University of Leicester

University of Leicester archaeologists dug up the Leicester City Council parking lot in search of the grave of King Richard III.

By Stephanie Pappas
LiveScience

Archaeologists may have uncovered the skeleton of the lost English King Richard III. But if they have, what should be done with the remains?

That question is causing contention among Richard III enthusiasts, according to a new report in the Wall Street Journal. The University of Leicester, which is overseeing the excavation and analysis of the remains, has jurisdiction over the remains, but various societies dedicated to the king have their own opinions.

Two groups, the U.S.-based Richard III Foundation and the Society of Friends of Richard III based in York, England, argue that the remains should be reburied in York, because Richard III was fond of that city, the Journal reported. The Richard III Society, which has been involved with the archaeological dig in Leicester that uncovered the remains, is officially neutral — a stance which itself has triggered anger.

"The lack of respect that's been shown to his remains has grated our membership," Joe Ann Ricca, founder and president of the Richard III Foundation, told the Wall Street Journal.

University of Leicester

Richard III and his queen, Anne of Neville, appear in a stained glass window in Cardiff Castle.

Richard III's History
Richard III ruled from 1483 to 1485. He died in battle at Bosworth Field in the War of the Roses, and English civil war between the House of Lancaster and the House of York.  After his death, Richard III's body was brought to Leicester and buried at Greyfriars Church. A century later, Shakespeare wrote "Richard III," a play fictionalizing the dead king's life. 

The location of both the Greyfriars Church and Richard III's grave were eventually lost to history. In August 2012, however, University of Leicester archaeologists began excavating a city council parking lot in Leicester, under which the remains of the Greyfriars church were thought to be. [ See Images of the Richard III Discoveries ]

Soon, the archaeologists unearthed floor tiles, window frames and other remnants of the medieval church. In less than a month, the team found a battle-bruised skeleton with signs of trauma to the skull and an arrowhead lodged in the spine, consistent with Richard III's cause of death.

The skeleton also had scoliosis, or an abnormally curved spine, consistent with contemporary accounts of Richard III's appearance.

Controversial remains
The team has not confirmed the remains to be Richard III's; the University of Leicester has said it will hold a press conference in the first week of February to announce results of the laboratory analysis of the bones.

"If the identity of the remains is confirmed, Leicester Cathedral will continue to work with the Royal Household, and with the Richard III Society, to ensure that his remains are treated with dignity and respect and are reburied with the appropriate rites and ceremonies of the church," the Very Reverend Vivienne Faull, the Dean of Leicester, said in a statement.

Petitions have sprung up online arguing that the reburial should take place at Westminster Abbey or Windsor Castle.

But the most vocal critics say that Richard III would have wanted to be buried in York, where he was reportedly building a chapel at the time of his death.

"Think about this being a member of your family," Charles Brunner, a Kansas bank teller and Richard III enthusiast, told the Wall Street Journal. "Where would you want them to go? Where they wanted to go or the town they were taken to after they were killed, where they were stripped bare and put on public display?"

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Karel Navarro / AP file

Part of the Pastoruri glacier is seen atop Peru's Cordillera Blanca, or "White Mountain Range." The largest glacier chain in the tropics, the range is melting fast.

By Stephanie Pappas
LiveScience

The glaciers of the Andes Mountains have retreated at an unprecedented rate in the past three decades, with more ice lost than at any other time in the last 400 years.

That's according to a new review of research that combines on-the-ground observations with aerial and satellite photos, historical records and dates from cores of ice extracted from the glaciers. The retreat is worse in the Andes than the average glacier loss around the world, the researchers report Tuesday in the journal The Cryosphere.

" Tropical Andes glaciers have lost on average between 30 to 50 percent (depending on the mountain ranges) of their surface since the late 70s," study researcher Antoine Rabatel, a scientist at the Laboratory for Glaciology and Environmental Geophysics in Grenoble, France, wrote in an email to LiveScience.  

Sensitive glaciers
The Andes Mountains of South America are home to 99 percent of tropical glaciers ­— permanent rivers of ice at high enough elevations not to be affected by the types of balmy temperatures usually associated with the tropics. But these glaciers are particularly sensitive to climate change, because there is little seasonality in temperatures in the tropics, Rabatel said.

