Free Republic

Soldiers in Russia’s newly formed 3rd Army Corps fighting in Ukraine are often drunk, plagued by low morale and forced to use obsolete weapons on the battlefield, according to the Ukrainian military. The Kremlin cobbled together the formation in June to replace the tens of thousands of troops killed or injured since the start of the invasion in February. It is composed of several brigades totaling some 15,000 mostly volunteer soldiers equipped with hundreds of tanks, Newsweek reported. But according to an update from the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on Monday, Russia’s five-month-old unit is facing...

Remnants of a statue depicting Hercules that derives from ancient Roman times was unearthed during an excavation of an archeological site in Greece, according to a report by Greek City Times. The larger-than-life statue of a young Hercules, dated to the 2nd century C.E., was uncovered at a site formerly known to be the ancient city of Philippi, located the country’s northern region by researchers at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AuTH). The team was led by Natalia Poulos, a professor at AuTH, in collaboration with her colleagues there Anastasios Tantsis and Emeritus Professor Aristotle Menzos; 24 students (18 undergraduates, 3...

Toxic levels of a pollutant commonly associated with the wastes of modern industry have been uncovered amid the most unlikely of archaeological sites. Long before conquistadors from far-off lands introduced the decay of war and disease, Maya cultures were dusting the soils of their urban centers with the heavy metal mercury. - snip - "Discovering mercury buried deep in soils and sediments in ancient Maya cities is difficult to explain, until we begin to consider the archaeology of the region which tells us that the Maya were using mercury for centuries." - snip - Perhaps the most widely used form...

Israeli archaeologists on Sunday announced the "once-in-a-lifetime" discovery of a burial cave from the time of ancient Egyptian Pharaoh Rameses II, filled with dozens of pottery pieces and bronze artifacts. The cave was uncovered on a beach Tuesday, when a mechanical digger working at the Palmahim national park hit its roof, with archaeologists using a ladder to descend into the spacious, man-made square cave. In a video released by the Israel Antiquities Authority, gobsmacked archaeologists shine flashlights on dozens of pottery vessels in a variety of forms and sizes, dating back to the reign of the ancient Egyptian king who...

During construction work at Palmachim National Park near Tel Aviv, a fallen rock reveals an ancient treasure trove from the era of the biblically notorious pharoah A team of archaeologists was essentially transported back in time when it entered an untouched 3,300-year-old cave at the Palmachim National Park, just south of Tel Aviv, last week. The vast array of discovered items date to the Late Bronze Age, close to or during the rein of the biblically notorious Ramses II. The cave was spotted when a rock shifted during the course of construction work and light was literally shed on an...

An Egyptian archaeological mission working in Giza’s prominent Saqqara necropolis has unearthed several blocks of white cheese dating back to the 26th dynasty of ancient Egypt (664–525 BC).A statement from the country’s antiquities ministry said the find was accomplished during the first round of excavations of the mission’s sixth season, which kicked off on Saturday.According to the statement, the mission unearthed a number of clay receptacles containing the cheese, inscribed with Demotic script — ancient Egyptian writing also found on the Rosetta Stone royal decree.The mission reportedly found a number of other containers that are expected to be opened in...

And it could shed light on our distant evolution. Says the co-author of a study on the fossilized organ: "We are all related, in the most literal sense." Professor Kate Trinajstic inspects a fossil of an ancient fish at the Western Australian Museum. Curtin University A 380 million-year-old fish heart found embedded in a chunk of Australian sediment has scientists' pulses racing. Not only is this organ in remarkable condition, but it could also yield clues about the evolution of jawed vertebrates, which include you and me. The heart belonged to an extinct class of armored, jawed fish called arthrodires...

A blackened, broken leg bone from Earth’s prehistoric past may hold the answer to when early humans diverged from apes and started their own evolutionary path.The fossilized find, first uncovered two decades ago, suggests that early humans regularly walked on two feet some seven million years ago... Since many consider bipedalism the major milestone that put our own lineage on a different evolutionary path than the apes, Sahelanthropus could be the very oldest known hominin—the group consisting of modern humans, extinct human species and all of our immediate ancestors.The species could even be our oldest non-ape ancestor, if its lineage...

According to scientists, images from the SPECULOOS (‘Search for habitable Planets EClipsing ULtra-cOOl Stars) telescopes, located in Chile and the island of Tenerife, have indicated that a distant planet may harbor the necessary conditions for life. The planet LP 890-9c orbits the star, LP 890-9, which rests 100 light-years from Earth. 40% larger than Earth, LP 890-9c orbits LP 890-9 roughly every 8.5 days, which was confirmed by the MuSCAT3 instrument in Hawaii. Scientists believe that fact permits the supposition that the planet exists in the “habitable zone” around the star. “The habitable zone is a concept under which a...

Scientists find fossil from THE DAY the dinosaurs died 66m years ago: Leg of Thescelosaurus was 'ripped off in aftermath' of huge asteroid strike that wiped out most species on Earth Dinosaurs were wiped out by the Chicxulub event - a plummeting asteroid that hit Earth 66 million years ago The asteroid more than six miles in diameter slammed into what is now Mexico, leaving a 93-mile wide crater Experts found the fossilised leg of a dinosaur killed and what appears to be a fragment of the asteroid itself Findings were made at Tanis, a renowned paleontological site in North...

