The cave lion may have been a symbolic animal for ancient people in Baikal-Yenisei Siberia. Fossilized bones of an extinct armored mammal give us the latest clue about when humans arrived in South America. The ancient Egyptians regularly mummified crocodiles in elaborate ceremonies to honor their crocodile god Sobek. Unusual wooden figurines depicting animals.
Animal Gods
Scientists have dissected a 3,000-year-old crocodile. The ancient Egyptians regularly mummified crocodiles in elaborate ceremonies in honour of their crocodile god Sobek.
A new study of one of these crocodiles reveals details of the animal’s death and the methods the ancient Egyptians used to catch these fearsome predators. Using X-rays and CT scans, archaeozoologists can now examine the insides of these animals, which, unlike mummified humans, have their organs intact, Popular Mechanics reports .
That’s exactly what researchers at the University of Manchester have done with a 3,000-year-old, 7.2ft-long crocodile corpse housed at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, known simply as 2005.335. Although the ancient Egyptians routinely removed organs when mummifying humans, crocodiles sacrificed to the crocodile god Sobek kept their insides intact, and this slight deviation from tradition allows 21st-century scientists to analyse the organs to unlock the secrets of this bizarre sacrificial ritual.
To preserve the specimen for future display, the research team used non-invasive techniques such as X-rays and CT scans to catalogue the crocodile’s stomach contents. Among the ancient gastronomic detritus, the scientists found several common ones called gastroliths, which are small stones that crocodiles regularly swallow to aid in digestion. However, among these stones were also whole fish impaled on a bronze hook. Because the time span between the crocodile’s last meal and its death was so short – the gastroliths had not yet reached the stomach – the crocodile was likely deliberately captured by the ancient Egyptians to be part of a sacrificial ceremony to Sobek.
Crocodile, 3000 years old. Popular Mechanics
“While earlier studies have favoured invasive methods such as unpacking and dissection, 3D X-ray imaging provides the opportunity to look inside without damaging these important and exciting artefacts,” said University of Manchester archaeozoologist Lydia McKnight, co-author of the study published in the journal Digital Applications in Archaeology and Cultural Heritage, in a press release.
While keeping the long-dead crocodile intact, McKnight and her team also “virtually” recreated the bronze hook lodged in the specimen’s stomach for future museum displays. McKnight says that in the past, ancient Egyptians likely used hardened clay to create a mold, then poured molten metal onto coal to create the hook.
Although 2005.335 met a grisly end, crocodiles were actually revered in ancient Egyptian society for their strength, as well as for their gentleness (especially toward their young) — but perhaps they were revered too much. Archaeologists believe that this Nile-based culture, in which the crocodile was the top predator (other than humans, of course), likely bred the animals specifically for sacrificial purposes by “crocodile cults.” In the Egyptian city of Fayum, which was the center of worship of Sobek, experts have discovered thousands of mummified crocodiles, many of them babies.
Cave lion may have been a symbolic animal for ancient people of Siberia. No traces of human activity were found on the animal bones
Scientists from the institutes of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences together with colleagues from the Novosibirsk State University (NSU) have found out that the cave lion could have been a symbolic animal for ancient people in Baikal-Yenisei Siberia. Analysis of the remains also showed that cave lions and hyenas did not compete with each other, unlike modern lions and hyenas living in Africa, the press service of one of the participants in the study, the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, reported.
Baikal-Yenisei Siberia is a huge territory between Yenisei and Baikal, bordered on the southwest by the Eastern Sayan mountain system. Between the two starting points there are more than a thousand kilometers, where in the late Pleistocene such predators as the cave lion and cave hyena lived.
Cave lion – a formidable predator of the Pleistocene. Penza State Museum of Local History
“There are no traces of human activity, such as butchering, on the bones we worked with. But nevertheless, these bones ended up at the site, that is, people brought them there, which means they were interested in the lion, maybe it was a symbolic animal for them. The same cannot be said about hyenas, whose bones are absent from ancient human sites. Perhaps it was either a taboo animal, or people simply were not interested in hyenas,” the press service quotes Dmitry Malikov, a research fellow at the Institute of Geology and Mineralogy SB RAS.
The researchers also found out that the cave lion, despite its name, did not live in caves at all – the bones of this large predator are found on flat areas or in river valleys. Field collection of materials for the study was carried out in the described territory using methods of area excavations, geological pitting, as well as in sections of rivers where bone material is washed onto beaches. It is the beach material that needs precise dating, because it does not have a clear geological reference and its age is unclear. The researchers obtained some of the data on the NSU accelerator mass spectrometer.
“The essence of our work was to correlate the objects of study, namely all the remains of cave lions and cave hyenas ever found in the territory of Baikal-Yenisei Siberia, with a certain type of relief. We showed that in the territory of Baikal-Yenisei Siberia, two species of these extinct animals tried to live in different conditions, thereby leveling out competition with each other,” Malikov explained, adding that this is very different from how modern lions and genies live in Africa.
Animal figurines
Archaeologists in Iceland have discovered what may be a rare Viking Age toy carved from stone, but what animal it depicts is anyone’s guess.
The figurine, which experts date to between 940 and 1000 AD, was found at the Fjord site in Seydisfjord, Iceland. It is a small, four-legged animal with a broken ear, carved from local stone.