"Glaciers of the tropical Andes react strongly and more rapidly than other glaciers on Earth to any changes in climate conditions," he said. [ Ice World: Gallery of Awe-Inspiring Glaciers ]

To piece together the story of the glaciers over the past centuries, Rabatel and his colleagues drew on disparate strands of data. Historical records from early settlements reveal glacier boundaries, as does ice core data taken by drilling down into the annual layers of ice that make up glaciers. Even the lichens (symbiotic organisms made of fungus and an algae or bacteria) that survive on the rocky debris, or moraine, that forms around a glacier have a story to tell. Researchers can date these lichens to determine how long ago the rocks were exposed and free of ice.

Aerial photographs dating back to the 1950s and satellite imagery from as far back as the 1970s also track the glaciers' movements. Finally, direct, ground-based observations have been in place at many glaciers since the 1990s.

Retreat of the glaciers
All together, the data tell a story of ice loss. The Andean glaciers reached their maximum extents in the Little Ice Age, a cool period that lasted from about the 16th to 19th centuries. In the outer tropics of Peru and Bolivia, the glaciers hit their maximums in the 1600s, the researchers found. The highest Andean glaciers maxed out in the 1730s or so, while lower-elevation glaciers reached their peaks around the 1830s.

Since then, the glaciers have gradually withdrawn, with one period of accelerated melt in the late 1800s and a second, much larger, accelerated melt period in the past three decades. Since the 1970s, the glaciers have followed a pattern of periods of accelerated melt with two to three years in between of slower retreat and occasional advance (or growth). But while there have been scattered good years for the glaciers in which more new ice formed than was lost, the overall average has been permanently negative over the past 50 years, the researchers wrote.

The average loss of 30 percent to 50 percent varies widely from glacier to glacier, Rabatel said. Some small glaciers have completely disappeared, such as the Chacaltaya glacier of Bolivia, which was once the world's highest ski resort, but which vanished in 2009.

Lower-altitude glaciers below about 17,700 feet (5400 meters) above sea level are melting twice as fast as those at higher elevations. These low glaciers, which make up the majority of Andes glaciers, are expected to vanish within years or decades, Rabatel said.

Precipitation in the region has not changed, the researchers found, but temperatures have risen nearly 0.2 degrees Fahrenheit (0.1 degrees Celsius) per decade over the last 70 years. That means it's likely atmospheric heat rather than lack of snow is driving the glacier retreat.

The looming loss of the glaciers is a major problem for the people living in arid regions west of the Andes, Rabatel said.

"The supply of water from high-altitude glacierized mountain chains is important for agricultural and domestic consumption, as well as for hydropower," he wrote.

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By Stephanie Pappas
LiveScience

Men are more likely than women to commit scientific fraud, a new analysis of misconduct convictions reveals. And the urge to cheat spans the entire range of academic careers, from students to seasoned professors.

For the new study, published Tuesday in the journal mBio, scientists examined 228 cases of misconduct in the records of the United States Office of Research Integrity (ORI), a government agency that oversees research funded by federal, public health-related agencies. Part of the ORI's mission is to monitor investigations of charges such as fabrication of data and plagiarism.

"The big picture is not that most scientists are dishonest, it's the opposite," said study researcher Ferric Fang, a microbiologist at the University of Washington School of Medicine. "But on the other hand, a few scientists being dishonest is a very bad thing, because it casts doubt on the whole enterprise."

Fraud in science
As of May 2012, at least 2,047 biomedical and life science studies had been retracted by the journals that published them, meaning that the studies contained errors or fabrications that rendered their results meaningless.

Fang, along with Arturo Casadevall, a professor of medicine at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University in New York, and colleagues analyzed these studies and found, to their surprise, that 67.4 percent were retracted because of fraud, duplicate publication (essentially, researchers "double-dipping" to get a paper published twice) or plagiarism. [ Understanding the 10 Most Destructive Human Behaviors ]

There are no firm numbers about how much misconduct goes on in science, but Fang, Casadevall and their colleagues turned to the most complete database on the subject, which is run by the ORI. It's the best database in the world, Casadevall said, because the cases have been thoroughly investigated and documented.

Between 1994 and the present, the ORI investigated 228 cases of alleged misconduct. Of these, 215 were found to involve wrongdoing. In 40 percent of these cases, the guilty party was a trainee (a student or postdoctoral researcher). In 32 percent of cases, it was a faculty member, and in 28 percent of cases, the fraud was committed by technicians, study coordinators or other lab staff.

