Giant 200,000-year-old hand axe discovered in Saudi Arabia
An international team of archaeologists working in the Qurh Plain of northwest Saudi Arabia has unearthed a colossal hand axe estimated to be over 200,000 years old. The find is made of fine-grained basalt and measures an impressive 51.3 cm (20 inches) in length...
First time we've been to the prehistoric ring cairn at Delfour, with Moray this morning. There's a central pile of stones, then two concentric rings of rocks. There's also one tall standing stone remaining from the stone circle that used to surround it. #Cairngorms National Park, #Scotland
A "Scaldicetus" I made for the Steinkern Magazine. "Scaldicetus" is considered to be a wastebasket taxon, consisting of various prehistoric sperm whales, often used as a name for tooth fossils.
The #antiquities trade has been accused of incentivizing #theft & #looting, especially in unstable parts of the world, and an ecosystem of private collectors, dealers, auction houses and museums has sprung up to handle items of dubious origin. A number of recent U.S. and Europe-based cases have centered on #falsified paperwork.
#Cambodia is one of the most extreme cases. The country’s temples were largely intact before a civil war broke out in the 1970s between government forces and the communist #KhmerRouge. At the time the looting mostly concentrated on #Angkorian and post-Angkorian items. Intense #looting of #prehistoric sites has been a more recent development, dating back to early 2000s.
Here's a Pappocetus lugardi while I'm at it. For reference I looked at some Pappocetus specimens from Gueran in the Laâyoune-Sakia El Hamra Region of Morocco and the drawings in the description by Charles William Andrews.
The #ProtoBird lived some 120 million years ago & did not have teeth—a trait more similar to #birds of today than to birds of its time—sharpening scientists’ understanding of #avian#evolution.
The #scientists who discovered the #NovelSpecies gave it a name that highlights its uniqueness and pays tribute to the British #naturalist#DavidAttenborough : Imparavis attenboroughi, which means “Attenborough’s strange bird” in Latin.
#Archaeologists in #Catalonia, #Spain, have unearthed human & animal remains & ornamental objects spanning from #Neolithic to #BronzeAge. The #CovaSelsXaragalls cave, located in Vimbodí i Poblet, has unveiled a #prehistoric#BurialSite that dates back from 7,000-3,000 yrs ago. The extended usage of the cave, over an extensive & enduring timeframe, may provide abundant insights into the #evolution of prehistoric society, especially regarding death & burial rituals.
A modern sand tiger shark (Carcharias taurus) and its 5 m long relative Carcharias cuspidatus from the Oligocene. The size is known from a partial skeleton that was found near Rauenberg in Baden-Württemberg.
A Dunkleosteus, reconstructed with extensive facial soft tissue, about to bite into an ammonite. I painted this last year shortly after Engelman et al. 2023 was published, hence the stocky proportions.
Ars longa, vita brevis.
“Over the past decade, increasing evidence suggests artistic expression emerged much earlier in human evolution than scientists once thought, and it's reshaping our understanding of the cognitive abilities of archaic humans, such as Neanderthals and earlier hominins. For instance, there's archaeological evidence that Neanderthals may have made pendants from eagle talons up to 130,000 years ago.” #prehistoric#art https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/did-art-exist-before-modern-humans-new-discoveries-raise-big-questions
The Corrimony chambered cairn and some of its surrounding standing stones. This unusually well preserved passage grave can be found some four miles east of Cannich, close to the road to Drumnadrochit, and was built some 4,000 years ago. More pics and info: https://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/drumnadrochit/corrimony/index.html
Prehistoric Giant Dolphin Discovered in the Amazon Forest (www.infoterkiniviral.com)
Visualize a dolphin, but one that’s double the size of an average human. This isn’t a figment of imagination but a reality from about 16 million year