Amateur Canadian Explorers Accidentally Discover 15,000-year-old Caves Below Montreal

It's not every day someone uncovers portal into ancient history, so you can imagine it came as quite a surprise to these two Canadians when they accidentally broke through a limestone wall and fell into a huge cavern network from the last Ice Age. These amateur explorers were digging around in an existing cave with hammers and drills until they made this historic breakthrough discovery into an ancient world dating back 15,000 years. 

It was Daniel Caron and his friend, Luc Le Blanc, who made the discovery. 'Normally you have to go to the moon to find that kind of thing,' Daniel Caron, one of the explorers, told The Canadian Press.

It's 650-foot long, 9-foot wide cave with a 20-foot ceiling above a lake. Caron believes the caverns were created during the Ice Age when pressure from the massive glaciers split the rock apart. Made from thousands of years of dripping water, stalactites hang from the ceiling with a 15-foot deep lake that they had to use an inflatable boat to cross. 

Cave explorer Daniel Caron points to a wall of a cave under a park in Montreal

The hallway looks almost manmade with vertical walls and horizontal ceiling. Perhaps they stumbled upon the legendary Mines of Moria?! Well, so far there are no signs of dwarves or orcs so it seems this is a natural network of inner earth caves. 

Francois Gelinas, the director of Quebec's speleological society told The Canadian Press, 'They built the street over the cave and they never found the cave. There is no technology available to detect the presence of caverns. Underground excavation is the only thing on the planet where there is no scientific, technical or technological means of knowing if there are caverns, and whether they are large or small,' he said.

Check out the video of these ancient caverns!

Sources:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5150023/Two-explorers-discover-15-000-year-old-cave-Montreal.html#ixzz50V7zzQKY 

2,400-Year-Old Statues of the Goddess of Hygiene Rescued from Rubble of Ancient Medicine City

Archaeologists in Turkey just discovered statues of Greek goddess Hygieia and god Eros.

Discovered in the Anavarza Antique City of the Kozan district of present-day Turkey, Hygieia is the symbol of health. As the daughter of Asclepius the god of medicine and Epione the goddess of healing, Hygieia is herself the goddess of cleanliness and hygiene. Finding her sculpture here embodies the city's vision and ideals of health. Eros is the god of sexual desire. 

Anavarza was a fine ancient Cilician city founded by the Assyrians over 2,000 years ago. During the early Roman Empire it was known as Caesarea and became the Metropolis of the late Roman province Cilicia Secunda. So it is a major historical site for researchers today. It dates back to over 2,000 years ago. It has a 5,000-foot wall with 20 bastions encompassing it, which seemed unable to hold back the forces that almost completely destroyed these antique statues.

Archaeologists first began excavating Anavarza in 2013 and found ruins of a church, bathhouse, and large double-lane road measuring 110 feet wide and about 9,000 feet long. These features indicate this was a well-established city where many people trafficked to spend time cleansing their bodies and their souls. 

"The famous pharmacologist Dioskurides, who worked in the army during the Roman period and who attracted attention with the medicines he made, lived in Anavarza. In this sense, we can call Anavarza the city where medicine and pharmacology developed," Dervişoğlu told Doğan News Agency.

The statue was made out of limestone about 2,400 years ago but unfortunately, Hygieia is broken into two parts and missing her hands and head. Dervişoğlu is working to find the statue's missing parts to restore this ancient symbol of health for everyone who visits. 

The director of the Adana Museum, Nedim Dervisoglu, is proud to have these statues because they prove the rich cultural heritage of the city's ancient history. He cares about people learning not just about the local history but also inspiring them to learn of their own history. 

To recognize and honor these symbolic statues, they were added to the UNESCO Temporary List of World Heritage Sites.

---

Sources:

https://www.dailysabah.com/history/2017/11/26/statue-of-hygieia-and-eros-uncovered-in-southern-turkey

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anazarbus

The First Man Mummified Like King Tut in 3,000 Years was Terminally Ill Taxi Driver from England

The late Mr. Billis became the first man mummified in the style of the ancient Egyptians for at least 3,000 years.

