neolithic settlement and Turkey's first nationally excavated area. Aykut Çınaroğlu, the head of the excavations and professor of archaeology at Ankara University, told Anadolu Agency (AA) that Chef Ömür Akkor, an excavation team member, prepared a special Hittite menu in light of the available archaeological findings....

They are one of our closest human relatives and dominated Europe and much of Asia for hundreds of thousands of years, but Neanderthals may be far older than previously thought. A new study by geneticists has revealed a collection of fossilised bones discovered in a cave in northern Spain belonged to an early member of the Neanderthal family. It is the oldest partial genome from early human fossils ever to be sequenced and pushes back the date for the origins of the Neanderthal branch of our evolutionary tree by up to 300,000 years....

Archaeologists discover palace with archaic inscriptions built during the Mycenaean period 'Archaeologists in Greece have discovered the ruins of an ancient palace with important archaic inscriptions dating back to the Mycenaean age, the culture ministry said Tuesday. The palace, likely built around the 17th-16th centuries BC, had around 10 rooms and was discovered near Sparta in southern Greece. At the site, archaeologists found objects of worship, clay figurines, a cup adorned with a bull’s head, swords and fragments of murals.'

Ongoing excavations at a site in the southern Peloponnese are offering rare insight into the ancient past of Laconia, about which very little physical evidence exists, the state-run Athens-Macedonian News Agency cited the Culture Ministry as saying on Tuesday. Covering an expanse of 3.5 hectares, the site on Aghios Vassilios Hill near the village of Xirokambi on the Sparta plain has been under excavation since 2009 and is believed to contain valuable evidence that will shed light on life in the area during the 17th to 16th centuries BC, the announcement said. A palace complex found on the site and...

MIAMI: Treasure hunters off Florida have found $4.5 million in gold coins from a Spanish ship that sunk during a hurricane in the 18th century , the sal vage company said on Wednesday. The ship 'Ten Galleons' traveling from Havana to Spain... "Over 350 gold coins, including 9 Royals were recovered on July 30 & 31 on the actual 300th anniversary of the wreck,"

Found on the western side of what was once the Templo Mayor complex in Tenochtitlan, in modern Mexico City, the partially unearthed skull rack was likely built between 1485 and 1502 and may have been about 112 feet (34 meters) long and 40 feet (12 meters) wide. Mostly belonging to young adult men, but also to women and children, several of the unearthed skulls feature holes on both sides, suggesting they belonged to a tzompantli. This was a rack on which the skulls of sacrificed people were arranged on wooden poles and displayed... To make the scene even more horrifying,...

But experts say the five that he identified in Bosnia-Herzegovina are natural hills.Despite his many critics, maverick archaeologist Sam Osmanagich stands by his claims that he has uncovered not one, but five structures which he says are pyramids in Visoko in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Dr Osmanagich, who earned his doctorate on the history of civilisations at the University of Sarajevo in 2008, was in Singapore recently for a conference, where he spoke about his work on pyramids. The 55-year-old claims that he has discovered the "biggest complex of pyramidal structures in the world" comprising five pyramids, all connected by underground tunnels. The...

The ancient city of Ephesus and the Diyarbakir Fortress and its surrounding Hevsel Gardens have become the latest historical sites in Turkey to be inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in July. Turkey’s next nomination is the Stone Age cult site of Gobeklitepe, located in Sanliurfa province not far from the turbulent Syrian border. The site’s discovery began with a coincidence reminiscent of a movie plot. In 1983, local farmer Mahmut Kilic found a carved stone while plowing his field in the village of Orencik. He took it to the Sanliurfa Museum, where it was to wait a decade...

A 12-METRE monolith, hacked out of limestone by stone-age humans some nine thousand years ago, has been found at the bottom of the Mediterranean. The enormous stone totem, now split in two and sitting in the Sicilian Channel between Tunisia and Sicily, was hewed from a rocky outcrop some 300m away when the Mediterranean Sea was still a dry basin. It’s now under 40m of water. The new study, published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, says the area was submerged about 9350 years ago (give or take 200 years) when the last Ice Age retreated. Before that time the...