"We originally thought that misconduct was going to be a problem primarily of trainees or people starting out," Casadevall told LiveScience. "We were surprised to find that, in fact, a lot of them were quite established."

Gendered misconduct
Another key finding was the gender schism in fraud. Even given that men outnumber women in the upper echelons of science, males committed more of the fraud than would be expected. The gap appeared on every rung of the career ladder given the relative proportion of men and women at each step.

Among research staff, 43 percent of those committing misconduct were male. Among students, men made up 58 percent of transgressors. That number rose to 69 percent among postdoctoral researchers and to 88 percent of faculty. [ Oops! 5 Retracted Science Results of 2012 ]

Among the 72 faculty members who committed fraud, only nine were female, the researchers found. That's one-third of what would be expected if the genders were committing fraud at the same rates.

It's not clear why the gender gap exists, Casadevall said. Men are generally known to take more risks than women, which could play a role. Additionally, the researchers can't rule out the possibility that women commit misconduct as frequently as men, but don't get caught.

The researchers did find, however, that the proportion of men and women investigated for fraud was similar to the proportion found guilty, Fang said. So the investigation process itself does not appear gender-biased.  

Stiff competition for research funding, jobs and scientific awards is likely behind the urge to cheat, Fang said. In the 1960s, 60 percent of researchers who applied for a standard federal research grant won that grant. Today, the chance of success is only 18 percent.

"It's become extraordinarily competitive," Fang told LiveScience.  

That doesn't mean that cheating scientists are off the hook ethically, he said, but the environment of science likely contributes to the problem. Among faculty, almost all misconduct recorded by the ORI involved grants or papers, while among trainees and lab staff, the motivations appear to involve working in the "pressure cooker" of a lab where results are expected. The pattern suggests that principal investigators in charge of labs need to take heed of the climate they're creating, Fang said.

"Even without being a crook, you can be a principal investigator who, under pressure, may be creating pressures on your people to generate certain results," he said.

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Stephanie Abramowicz, NHM Dinosaur Institute

Researchers have determined the gender of a specimen of an ancient beaked bird Confuciusornis sanctus (reconstruction shown here) to be female, finding this species has drab females and flashy males like today's birds.

By Charles Choi
LiveScience

An ancient, beaked bird that lived in what is today northeastern China was ovulating when she, yes "she," perished some 125 million years ago, suggests new research that can reveal the gender of bird fossils.

Scientists investigated the ancient, beaked bird Confuciusornis sanctus. Hundreds of fossils of the extinct, crow-sized species are found in lake deposits in northeastern China. The area back then was "a seasonal forest that surrounded small lakes, a very rich ecosystem with a great variety of animals and plants," said researcher Luis Chiappe, paleontologist and director of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County's Dinosaur Institute.

Some fossils of this ancient bird were discovered with pairs of long, almost body-length ornamental tail feathers, while others were not. Scientists had suggested these differences were sexual in nature; in modern birds, males, such as peacocks, are often flamboyantly showy to court the opposite sex, while females, such as peahens, are typically rather drab, presumably to avoid attracting the attention of predators to themselves or their young.

Scientists had little evidence to prove whether the more flashy Confuciusornis sanctus fossils were male or not, however. But now researchers have found details in these skeletons that apparently enable clear gender identification, suggesting the showier fossils were indeed male. [ Avian Ancestors: Dinosaurs That Learned to Fly ]

Specifically, the researchers discovered medullary bone, spongy tissue unique to reproductively active female birds, in a specimen unearthed by local farmers. Medullary bone helps female birds manufacture eggshells.

"I think that it is so exciting to be able to say with certainty that this 125-million-year-old fossil bird was a reproductively active female," researcher Anusuya Chinsamy-Turan, a paleobiologist at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, told LiveScience.

"People might wonder why this has never been found before," Chinsamy-Turan added. "The reason is that for medullary bone to be observed, the female bird has to be in a particular physiological state — that is, ovulating, or just having laid eggs."

This female fossil did not possess ornamental feathers, which supports the idea that ancient female birds were as drab as their modern counterparts.

Intriguingly, researchers found medullary bone in some fossils even before the skeletons of those birds were full-grown. This suggests that this and other early birds matured sexually well before their skeletons matured.