Mr. Alan Billis was a taxi driver in Torquay, England who loved documentaries and history. One day saw an ad seeking people willing to be embalmed in the same way as ancient Egypt's King Tutankhamen and, as he was dying from lung cancer, signed up. When he did die at age 61 from the cancer, scientists used the ancient Egyptian embalming techniques not used since 1,323 BC on King Tut's body. 

Mr. Billis' wife Janet and their three grown-up children all gave this their blessing. She said "He just said, 'I’ve just phoned someone up about being mummified.' "I said, 'You’ve what?' I thought here we go again. It’s just the sort of thing you would expect him to do."

Torquay's Tutankhamun

English Channel 4's program called "Mummifying Alan: Egypt's Last Secret" recently aired on TV dubbing Alan "Torquay’s Tutankhamun." In the documentary he says,

"People have been leaving their bodies to science for years, and if people don’t volunteer for anything nothing gets found out."

The experts: Professor Vanezis, Dr. Buckley, Dr. Fletcher and Maxine Coe with a mummified Alan Billis before them

Except for Mr. Billis' heart and brain, all his internal organs were taken out and put in jars over several months. To preserve his skin, scientists soaked the body in a mix of oils, Natron salt, and resins for a month in a glass tank in the Medico-Legal Center in Sheffield. Afterwards, they put it into a drying chamber and wrapped it in linen fabric.

According to Dr. Stephen Buckley from the University of York that researched Egyptian mummification techniques, believes Mr. Ballis' body will last for thousands of years.

Dr. Stephen Buckley with mummified Mr. Billis

It's good to note how Mrs. Ballis' feels about all this during and after the process. She told the Radio Times,

“I didn’t find it upsetting. There wasn’t anything scary. I think it was because you could see they all took such good care of Alan.

When I did eventually watch the film and saw his mummified face, you could see it was still him, still very much Alan.

’I won’t be Tutankhamun, I’ll be Tutanalan,’ he used to say. The involvement in the television programme kept him occupied, took his mind off the illness.”

— Mrs. Ballis

Original Mummies

If you want to check out a real Egyptian mummy, you can see King Rameses III in Egypt's Cairo Museum. As for "Tutan-Alan," he will be being studied by scientists researching decomposition. 

The forensic pathologist overseeing the project, Professor Peter Vanezis was impressed with the results saying,  

"The skin itself has this leathery appearance which indicates that he has become mummified all over. It makes me very confident that his tissues have been mummified correctly and in a very successful manner."

So are you now considering volunteering your body for scientific research? Do you think ancient Egyptians mummified their bodies so future generations could clone them to resurrect their royal bloodline? 

Controversial Plastination Exhibits

Besides mummifying via embalming, there's another technique called plastination. This requires fresh bodies whose fluids have not congealed too much because a plasticine solvent replaces the blood and other bodily fluids. When this hardens, the tissues basically become plastic. 

There has been a lot of controversy surrounding a Chinese-based plastination company who cannot prove it got their bodies from willing volunteers nor from bodies left "unclaimed." This company has been parading hundreds of the "unknown" Chinese corpses on display around the world in the Body Exhibitions fully nude with some even engaging in sex acts (which we will not show here). Needless to say, this has sparked shock, outrage, and protests.

According to traditional Chinese culture, the remains of the deceased are treated with great respect and honor. Many Chinese are simply repulsed by such a concept of publicly displaying naked dead bodies. This exhibition is doing something quite different than ancient Egypt preserving their royalty's bodies wrapped up and contained in intricately decorated sarcophaguses. It's even different than privately studying the bodies for medical research, which are also required to be donated. 

“A New York Times report found that “Here in China, determining who is in the body business and where the bodies come from is not easy. Museums that hold body exhibitions in China say they have suddenly ‘forgotten’ who supplied their bodies, police officials have regularly changed their stories about what they have done with bodies, and even universities have confirmed and then denied the existence of body preservation operations on their campuses.

In May 2008, a settlement with the attorney general of New York obliged Premier Exhibitions, Sui’s exhibition partner, to publish a disclaimer on its website and at the exhibition hall, stating that the origin of Dalian Hoffen’s cadavers was from ‘the Chinese Bureau of Police.’”

This means these bodies are likely from innocent prisoners of conscience who are victims of a brutal and immoral communist regime. 

The largest population of such prisoners in China are of Falun Gong practitioners, who believe in living by the universal principles of Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance and practice a set of qigong-like slow-moving exercises. They have no political aspirations, are non-violent, have no membership system, and don't charge anything.