The limb, complete with skin, is just one of a series of remarkable finds emerging from the Tanis fossil site in the US State of North Dakota. But it's not just their exquisite condition that's turning heads - it's what these ancient specimens purport to represent. The claim is the Tanis creatures were killed and entombed on the actual day a giant asteroid struck Earth. The day 66 million years ago when the reign of the dinosaurs ended and the rise of mammals began. The BBC has spent three years filming at Tanis for a show to be broadcast on...

Congress made two startling claims. The first is that “cross-domain transmedium threats to the United States national security are expanding exponentially.” The second is that it wants to distinguish between UFOs that are human in origin and those that are not: “Temporary nonattributed objects, or those that are positively identified as man-made after analysis, will be passed to appropriate offices and should not be considered under the definition as unidentified aerospace-undersea phenomena,” the document states. What does all this jargon mean, though? One key word in the congressional report is “transmedium,” a term the Pentagon has recently adopted for its...

Lizard Skull Fossil Closeup One of the Thalassotitan skulls. (University of Bath) The discovery of incredible fossils of a giant marine lizard reveals how this ancient extinct beast would have ruled the sea 66 million years ago. The beast is a newly discovered species of mosasaur, giant marine reptiles that hunted the oceans during the Late Cretaceous. It's called Thalassotitan atrox, and wear on its teeth along with other remains found at its excavation site suggest that this intimidating animal was no gentle giant – but feasted on difficult prey such as sea turtles, plesiosaurs, and other mosasaurs. Other mosasaurs...

A handout image obtained on August 23, 2022 courtesy of the Dinosaur Valley State Park shows dinosaur tracks from around 113 million years ago. A drought in Texas dried up a river flowing through Dinosaur Valley State Park, exposing tracks from giant reptiles that lived some 113 million years ago, an official said Tuesday. Photos posted on Facebook show three-toed footprints leading down a dry tree-lined riverbed in the southern US state. It is "one of the longest dinosaur trackways in the world," a caption accompanying the images says. Stephanie Salinas Garcia of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department...

About 2.6 million years ago, an oddly bright light arrived in the prehistoric sky and lingered there for weeks or months. It was a supernova some 150 light years away from Earth. Within a few hundred years, long after the strange light in the sky had dwindled, a tsunami of cosmic energy from that same shattering star explosion could have reached our planet and pummeled the atmosphere, touching off climate change and triggering mass extinctions of large ocean animals, including a shark species that was the size of a school bus. The effects of such a supernova—and possibly more than...

The reconstructed megadolon was 16 metres long and weighed over 61 tons. In a new 3D modeling study published this week in Science Advances, we show that the giant extinct shark, Otodus megalodon, was a true globetrotting super-predator. It was capable of covering vast distances in short order, and could eat the largest of modern living super-predators, the killer whale, in five gargantuan bites. It could have swallowed a great white shark whole. The largest shark that ever livedMegalodon was the largest shark that ever lived, and it was around for a long time—from around 23 million to 2.6...

What was the shape of Noah’s Ark? For millennia Jewish and Christian clerics, scholars, and academics, as well as others with too much time on their hands, have pondered this question. Artist rendering of the one true shape of Noah’s Ark, scientifically provenILLUSTRATION: JON BERKELEY What makes it tantalizing is the precision of the numbers in Genesis 6 (here, in the King James translation): [13] And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth. [14] Make thee...

Dinosaurs once roamed the earth. They were the kings of the land. That’s why paleontologists have been studying these majestic creatures to see how they lived. They have come across interesting discoveries that have left them stunned. While so much has already been discovered, they have recently come across the fact that these large reptiles may have had belly buttons. This is new information and one that they’re looking into more. How is that possible when these creatures laid eggs? More about the Mystery Credit must be given to an ‘incredible’ fossil that the paleontologists found. Because of this, they...

Rather, the comet's behavior is probably typical for comets making their first trip toward the sun — we just haven't been able to observe it before. "What makes this comet special is that it was discovered early," Jewitt said. "We've been able to follow the way the comet changes with distance from the sun over a much larger range than has ever been done before." Comet K2 comes from even farther away than the Kuiper Belt, Jewitt said. The comet's original home was most likely the Oort Cloud, the repository of comets and planetary fragments that extends from 2,000 to...

A joint Ethiopian-US team of palaeontologists announced on Saturday they had discovered the world's oldest biped skeleton to be unearthed so far, dating it to between 3.8 and four million years old. "This is the world's oldest biped," Bruce Latimer, director of the natural history museum in Cleveland, Ohio, told a news conference in the Ethiopian capital, adding that "it will revolutionise the way we see human evolution".The bones were found three weeks ago in Ethiopia's Afar region, at a site some 60 kilometres from Hadar where Lucy, one of the first hominids, was discovered in 1974. Researchers at the...