"The most important conclusion is that early birds had reproductive patterns very different from their living counterparts and more akin to large dinosaurs," Chiappe told LiveScience.

The research could help scientists determine the sex of birds that lived millions of years ago, as well as shed light on ancient sexual maturity patterns. Future research should analyze other early bird species, Chiappe said.

The scientists detailed their findings online Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications.

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Photo copyright International Journal of Paleopathology

Archaeologists working at the site of La Fogonussa near Lleida, Spain, uncovered an ancient female skeleton with an odd tumor embedded with teeth hidden in her pelvis.

By Owen Jarus
LiveScience

In a necropolis in Spain, archaeologists have found the remains of a Roman woman who died in her 30s with a calcified tumor in her pelvis, a bone and four deformed teeth embedded within it.

Two of the teeth are still attached to the wall of the tumor researchers say.

The woman, who died some 1,600 years ago, had a condition known today as an ovarian teratoma which, as its name indicates, occurs in the ovaries.The word Teratoma comes from the Greek words "teras" and "onkoma" which translate to "monster" and "swelling," respectively. The tumor is about 1.7 inches (44 millimeters) in diameter at its largest point.

"Ovarian teratomas are bizarre, but benign tumors," writes lead researcher Núria Armentano, of the ANTROPÒLEGS.LAB company and the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, in an email to LiveScience.

The tumors come from germ cells, which form human eggs and can create hair, teeth and bone, among other structures. [ See Images of Bizarre Tumor & Remains ]

This is the first time scientists have found this type of teratoma in the ancient world.

"(T)his is an extraordinary case, not only for its antiquity, but also its identification in the archeological record," writes the research team in a paper published recently in the International Journal of Paleopathology.

Photo courtesy Núria Armentano, cropping by Owen Jarus

A close-up view of the two teeth still attached to the tumor.

The woman lived at a time of decline for the Roman Empire, with new groups (popularly known as the "barbarians") moving into Roman territory, eventually taking over Spain and other areas.

Who was she?
Archaeologists found the woman buried in a necropolis near Lleida in the Catalonia region of Spain. They only found a few artifacts buried with her: tiles known as tegulae that had been put over her body to form a gabled roof.

"Tegulae graves were the most common Roman burials. She was not an important or rich person. She had a low socioeconomic status," Armentano explained.

The researchers note in their paper that while it's possible the woman never experienced symptoms, it's also possible that, despite the tumor being benign, it ultimately killed her.

"This ovarian teratoma could have been the cause of this woman's death, because sometimes the development of teratomas results in displacement and functional disturbances of adjacent organs," the researchers write. They note that infection, hemolytic anemia and pregnancy complications can also occur with an ovarian teratoma, events that could also have caused the woman's death.

The tumor would not have changed her outward appearance, and researchers can't tell for certain what affect it had on her, Armentano explained.

"We suppose that, at least during a long part of her life, she was completely unaware of this tumor. Depending on the eventual complications, she could have suffered, but there" is no evidence of this, writes Armentano. "She could have died because of many other causes!"

Despite that uncertainty, historical records do indicate that this woman lived in a time period of great change. King's College London Professor Peter Heather notes in his book "The Fall of the Roman Empire" (Oxford University Press, 2006) that, by A.D. 411, Spain had been divided between groups known as the Vandals, Suevi and Alans.

The ancient writer Hydatius wrote that the "Spaniards in the cities and forts who had survived the disasters surrendered themselves to servitude under the barbarians, who held sway throughout the provinces."

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Zhifei Zhang et al

The Cambrian marine animal Cotyledion tylodes in fossil form and as illustrated by artists.

By Stephanie Pappas
LiveScience

An ancient sea animal that looked like a flower had its anus right next to its mouth, a new fossil study finds.

The research reveals that this odd marine creature was likely an ancestor of a group known as the entoprocta. Previously, the oldest fossil entoprocta came from the late Jurassic, about 145 million years ago. The new fossils date all the way back to the Cambrian, about 520 million years before the present.

That is near the so-called Cambrian Explosion, when most of the major lineages of animals appeared on the scene, as did complex ecosystems. Some odd animals emerged during this time, such as bizarre shrimplike monsters called anomalocaridids that could grow up to about 6 feet (1.8 meters) in length; a 515-million-year-old predator with compound eyes containing 3,000 lenses; and a 50-legged arthropod that skittered along the seafloor of what is now Canada.