This kind of traditional self-cultivation practice was well-known and common in Chinese traditional culture. Think of Taoists practicing martial arts and meditation up in the mountains, Buddhist monks farming, training, meditating, and studying Buddhist sutras in temples. It was made available to the public in 1992 by Shifu Li Hongzhi in China and spread by word of mouth to millions of people because of health benefits and being completely free.

However, despite great benefits to society and public popularity, the communist regime could not make money off of it and feared people would become harder to control under its atheistic communist ideology. So, in 1999 the communist dictator Jiang Zemin launched a brutal and unconstitutional persecution campaign arresting, torturing, raping, murdering, and even harvesting organs of Falun Gong practitioners and others.

Website ►http://endorganpillaging.org/ Facebook ►https://www.facebook.com/EndOrganPillaging Subscribe ►http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=IntlCoalition The basis of the report is a meticulous examination of the transplant programs of hundreds of hospitals in China, drawing on media reports, official propaganda, medical journals, hospital websites and a vast amount of deleted websites found in archive.

---

Sources:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2050293/Terminally-ill-taxi-driver-Alan-Billis-mummified-Channel-4-documentary.html#ixzz50DkQS98p 

http://fofg.org/2015/03/08/the-dark-secret-of-the-bodies-exhibitions/

https://www.theepochtimes.com/hundreds-protest-bodies-revealed-exhibit-of-plastinated-corpses-in-niagara_1325194.html

http://www.stoporganharvesting.org/

Man Finds Buried Treasure of 1,500-year-old Gold Coins Worth Over $13,000 in English Field

• Chris Kutler, 54, read article that coins might be in the area and started scanning
• Coins are 1.5 grams each, ~$13,000 total
• Merovingian style dating back to Dark Ages
• Technically a "hoard" from Royal burials

An Englishman named Chris Kutler has been hunting with a metal detector for over 25 years and just made the biggest discovery of his life. 

He spent 4 days systematically scanning a 5,200 sq foot field in Chelmsford, Essex (~1.5 hours northeast of London) because he read an article suggesting there may be remains of treasure there. Chris had actually been there 18 years before when he found other rare Anglo-Saxon coins at that are now housed at the British Museum.

Ancient Coin "Hoard"

According to law, a treasure is considered "two or more coins from the same find, at least 300 years old, and contains at least 10% gold." So, technically, Kutler found a "hoard" of ancient coins.

These specific coins are called "Tremissis" meaning "a third of a unit," which measured 1.5 grams. It turns out the belonged to the Merovingians, a Salian Frankish dynasty that ruled the Franks for nearly 300 years in what is today's France starting from the mid 5th century. 

Researchers believe these newfound gold coins were buried with an Anglo-Saxon King about 1,500 years ago. That would mean they're from the Dark Ages of 620-640AD. These kinds of coins are usually found buried with high-class people or even royalty.

“It was the best feeling in the world.”

— Chris Kutler

“It is kind of the Holy Grail of metal detecting. It was an incredible feeling to find the coins.

When I found the first, I thought it was a wasp. I got a flash of yellow and threw it back but then I realised what it was.”

— Chris Kutler

Treasure Hunter Methodology

When asked how he found these rare gold coins, Mr. Kutler actually did a lot of careful research and investigation before investing the time to scan locations. "I started collecting data about place names, I would locate the name of the place, and field names often indicate archaeological activity."

Then on the field, he used a simple yet very practical and systematic strategy. "I decided to rake the topsoil off and get down to the compact soil [underneath], and scanned the area off in 100 square meters, and did every one individually."

When asked about why he decided to return to the area when hearing possible more coins were hidden in the area after he'd already scanned it before, Mr. Kutcler said: "I thought I really need to do it because this is the last time I am going to do it. I needed to go back. If you find one coin there are probably many."

The official value of these Anglo Saxon gold coins will be appraised by the British Museum but may take up to a year for a complete analysis. Let's hope they don't go missing and forgotten like artifacts in the Smithsonian.

