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Red squirrels are carrying human leprosy and people have been warned to stay away from the animals to minimise the risk of catching the disease. One of the strains – which is affecting squirrels on Brownsea Island, off the south coast of Dorset – shares close similarities with that responsible for outbreaks of the disease in medieval Europe. Researchers tested 25 samples from red squirrels on the island and found that all were infected with the bacteria Mycobacterium leprae, though not all showed signs of the disease. Those that did had swelling and hair loss on the ears, muzzle and...

A historic 17th century manor house that featured in author Thomas Hardy's seminal novel Tess of the d'Urbervilles has gone on the market for £850,000. Woolbridge Manor, in East Stoke, near Wool, Dorset, dates back to the early 17th century and was once owned by the Turberville family. It is from here that Hardy got the idea for the title of his 1891 book, with the red brick and stone property given the fictitious name of Wellbridge House. In the novel, newlyweds Tess Durbeyfield and Angel Clare spend their ill-fated honeymoon in the manor.

Mrs Denyer, 52, armed herself with an umbrella which she used to hit the bearded druid over the head with while her 56-year-old husband had grabbed a carving knife from the kitchen and made a "short jab" with it towards his victim. Because Mr Bennett weighs 22 stone and has a "big belly" the blade didn't penetrate his abdomen and he suffered superficial injuries. A court heard the Denyers had never been in trouble with the police before the incident in Alderholt, Dorset. Denyer, a lorry driver, and his wife, denied charges of unlawful wounding but were found guilty following...

Pomologists bite off more than they can chew with 200-year-old apple mystery By Richard Savill Last Updated: 2:01am GMT 30/01/2007 The identity of an apple variety that has been growing in Dorset for 200 years has left fruit specialists baffled. For generations, the family of Diana Toms has affectionately referred to the fruit as Granfer's Apple, after her great, great grandfather who planted the tree in 1803. The family has asked pomologists to help establish the cooking apple's identity but they have so far been unable to solve the mystery. Mrs Toms, 83, said: "I am rather pleased it is...

Rapid Erosion Supports Creation Model by Frank Sherwin, M.A. | Jan. 25, 2016 Recently in Dorset, England, bad weather washed a massive section of a cliff into the sea revealing scores of ammonite fossils.1,2 Creation scientists are interested in this cliff fall because substantial erosion was accomplished in literally seconds. It didn't take hundreds of thousands to millions of years of slow and gradual erosion. The cliff fall at Dorset isn't the only recent example of rapid and significant erosion. Uniformitarian geologists claim the famous White Cliffs of Dover, composed of calcium carbonate, were formed in the Cretaceous Period between...

The earliest people in the North American Arctic remained isolated from others in the region for millennia before vanishing around 700 years ago, a new genetic analysis shows. The study, published online Thursday, also reveals that today's Inuit and Native Americans of the Arctic are genetically distinct from the region's first settlers. Inuit hunters in the Canadian Arctic have long told stories about a mysterious ancient people known as the Tunit, who once inhabited the far north. Tunit men, they recalled, possessed powerful magic and were strong enough to crush the neck of a walrus and singlehandedly haul the massive...

A new scientific dating technique has revealed there was a building spree more than 5,500 years ago, when many of the most spectacular monuments in the English landscape, such as Maiden Castle in Dorset and Windmill Hill in Wiltshire, were built, used and abandoned in a single lifetime. The fashion for the monuments, hilltops enclosed by rings of ditches, known to archaeologists as causewayed enclosures, instead of being the ritual work of generations as had been believed, began on the continent centuries earlier but spread from Kent to Cornwall within 50 years in about 3700 BC. Alex Bayliss, an archaeologist...

* The 15ft-high road ran from London to Exeter It was a route once trod by legionnaires as they marched across a conquered land. But, eventually, the Romans left Britain and the magnificent highway they created was reclaimed by nature and seemingly lost for ever. Now, some 2,000 years after it was built, it has been uncovered in the depths of a forest in Dorset. And, remarkably, it shows no sign of the potholes that blight our modern roads.

Dozens of decapitated skeletons have been unearthed in southern England believed to be those of 1,000-year-old Vikings, scientists said Friday. > "To find out that the young men executed were Vikings is a thrilling development," he added. >

Naked, beheaded, and tangled, the bodies of 51 young men—their heads stacked neatly to the side—have been found in a thousand-year-old pit in southern England, according to carbon-dating results released earlier this month. The mass burial took place at a time when the English were battling Viking invaders, say archaeologists who are now trying to verify the identity of the slain. The dead are thought to have been war captives, possibly Vikings, whose heads were hacked off with swords or axes, according to excavation leader David Score of Oxford Archaeology, an archaeological-services company. Announced in June, the pit discovery took...

Naked, beheaded, and tangled, the bodies of 51 young men -- their heads stacked neatly to the side -- have been found in a thousand-year-old pit in southern England, according to carbon-dating results released earlier this month. The mass burial took place at a time when the English were battling Viking invaders, say archaeologists who are now trying to verify the identity of the slain. The dead are thought to have been war captives, possibly Vikings, whose heads were hacked off with swords or axes... Many of the skeletons have deep cut marks to the skull and jaw as well...

(CBS News) A gruesome mass grave found in southern England may be the final resting place of some of the most feared marauders of the 11th century. Archeologists say the remains may belong to Viking mercenaries, who were buried in a burial pit in what now is the English town of Dorset. Isotope testing on the men's teeth links their origin to Scandinavia. That's where the easy clues end.

A mysterious cache of dozens of humans skulls discovered earlier this year in Dorset, England belonged to Viking raiders. Anthropologists figured this out when they examined the teeth, and found that elaborate patterns had been filed into them. That's right — the Vikings filed their teeth, and probably put pigment into the designs to make them look even more badass. No other European groups were known to file their teeth at the time these Vikings were beheaded about a millennium ago, though it was a common practice in Africa and Paleoamerica. Were the filed teeth these Norsemen's attempt to make...

Archaeologists have discovered one of the victims of a suspected mass Viking burial pit found in Dorset had grooves filed into his two front teeth. Experts believe a collection of bones and decapitated heads, unearthed during the creation of the Weymouth Relief Road, belong to young Viking warriors. During analysis, a pair of front teeth was found to have distinct incisions. Archaeologists think it may have been designed to frighten opponents or show status as a great fighter....

London, England (CNN) -- They were 51 young men who met a grisly death far from home, their heads chopped off and their bodies thrown into a mass grave. Their resting place was unknown until last year, when workers excavating for a road near the London 2012 Olympic sailing venue in Weymouth, England, unearthed the grave. But questions remained about who the men were, how long they had been there and why they had been decapitated. On Friday, officials revealed that analysis of the men's teeth shows they were Vikings, executed with sharp blows to the head around a thousand...

The captives, all well built young men in their late teens and early 20s, were herded to the place of execution. Fifty-four in total, their heads were hacked off and stacked neatly in a pile. The bodies were tossed into a pit where they remained a tangle of limbs and headless torsos until archaeologists following the route of a new road stumbled across the remains last year. Not the killing fields of Iraq or the Balkans but the Ridgeway, near Weymouth, an ancient track across the now tranquil Dorset countryside, where one thousand years ago a long forgotten massacre took...