The fragments making up the 6th century AD marble slab with a christogram and a donor’s inscription below it have been discovered by the archaeologists excavating the Bishop’s Basilica of Ancient Parthicopolis in Bulgaria’s Sandanski over a period of 25 years. Photo: TV grab from BNT Archaeologists excavating the so called Bishop’s Basilica of the Ancient Roman and Early Byzantine city of Parthicopolis located in the town of Sandanski in Southwest Bulgaria have discovered the last fragment from a marble slab with a christogram, a Christian symbol consisting of a monogram of letters standing for the name of Jesus Christ.The...

Elasmosaurs had extremely long necks, small heads and paddle-shaped limbs for swimming Photo: Nobu Tamura Researchers in Alaska have uncovered the bones of a prehistoric marine reptile dating back 70 million years. This is the first time an elasmosaur has ever been unearthed in this state. Its vertebrae were discovered embedded in an eroding cliff. Curvin Metzler (left) and Dr Patrick Druckenmiller on the cliff face where the elasmosaur was discovered  Photo: University of Alaska Museum of the North Elasmosaurs had extremely long necks, small heads and paddle-shaped limbs for swimming. • Scientists study remains of massive Dreadnoughtus dinosaur, in pics...

Science continues to prove the Bible on a regular basis. This time, archaeologists from Bar-Ilan University in Israel have uncovered what appears to be the hometown of the giant Goliath. The town, called Gath, was occupied until the ninth century B.C. In biblical accounts, the Philistines — the mortal enemies of the Israelites — ruled the city. The Old Testament also describes Gath as the home of Goliath, the giant warrior whom the Israelite King David felled with a slingshot.The new findings reveal just how impressive the ancient Philistine city once was, said lead archaeologist of the current excavation,...

A massive gate unearthed in Israel may have marked the entrance to a biblical city that, at its heyday, was the biggest metropolis in the region. The town, called Gath, was occupied until the ninth century B.C. In biblical accounts, the Philistines — the mortal enemies of the Israelites — ruled the city. The Old Testament also describes Gath as the home of Goliath, the giant warrior whom the Israelite King David felled with a slingshot. The new findings reveal just how impressive the ancient Philistine city once was, said lead archaeologist of the current excavation, Aren Maeir, of Bar-Ilan...

Archaeologists at Israel's Bar-Ilan University announced on Monday the discovery of a massive gate and other fortifications in the ruins of Gath, the hometown of the Bible's Goliath. The ancient gate is one of the largest ever discovered in Israel and evidence of the Philistine city's power in the 10th and ninth centuries B.C.E, head archaeologist Professor Aren Maeir says. It even made a brief appearance in the Bible when David, Goliath's slayer and future king of Israel, "acted like a madman, making marks on the doors of the gate and letting saliva run down his beard."

The cat paw print on the Roman roof tile. David Rice ================================================================================================================== Paw prints made by a cat 2,000 years ago have been found on a Roman roof tile kept at a museum in south west England. Dug up in Gloucester in 1969, the tile fragment had long lain unnoticed at Gloucester City Museum. Only recently, a researcher spotted the cat’s paw on the tile while going through the finds from the 1969 archaeological excavation. “At that time the archaeologists seem to have been more interested in digging things up than looking at what they found,” David Rice, curator at...

Elongated head was bound in tribal tradition 2,000 years ago Skeleton with long skull was unearthed in Arkaim, central Russia It's thought to belong to a woman living almost 2,000 years ago Her skull is elongated because it was bound out of tribal tradition Arkaim is known as Russia's Stonehenge because it may have been used by ancient people to study the stars, like the British site A skeleton with an unusual-shaped skull has been unearthed on a site known as Russia's Stonehenge. When images of the remains were first published, UFO enthusiasts rushed to claim they were proof that...

Archaeologists in Israel have found a rare inscription of the name of an apparently influential person from the time of King David, a name that is also mentioned in the Bible, according to Israel Antiquities Authority. Archaeologists have discovered a 3,000-year-old large ceramic jar with the inscription of the name "Eshbaal Ben Beda," The Associated Press reported Sunday. The Old Testament book of 1 Chronicles in 8:33 and 9:39 identifies the fourth son of Saul as Eshbaal, also written as as Ish-bosheth. "Ner was the father of Kish, Kish the father of Saul, and Saul the father of Jonathan, Malki-Shua,...