---

Sources:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-5111751/Treasure-hunter-unearths-1-500-year-old-Anglo-Saxon-coins.html#ixzz502Q6mJRn 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merovingian_dynasty

X-Ray Scans Reveal Secrets of Ancient Egypt's Child Mummy After 1,900 Years

• Found in Hawara, Egypt in 1911
• One of 100 "portrait mummies"
• Combined X-ray and CT scans
• From upper-class and died of disease

This astonishing small 3-foot mummy was originally found in 1911 by archaeologists in Hawara, Egypt and named the Garret Mummy. There's a detailed portrait covering the face and the linen wrappings were intricately woven in a  geometric pattern of overlapping rhomboids that framed the portrait. It's an image of a little girl with a serene look on her face, dark hair tied back, wearing a dark red tunic and gold jewelry. Entombed besides her in the same underground chamber were four other mummies.

Modern Tech Solves an Ancient Mystery

After 106 years of patiently waiting for some method to examine the mummy without damaging it, scientists from Northwestern University are using an innovative X-ray scanning technique to see through her mystery. These scans revealed how her body was prepared 1,900 years ago, what items she was buried with, and even what killed her. 

This is the first time x-ray scattering technique has been used on a human mummy as it uses extremely brilliant high-energy x-rays combined with CT scans to probe the materials and objects inside the mummy, while leaving the mummy and her wrappings intact. 

View fullsize

This recreated a 3D map of the mummy's entire structure allowing researchers to confirm she was a 5-year-old girl. 

The study's leader, Professor Stuart Stock, said:

View fullsize

"This is a unique experiment, a 3D puzzle. We have some preliminary findings about the various materials, but it will take days before we tighten down the precise answers to our questions. We have confirmed that the shards in the brain cavity are likely solidified pitch, not a crystalline material. We also are investigating a scarab-shaped object, her teeth, and what look like wires near the mummy's head and feet."

 

Portrait Mummies

Other than the Garrett mummy, there are about 100 other mummies with lifelike portraits placed over their faces. Researchers believe Romans influenced the Egyptians to create paintings for the deceased instead of sculptures. 

The Garrett Mummy's portrait looks different than the others, like using a unique style from another artisan or workshop. Analysis shows the painting was made with beeswax and pigments. These clues lead researchers to believe this mummified girl belonged to an upper-class household who had the wealth and culture to preserve their child in such a way. 

Such an exotic find among an already rare mummy caused great excitement for Professor Marc Walton, a researcher of the study, who said:

"Intact portrait mummies are exceedingly rare, and to have one here on campus was revelatory for the class and exhibition. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for our undergraduate students - and for me - to work at understanding the whole object that is this girl mummy. Today's powerful analytical tools allow us to nondestructively do the archaeology scientists couldn't do 100 years ago."

The scans suggested the girl died of tuberculosis, smallpox, or malaria, says Dr. Taco Terpstra.

Since there were no obvious signs of physical damage, it's more likely she died from a disease. 

“We’re basically able to go back to an excavation that happened more than 100 years ago and reconstruct it with our contemporary analysis techniques. All the information we find will help us enrich the entire historical context of this young girl mummy and the Roman period in Egypt.”

— Professor Walden

Future Possibilities

With this Garrett Mummy study as an example of how technology can help archaeologists and historians extract more information from hard to investigate artifacts, especially such old and delicate ones wrapped beneath layers of culturally significant materials, there may be a new wave of data when scientists restudy such ancient items with new scanners.

The mysterious void found in the Great Pyramid of Giza is one more example of this, and I can't wait until they try scanning those crystal skulls! 

---

Sources:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-5132131/Unravelling-mystery-Garrett-mummy.html

http://www.cetusnews.com/tech/Unravelling-the-mystery-of-the-Garrett-mummy.SkaLO5pgG.html

Ancient Underwater Castle Discovered in Turkey After Decade of Searching

After 10 years of searching, Turkish underwater diving team finally make a huge discovery. 

Hidden beneath the waters of Turkey's Lake Van researchers found a 3,000-year-old castle. The leader of this long adventure is Tahsin Ceylan from Van Yüzüncü Yıl University who admits he was actually hunting for the mysterious Lake Van monster instead.

"There was a rumor that there might be something under the water but most archaeologists and museum officials told us that we won't find anything," Ceylan told the Daily Sabah. But he paid no heed to the neigh sayers, kept following his vision, and now made an even greater discovery than he dreamed. Arnold Schwartzenegger would call this kind of person a champion. 