The newfound species, Cotyledion tylodes, has been analyzed before, but the discovery of hundreds of new specimens allowed researchers led by Zhifei Zhang of Northwest University in Xi'an, China, to take a more detailed look. The team analyzed 418 specimens from Yunnan, China. [ The 10 Weirdest Animal Discoveries ]

They found that C. tylodes lived a lifestyle fixed to one spot, filtering water through a ring of tentacles that surrounded its mouth — and its anus. The two openings sat right next to one another, connected by a U-shaped gut.

That gut proved that the previous classification of C. tylodes as a cnidarian, or jellyfishlike creature, was wrong, the researchers report Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports.

Instead, the flowerlike filter feeder was likely an early entoproct, Zhang and colleagues found. The body pattern is almost identical, though the ancient version grew to a length of 0.3 inches to 2.2 inches (8 to 56 millimeters), while today's entoprocts are comparatively tiny at between 0.004 inches and 0.27 inches long (0.1 to 7 mm).

Another big difference between C. tylodes and modern entoprocts is on the outside. Unlike what is found in living entoprocts, the stem and flowerlike feeding cup of the ancient creature were covered by tiny hardened protuberances called sclerites, which may have formed a sort of hard exoskeleton for the creatures.

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Robert Elwood, Queen's University Belfast

A common shore crab, used in new "pain" research, with wires attached to deliver a mild electrical shock.

By Joseph Castro
LiveScience

Scientists have long held that crabs are unable to feel pain because they lack the biology to do so, but behavioral evidence has recently shown otherwise. Now, new research further supports the hypothesis that crabs feel pain by showing that crabs given a mild shock will take steps to avoid getting shocked in the future.

From humans to fruit flies, numerous species come equipped with nociception, a type of reflex that helps avoid immediate tissue damage. On the other hand, pain, which results in a swift change of behavior to avoid future damage, isn't so widespread. (Research has also shown naked mole rats may be immune to pain.)

In the new study, researchers allowed shore crabs (Carcinus maenas) to choose between one of two dark shelters in a brightly lit tank. One shelter came with a mild shock. After just two trials, crabs that initially chose the shocking shelter began opting for the zapless shelter, suggesting they learned to discriminate between the two options and headed for the less painful one.

"It's almost impossible to prove an animal feels pain, but there are criteria you can look at," said lead researcher Robert Elwood, an animal behaviorist at Queen's University, Belfast, in the U.K. "Here we have another criteria satisfied — if the data are consistent, a body of evidence (showing crabs feel pain ) can build up."

Building evidence
Elwood initially set out to see if crabs and other crustacean decapods feel pain after a chef posed that question to him about eight years ago. If the invertebrates (animals without backbones) feel pain, he reasoned, their reactions to unpleasant stimuli would be more than the simple reflex of nociception — the experience would change their long-term behavior.

Elwood's first experiment showed that prawns whose antennae were doused with caustic soda vigorously groomed their antennae, as if trying to ameliorate pain. Importantly, this behavior didn't occur if Elwood treated the antennae with an anesthetic first.

Another experiment showed that hermit crabs would leave their shells if given a mild shock. "A naked crab is basically a dead crab — they were trading off avoiding the shock with getting out of the shell," Elwood told LiveScience, adding that many of the crabs moved into new shells if any were available. [ The 10 Weirdest Animal Discoveries ]

For his new study, Elwood tested 90 shore crabs, which naturally seek dark spaces, to see if they exhibited "avoidance learning" and would discriminate between a dangerous and a safe area. Half of the crabs were shocked upon entering the first chamber of their choice, while the other half were not. For each crab, the jolting chamber stayed the same throughout the 10 trials.

In the second trial, most of the crabs returned to their original shelter; whether they were shocked in the first trial had little effect on their second choice. However, crabs were more likely to change shelter in the third trial if they were shocked in the second trial. And as the trials wore on, crabs that chose incorrectly became more likely to exit the unpleasant chamber, brave the bright arena and hide in the alternate shelter. By the final test, the majority of the crabs chose the nonshock shelter at first go.

Time for change?
The research "provides evidence that supports the issue that crabs — and other crustacean decapods as well — feel pain," Francesca Gherardi, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Florence in Italy who wasn't involved in the study, told LiveScience in an email. "It is avoidance learning that makes the difference."