The carved animal could have been a toy, a rare find for the Viking Age. Antikva
Most of the team thought the animal was a pig. This isn’t far-fetched, as the Vikings used domesticated pigs for meat. However, two of the team members interpreted it as a bear, and while bears are not native to Iceland, at least 600 polar bears (Ursus maritimus) have been recorded on the island from the beginning of human settlement to the present day. But when photos of the figurine were posted on Facebook on August 13, many Facebook users became convinced that it was an Icelandic dog, Live Science reports .
The excavations at Fjörður, named after the historic Fjörður farm, began in 2020 ahead of the planned construction of avalanche walls at Seyðisfjörður and were only supposed to last two years. But the excavations have revealed so much that Traustadóttir is now spending her fifth summer there.
What is this stone carving – a pig, a bear, an Icelandic dog or another animal entirely? Antikva
In 2021, archaeologists discovered a farm mound, a mill, and a sheepfold dating to sometime between the 18th and 20th centuries, according to Seydisfjord Archaeological Research, a website run by Antikva that publishes the results of excavations in the fjord. Beneath them, they found medieval remains, and beneath them, four graves from the Viking Age (793–1066 AD) buried under an 11th-century landslide.
In other words, one excavation has uncovered 1,000 years of Icelandic history. In 2022, archaeologists discovered a Viking longhouse south of the previous site, complete with a weaving room, animal pens, and a farm midden dating to the 11th to 13th centuries. They placed their findings on this historical timeline by dating layers of ash from the many volcanic eruptions that have impacted the region since human settlers arrived.
Bison Licking Bug Bite: 14,000-Year-Old Lifelike Figurine Carved From Weapons This prehistoric carving, discovered in a cave in France, depicts a steppe bison (Bison priscus), a now-extinct species of bison. It was made from a piece of deer antler that was previously used as a spear thrower for hunting, according to the Bradshaw Foundation.
Bison Figurine. Living Science
Despite its small size – about 4 inches (10.5 centimeters) wide – the figurine contains a lot of fine detail, including finely carved individual hairs all over the animal’s body and a pair of horns protruding from its head, giving the piece a realistic look, Live Science reports .
Archaeologists attribute the artifact to the Magdalenian culture, a paleolithic culture that existed in Europe between 23,000 and 14,000 years ago, during the last ice age. According to the Natural History Museum in London, these people were known for their sophisticated artwork, including charcoal cave paintings and engravings using stone and bone tools.
Not only were they skilled craftsmen, but they were also skilled big-game hunters who focused on hunting horses and bison. Researchers believe that because food was plentiful, the culture had enough free time to focus on other activities, including art. The artifact is currently housed at the National Museum of Prehistory in Les Eyzies, France.
And finally, hunting
The fossilized bones of an extinct armored mammal provide the latest clue about when humans arrived in South America. Scientists have long debated when humans first set foot on the continent because “the evidence is so thin,” says Miguel Delgado, an archaeologist at the National University of La Plata in Argentina. For a time, the consensus hovered around 13,000 years ago — but a slow accumulation of research is pushing that date back further.
Now, in a study published in PLOS One, Delgado and his colleagues have used new fossil fragments of an armored glyptodont to support other work placing humans in South America at least 21,000 years ago. That was during the late Pleistocene, when they would have had to navigate a planet in the face of dramatic climate change, NPR reports .
The Last Glacial Maximum occurred about 20,000 years ago, after which glaciers began retreating around the world, including in southern South America. If humans were present on the continent then, says Alia Lesnek, a geologist at CUNY Queens College who was not involved in the study, “that could tell us about the really long history that humans have with climate change” — and their resilience in the face of it.
Glyptodont. NPR radio station
The Reconquista River runs through the western outskirts of Buenos Aires, Argentina. In 2016, a bulldozer dug up the riverbank to widen the channel. Shortly after the work was completed, Guillermo Jofre, a paleontologist at the Repositorio Paleontológico Ramón Segura, went for a walk there.
That’s when he stumbled upon a handful of exposed fossil bones that belonged to an ancient armadillo-like mammal called a glyptodont. “This animal was heavily armored,” says Delgado. “They had big tails and short limbs.” Finding these bones was a happy accident, because when Jofre looked closely, he saw something unexpected: small markings on the bones.
These marks could have been left on the bones by stones or other bones that scratched them, or by rodents or carnivores that bit or scratched them, or perhaps by prehistoric people who did something to them.
To find out, Delgado and his colleagues excavated the site and found various fossilized glyptodont bones, including fragments of the hard outer shell, tail, vertebrae, and pelvis. Back in the lab, they analyzed the samples by looking at them under a microscope, analyzing the chemistry of the sediments, and taking detailed measurements of the cut marks, visualizing them as 3D models. The results were unmistakable, Delgado says.
This isn’t the first glyptodont fossil to be found with these markings, but it’s certainly one of the oldest. When the team dated the fossils, they found that the animal lived about 21,000 years ago.
This means that if humans were responsible for the cuts, they must have been present then. “So this is one of the oldest pieces of evidence of human presence here in South America,” Delgado says.
At this time, in the late Pleistocene, numerous large animals inhabited the harsh, cold landscape, including giant sloths, mastodons, and saber-toothed cats, all of which shared the Earth with humans until about 10,000 years ago. Delgado says prehistoric humans living then may have contributed to the extinction of these species. However, dramatic changes in the environment as the glaciers retreated didn’t help.