Lake Van is the largest body of water in Turkey and once belonged to the Urartu civilization that peaked about 2,600-2,900 years ago, corresponding to the biblical Kingdom of Ararat. There were many conflicts around here in the past and it's debatable that this castle was actually used as a fortress in ancient times. 

It measures .6 miles long (1 km) and made of cut stones stacked up to 13 feet high. Despite being underwater for many years, it's still in good shape due to the alkaline water.

"Many civilizations and people had settled around Lake Van," Ceylan told Hurriyet Daily News. "They named the lake the 'upper sea' and believed it had many mysterious things. With this belief in mind, we are working to reveal the lake's 'secrets'."

Finding More Sunken Treasures

Besides this fortress castle, Ceylan's team has found other impressive treasures along their journey of discoveries. Last year they found 1.5 square miles of stalagmites they nicknamed "Underwater Fairy Chimneys" after Cappadocia's famous "Fairy Chimneys" that were supposedly built or inhabited by mountain fairies. Perhaps then these new ones built by mermaids? They also found thousands of years old gravestones and a Russian ship from 1948. 

Ceylan is very excited to find such a large historically significant artifact and is eager for researchers to arrive so the world can learn more. 

"It is a miracle to find this castle underwater. We now believe we have discovered a new area for archaeologists and historians to study. Archaeologists will come here to examine the castle's history and provide information on it," Ceylan said. 

With an estimated 600,000 year history, this lake is set to contain many more remnants of our humankind's distant past. The only way to know for sure is to keep looking deeper like Ceylan and his team have been doing. So, sometimes you have to just trust yourself and ignore the skeptics to make true breakthroughs.

Keep exploring and go further. Let us know what you find. 

---

Sources:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/castle-discovered-lake-turkey-underwater-lake-van-urartu-thousands-years-old-a8070911.html

http://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/mysterious-3000yearold-castle-found-hidden-in-turkish-lake/

Egypt Finally Reveals Unseen King Tut Artifacts

By SAMY MAGDY, Associated Press

CAIRO (AP) — Egypt opened an exhibition on Wednesday to display previously unseen treasures from King Tutankhamun's famed tomb.

At least 55 pieces of fabric decorated with gold that were found in the tomb of the pharaoh, better known as King Tut, will be exhibited in public for the first time since its discovery in 1922, said German conservator Christian Eckmann.

He said the pieces had been kept in storage at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo for some 95 years, without being restored or scientifically examined.

He said the artifacts attest to the network of social and cultural connections which have characterized the eastern Mediterranean going back to antiquity.

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

"Those pieces are connected to the chariots of Tutankhamun," he said. "They were unfortunately in a very bad state of condition."

Some depict traditional Egyptian motifs, while others feature designs that were widespread throughout the eastern Mediterranean in the second millennium B.C., he said.

Antiquities Minister Khaled el-Anani inaugurated the exhibition to mark the 115th anniversary of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

Howard Carter discovered Tutankhamun's near-intact tomb in the Valley of the Kings. The king's mummified body was in a golden coffin surrounded by precious goods.

Tutankhamun ruled Egypt more than 3,000 years ago. The discovery of the tomb made him Egypt's most famous pharaoh and inspired a wave of interest in the country's ancient civilization.

5 Clues that a Global Flood Actually Happened

In the book Genesis, it was said that there was once a flood so great that it overwhelmed the entire world. This flood was known as the Global Flood, and all people died from the flood besides a few people chosen by God. Those chosen few were supposed “not wicked” in their hearts and didn’t deserve to die like the rest of the world did. Although many people believe that the story is just a myth, there have been hints that support the legitimacy of the story. Without further ado, here are five clues that a Great Global Flood actually happened.
 

1. International Flood Stories

The first clue that a Global Flood happened is the fact that many, many cultures around the world have had flood stories that occurred in similar time periods. Such ubiquitous presence of flood legends across the world can’t just be a mere coincidence. Efficient communication tools existed back then, so how did they all come up with the story of a great flood?

From Mesopotamia to Nigeria to China, these flood stories and legends are in almost every culture imaginable. Although nowadays, these are thought to be mere myths, we have to understand that people back then could not share information as fast and easily as we can today. Most of the time stories were how people passed down information about events that occurred.