Animals in pain should quickly learn to avoid the unpleasant stimulus and show long-term changes in behavior, Gherardi noted. More research is needed on decapods' avoidance learning and "discrimination abilities between painful and nonpainful situations," he said.

Elwood said he thinks future research should go in a different direction. Stress often comes with pain, he said, so other experiments could look at changes in crustacean hormones or heart rates due to shock.

Whatever the case, Elwood feels it may be time to reconsider the treatment of decapods in the food industry. "If the evidence for pain in decapods continues to stack up with mammals and birds that already get some protection, then perhaps there should be some nod in that direction for these animals," he said.

The study was published Wednesday in the Journal of Experimental Biology.

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Romain Libbrecht and Yannick Wurm

A 616-gene sequence ("social chromosome") determines whether a single queen or many will rule a colony of fire ants, Solenopsis invicta. Here, a queen, three smaller workers and one pupa.

By Stephanie Pappas
LiveScience

Whether fire ants bow to one queen or accept many rulers depends on one long strand of genes, a new study finds.

The gene sequence is the first "social chromosome" ever discovered, according to study researcher Yannick Wurm of Queen Mary, University of London, who called the DNA sequence a "supergene."

Chih-Chi Volans Lee, Yu-Ching Huang and John Wang

Worker fire ants with only the B variant of the social chromosome will accept a single queen also with only the B variant (described as "BB"). But if the queen has the other variant, the so-called Bb queen, she will be attacked by these BB workers (shown here).

"This was a very surprising discovery," Wurm said in a statement. "Similar differences in chromosomal structure are linked to wing patterns in butterflies and to cancer in humans, but this is the first supergene ever identified that determines social behavior."

Choosing queens
The fire ant Selenopsis invicta is one of many fire ant species known for nasty stings. The species is native to South America and invasive elsewhere.

One of its odder traits is a particular flexibility about its social structure. Some members of the species live in colonies with a single queen, while others tolerate hundreds of queens. [ Gallery: Stunning Photos of the World's Ants ]

The new genetic analysis, to be published Thursday in the journal Nature, finds that a sequence of genes on a certain chromosome determines which social arrangement is acceptable to the ants. Much in the same way that the human sex chromosomes vary between X and Y, the ant chromosomes vary between B and b.

If all the workers in a colony carry the B variant only, they will accept a single queen that also carries only the B variant (marked as BB, because the chromosomes come in pairs). But if some workers in the colony carry the b version of the chromosome, the colony will accept multiple queens — but only those queens with a mismatched "Bb" set of chromosomes.

Smelly queens?
The chromosomal differences have been linked to a number of anatomical differences in the ants, Wurm and his colleagues wrote, from the queen's fecundity to the size of male workers and the structure of their sperm. These differences could explain how the ants "know" what sort of monarchy to accept.

"Odor is likely involved," Wurm told LiveScience. "We know the queens smell different."

The two different genes may also confer their own advantages. BB queens mate and disperse to their own colonies when they reach maturity, making them good at invading new areas, the researchers wrote. Bb queens join others near their maternal colony and, working together, produce more workers overall. This might make them more successful in previously colonized areas.

Wurm and his colleagues plan to dig deeper into the chromosome to find out which of the 616 genes in the social sequence are responsible for the differences between ants. They also hope to find out if similar sequences play social roles in other species. And the differences aren't just academic. The fire ants have spread into the southern United States as well as Australia and China, where they are major pests.

"Our discovery could help in developing novel pest-control strategies," Wurm said. "For example, a pesticide could artificially deactivate the genes in the social chromosome and induce social anarchy within the colony."

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Shetland Amenity Trust

These skeletal remains were uncovered by storms in the Shetland Islands.

LiveScience

A series of storms that hit Scotland's Shetland Islands over the holidays revealed what archaeologists believe could be 2,000-year-old human remains.

Police were initially called to the scene when storms eroded a cliff at Channerwick and exposed the skeleton, but officials soon determined that they wouldn't have to open a homicide investigation.

Local archaeologist Chris Dyer said the ancient skeleton looked as if it were contemporary with the remains of Iron Age structures revealed nearby. Researchers then identified evidence of one or possibly two more burials at the site, but another storm caused a further chunk of the cliff to crumble, covering up the discovery.

