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...in the heart of Paris, scientists have uncovered 50 graves in an ancient necropolis which offer a rare glimpse of life in the French capital's precursor Lutetia nearly 2,000 years ago.Somehow the buried necropolis was never stumbled upon during multiple road works over the years, as well as the construction of the Port-Royal station on the historic Left Bank in the 1970s.However, plans for a new exit for the train station prompted an archaeological excavation...The "Saint Jacques" necropolis, the largest burial site in the Gallo–Roman town of Lutetia, was previously partially excavated in the 1800s.However, only objects considered precious were...

Roman Paris was not in Paris, but Nanterre PARIS, Feb 26 (AFP) - The historic Paris - the Gallic town of Lutetia captured by Julius Caesar in 52 BC - lay not on the island in the centre of the modern French capital but in a suburb 10 kilometres (six miles) to the west, according to archaeological evidence published on Thursday. Recent excavations at a building site in the suburb of Nanterre have brought to light a pre-Roman settlement that far outstrips in density and sophistication traces discovered on the Ile de la Cite - until now regarded as the...

Explanation: What would it look like to approach an asteroid in a spaceship? In 2010, ESA's robotic Rosetta spacecraft zipped past the asteroid 21 Lutetia taking data and snapping images in an effort to better determine the history of the asteroid and the origin of its unusual colors. Recently, many images from a camera always facing the asteroid were compiled into the above video. Although of unknown composition, Lutetia is not massive enough for gravity to pull it into a sphere. The 100-kilometer across Lutetian was at that time the largest asteroid or comet nucleus that had been visited by...

A European spacecraft zoomed by past a mysterious asteroid Saturday to take the first-ever close look at the space rock while flying more than 282 million miles from Earth. The European Space Agency's (ESA) Rosetta space probe flew past the asteroid Lutetia, an object discovered in 1852 that appeared only as a bright speck in the sky to astronomers until today. The first new photos of the asteroid revealed Lutetia to be a lumpy rock with a potato-like appearance. Rosetta was about 1,900 miles (3,100 km) from the asteroid at its closest approach. The enigmatic space rock, which is about...