So maybe there are myths and legends about a great flood from all around the world because people all around the world did, in fact, witness a great flood.
 

2. Evidence in China

Like in many other civilizations, ancient texts say that the Chinese civilization began due to a great flood. Recently, archaeologists have found evidence of a great flooding of the yellow river that provides clues about the Xia dynasty, which is the almost mythical first dynasty of China.

Legends say there was a flood that had waves as tall as a 30 story building and crushed anything in its path, even toppling mountains and seemed like it would never stop.

Lands in China was submerged in water, and it was because of the efforts of Da Yu or Yu the Great, who gathered the people to dig tunnels channeling the water back to its source, thus becoming the ruler of the Xia Dynasty. Of course, this 4,000-year-old story was believed to be only a myth to some, but recently researchers say, it may not have been a myth at all.

After observing the Yellow River’s Jishi Gorge area, geologists stated that there was an ancient landslide that created a dam about 660 feet tall. The dam blocked the river and as a result, created a lake that rose high above present river levels. Months later, when the water broke the dam, it created a massive flood that destroyed everything in its path.

Sediments were found by researchers that gave evidence to a flood that rose as high as 50 meters above river levels. Precise dating later revealed that the approximate date for the flood would have been 1920 BC. So It’s possible that the Global Flood occurred at that time, and China was heavily affected by it.
 

3. Rising Water Levels 12,000 Years Ago

The third clue comes from a study by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The NOAA has recently documented evidence that water levels rose dramatically around 12,000 years ago, which would supposedly rewrite the entire geological history. After looking at satellite images, evidence has been found of water recession during the past 12,000 years.

During the same time, there was also a major pole shift that explains the displacement of the icebergs during the end of the last Ice Age. This shows that there could have been a great flood that happened thousands of years ago that was caused by a pole shift due to changes in the magnetic resonance of the Earth. The water from the melting glaciers began to rush toward the world's oceans, causing floods all around the world.
 

4. Submerged Civilizations

There are many massive underwater structures and sunken discovered all around the world.  For example,  a city was found off the coast of West India in the Gulf of Cambay. The city was found to be 10,000 years old and was completely submerged under 130 ft of water. Fishermen in the area had previously claimed that there were stories passed on from generation to generation of an underwater city in the area, but no one believed them or cared to investigate.

It was only until the pollution survey test was made by India’s National Institute of Ocean Technology that scientists found huge structures at the bottom of the ocean in that area.The structures that were retrieved were carbon dated to be around 10,000 years old. Like I mentioned underwater cities like this one are found all around the world researchers even discovered wheel tracks such as the ones in Maltese archipelago where the tracks look like they deliberately plunge off cliffs or up and down very steep ridges, and some even drive off the island and into the sea, continuing underwater. It is not yet known who made the tracks, or why.

5. The Black Sea

This is something that started out as a theory by two Columbia University researchers. According to them, there really was a “Mother of Floods” that occurred in the Black Sea region. They said that the Black Sea was once a freshwater lake surrounded by land until it was flooded.

The force of the water was monumental and swept everything in its path. To investigate the validity of the theory, Robert Ballard, who is well known for discovering the Titanic, decided to look for remnants of the flood. 400 ft below the surface of the Black Sea, Ballard and his team found an ancient shoreline, which proved that something did happen in the Black Sea.

After carbon dating shells that were on the shoreline, Ballard said that whatever happened in the area occurred around 5,000 BC which is believed by experts to be the time when Noah’s flood suppose to have occurred.

What do you think? Did a Great Global Flood really exist that destroyed almost all of the world? Or were there separate floods in certain civilizations that coincidentally occurred during the same period?

Strange 518-Million-Year-Old 'Mythical Beast' Sea Creature Fossil Discovered

An artistic rendition shows the rare creature had a long worm-like body, a shell over its head like a bike helmet and lengthy scary spikes poking out from either side of its body.

Experts find rare ancient fossilized sea creature that's 'strange beyond measure'

• The second one of its kind ever found
• 518 million years old from Cambrian Period
• Likely lived in shallow waters less than 100 meters deep
   

This bizarre prehistoric sea creature looks like an armored spikey caterpillar from outer space! It was found by archaeologists at southern China's famous fossil site of Yunnan Province where a treasure trove of ancient history lies hidden beneath the earth dating back to the Cambrian Period 541 to 485.4 million years ago. 