"The original burial now lies under several tons of fallen bank, and the Iron Age structures have also disappeared from view," Dyer said in a statement from the Shetland Amenity Trust.

Nature is known to reveal human history. For instance, remains of hominids — a juvenile male and adult female who lived nearly 2 million years ago — were discovered in the far reaches of a limestone cave system that had eroded over time. "We are looking at very eroded and denuded portions of this cave system, where nature has exposed what had once been the deep reaches," said researcher Daniel Farber, an earth scientist at the University of California at Santa Cruz, in 2011 at the time the discovery was announced.

In addition, melting patches of ice that had been in place for thousands of years in the mountains of the Canadian High Arctic revealed a treasure trove of ancient hunting tools.

Regarding the new finding, officials have not planned further archaeological work at the site, but said a small piece of bone was recovered and will be analyzed using radiocarbon dating to confirm the skeleton's age. (This method relies on the level of radioactive carbon, which is naturally occurring and decays at a predictable rate into nonradioactive carbon, to estimate the age of organic materials.)

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Ruth Dickau

A cache of nearly 5,000-year-old shaman's stones were found in a rock shelter in Panama.

By Tia Ghose
LiveScience

Archaeologists have unearthed nearly 5,000-year-old shaman's stones in a rock shelter in Panama. The stone collection may be the earliest evidence of shamanic rituals in that region of Central America, researchers say.

The 12 stones were found in the Casita de Piedra rock shelter, in the Isthmus of Panama. The rocks, which carbon-dating of surrounding material showed to be between 4,000 and 4,800 years old, were clustered in a tight pile. That suggests they had been carried there, likely in a leather pouch that has long-since disintegrated, said study co-author, Ruth Dickau, an archaeologist at the University of Exeter, in an email.

"If our interpretation is correct, it constitutes the earliest material evidence in lower Central America of shamanistic practice," the authors wrote in the article.

The findings were published online Dec. 27 in the journal Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences.

The Pre-Columbian rock shelter was first discovered in the 1970s, and was initially thought to have been used by people since about 6,500 years ago. In 2006 Dickau reanalyzed the shelter and found that people had used the shady nook for cooking and tool-making for over 9,000 years. During the excavations, she also uncovered the mysterious cache of stones. [ In Photos: Amazing Ruins of the Ancient World ]

The collection, which included translucent quartz, pyrite, magnetic rocks and bladed tools, was likely used in shamanic rituals because of how closely together they were packed, Dickau told LiveScience. Some of the rocks contained grains of iron called magnetite, and showed magnetic properties by deflecting a compass needle. In addition, the stone types themselves don't come from the rock shelter, but were historically used in shamanic rituals throughout the region.

The stones came from a distant, gold-rich region of Panama called the Central Cordillera up to 3,000 years before mining of the precious metal began, said study co-author and consulting geologist Stewart Redwood in a statement.

Eduardo Berejano

The stones were found in a rock-shelter in Panama that has been used by humans for more than 9,000 years.

"However, there are no gold artifacts in the rock shelter, and there's no evidence that the stones were collected in the course of gold prospecting as the age of the cache pre-dates the earliest known gold artifacts from Panama by more than 2,000 years," Redwood said in a statement. 

The shaman who once used these rocks probably belonged to an indigenous culture that lived off maize, manioc and wild tubers. But the story of the rocks themselves may remain an enigma. 

"We will never be entirely sure how the ancient people used the stones in the past," Dickau wrote.

Modern-day practices, however, can provide some clues. Even today, indigenous shamans in Costa Rica will chant, sing and blow tobacco smoke over stones to communicate with otherworldly spirits or diagnose illnesses, she wrote. The stones' movement in the shaman's hands are taken as responses to questions.

In addition, in indigenous myths and stories in the region, crystals are linked to transformative experiences.

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University of Zurich

Researchers found that the single-syllable call of the banded mongoose is actually structured, and perhaps like the vowel and consonant system of human speech.

By Megan Gannon, news editor
LiveScience

While some animals like birds and whales are famous for their impressive repertoire of information-packed songs, banded mongooses blurt out short grunts that, to human ears, sound rather unsophisticated.

But a closer examination of mongoose calls has revealed that these animals might be more eloquent than previously believed. In fact, researchers say the creatures combine discrete units of sound somewhat like humans put together a consonant and vowel to form a syllable.

"The fact that such findings were done in a 'simple' species as the banded mongoose rather than in primates or apes could be revealing," researcher David Jansen of the University of Zurich told LiveScience in an email.

The results suggest that the "simple" calls of other species — like frogs and bats — might actually contain vocal cues with more complex encoding.

For the study, Jansen and his colleagues followed around banded mongooses (Mungos mungo) in western Uganda, inside of Queen Elizabeth National Park. The small carnivores are related to the meerkat and found in the savannah regions south of the Sahara Desert. They live in social groups of about 20 adults that raise their young cooperatively.

Their calls, which last between 50 and 150 milliseconds and can be considered to represent a single "syllable," allow them to maintain group cohesion and coordinate activities like foraging.

The researchers recorded the animals' calls to each other, noting what the creatures were doing at the time (i.e. digging, searching or moving).

The team found subtle vocal signatures within the single syllables of the calls. There's an initial sound that seems to provide information about the identity of the caller and a second sound (which Jansen compared to a vowel) that indicates the caller's current activity. [See Video of Mongoose 'Talking' ]

Jansen said the research "adds an unexpected layer of complexity to the field of animal communication." 

"It shows that banded mongooses combine vowel-like segments in a way that was thought to be unique to human speech," he added, noting that such elements might be found in the calls of other animals that speak to each other in single syllables.

"We think it is present in other species, and future research should attempt to find these," Jansen wrote, citing frogs and bats as possible candidates.

The research was detailed online last month in the journal BMC Biology.

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Public domain

The Greek hero Theseus slays the minotaur in this 6th-century depiction on pottery.

By Stephanie Pappas
LiveScience

The civilization made famous by the myth of the Minotaur was as warlike as their bull-headed mascot, new research suggests.

The ancient people of Crete, also known as Minoan, were once thought to be a bunch of peaceniks. That view has become more complex in recent years, but now University of Sheffield archaeologist Barry Molloy says that war wasn't just a part of Minoan society — it was a defining part.

" Ideologies of war are shown to have permeated religion, art, industry, politics and trade, and the social practices surrounding martial traditions were demonstrably a structural part of how this society evolved and how they saw themselves," Molloy said in a statement.

The ancient Minoans
Crete is the largest Greek isle and the site of thousands of years of civilization, including the Minoans, who dominated during the Bronze Age, between about 2700 B.C. and 1420 B.C. They may have met their downfall with a powerful explosion of the Thera volcano, which based on geological evidence seems to have occurred around this time.

The Minoans are perhaps most famous for the myth of the Minotaur, a half-man, half-bull that lived in the center of a labyrinth on the island. [ 10 Beasts & Dragons: How Reality Made Myth ]

Minoan artifacts were first excavated more than a century ago, Molloy said, and archaeologists painted a picture of a peaceful civilization where war played little to no role. Molloy doubted these tales; Crete was home to a complex society that traded with major powers such as Egypt, he said. It seemed unlikely they could reach such heights entirely cooperatively, he added.

"As I looked for evidence for violence, warriors or war, it quickly became obvious that it could be found in a surprisingly wide range of places," Molloy said.

War or peace?
For example, weapons such as daggers and swords show up in Minoan sanctuaries, graves and residences, Molloy reported in November in The Annual of the British School at Athens. Combat sports were popular for men, including boxing, hunting, archery and bull-leaping, which is exactly what it sounds like.

Hunting scenes often featured shields and helmets, Molloy found, garb more suited to a warrior's identity than to a hunter's. Preserved seals and stone vessels show daggers, spears and swordsmen. Images of double-headed axes and boar's tusk helmets are also common in Cretian art, Molloy reported.

Even the yet-undeciphered language of Minoan may hint at a violent undercurrent. The hieroglyphs include bows, arrows, spears and daggers, Molloy wrote. As the script is untranslated, these hieroglyphs may not represent literal spears, daggers and weapons, he said, but their existence reveals that weaponry was key to Minoan civilization.

"There were few spheres of interaction in Crete that did not have a martial component," Molloy said.

Some of the violent nature of Minoan society might have been missed because archaeologists find few fortified walls on the island, Molloy wrote. It may be that the island's rugged topography provided its own defense, he said, leaving little archaeological evidence of battles behind.

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