Its official name is orthrozanclus elongata, after its long body and despite the tens of thousands of fossils in the area, only 2 of these have ever been found so far. 

1. The first one was dug up in 2015 in Chengjiang fossil site by Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology's researchers. 
2. The second was discovered in 2016 in Kunming by a fossil lover who gave it to Mr. Zhao, who learned it was the same as species. 

View fullsize

Zhao Fangchen holds one of the two fossils of the ancient species that have been discovered in Yunnan Province, China.

“The two specimens could shed light on the diversity of extinct creatures as well as their connection with animals in modern times.”

— Zhao Fangchen, researcher

Zhao Fangchen knew as soon as he saw the fossil it was different from others 'even if it was very small' because of its extremely long spikes and unsegmented body. These made it difficult to categorize.

"The creature was about 1.5cm long and 3mm wide, but its spikes were about 6mm long. It just looked so different," said Mr. Zhao.

Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology. Shell-armoured creatures, sclerite-covered taxa, discovered in Chengjiang, Yunnan fossil site. A, b, f, and g are the two new specimens.

Ancient Mythical Beasts

With an armored body and long spikes all around Dr. Smith said "the creature is like a mythical beast." He added that "we don't know much about the animal underneath these mineralized plates - whether it had legs or a slug-like foot, whether it had teeth or tentacles." 

Mr. Zhao Fangchen believes this strange appearance is more than just some ornate decoration to attract mates but that it evolved to protect itself from enemies. The armor is a strong defense and the spikes are even better, acting as feelers through the water as well as an offensive defense to keep predators at a distance. 

Mr. Zhao and other researchers think these fossils backup the Cambrian Explosion theory that claims a huge variety of creatures emerged about 541 million years ago due to a dramatic increase in oxygen. Before that time, there were mostly simple organisms that didn't change much for a long time. This diversification explosion ended during an extinction even about 488 million years ago. 

A tiny but significant discovery.

---

Sources:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5132611/518-million-year-old-creature-strange-measure.html

https://www.livescience.com/61021-bizarre-cambrian-worm-discovered.html

Scientists Bring Viking King "Back from the Dead" with 3D Printer

Computer model of dead Viking King's skeleton rebuilt with 3D printer.

Danish Viking king, Gorm the Old, is the son of semi-legendary Danish King Harthacnut, originally from Northmannia, who took power in the early 10th century deposing young king Sigtrygg Gnupasson and reigning over Western Denmark. When Harthacnut died, Gorm ascended the throne and ruled into his old age until he died in 958 AD. 

Scientists at the National Museum of Denmark made computer tomography (CT) scans of Gorm the Old's remains before reburying them in 2000. However, these early low-resolution scans were not good enough to learn many aspects about the man himself. For example, they could only guesstimate his age was between 35 to 50.

In the computer, they repaired the 3D model of his bones to compensate for damages of time. Marie Louise Jørkov of the University of Copenhagen said “you can print the bones one to one in 3D, which makes it possible to display the bones. We can then re-analyse the skeleton and study the bones to look for any signs of disease, which can’t be seen at the surface.”

They found a bump on the back of the skull that “can best be compared to a bunion,” concluded Carsten Reidies Bjarkam of Aarhus University. This is larger than normal but not a big deal, besides it probably being painful to lay down on. There's plenty of room for speculation as to what pressure could have caused such a protrusion, among the most likely may be a battle injury or the heavy burden of the king's crown. 

Despite not being able to gather DNA evidence of this body's actual identity, the museum feels it's best to leave the bones to rest since they've already been excavating and reburied several times. It's also an issue for the church and the royal family to decide. 

“He’s been in the grave for 800 years, which for much of that time was under water, and his bones are very damaged. I doubt that it’s possible to extract DNA or strontium [a trace element that can say something about where a person was born and lived]. Moreover, he’s been disinterred three times now, so it’s also a question of allowing him to rest in peace,” he says.

Rest in peace Viking King.

---

Sources:

http://sciencenordic.com/denmark%E2%80%99s-first-viking-king-printed-3d

https://www.archaeology.org/news/6114-171121-gorm-the-old