Tag Archives: Bones

Deep in the labyrinth of the American Museum of Natural History, past the giant suspended blue whale and the first floor’s Alaska brown bears, is an unobtrusive locked door. On it, there is a small sign. “Bug Colony.” Behind the door, accessible only to a handful of museum employees, thousands of flesh-eating dermestid beetles toil around the clock handling a …

Gladiators battled lions and other wild animals in the arenas of the Roman Empire. But for all the tales of glorious combat depicted in ancient texts, marble reliefs and mosaics and then retold in movies and other modern media, archaeologists have never found direct physical evidence, like the skeletons of gladiators bearing animal-induced wounds. At last, proof of classical combat …

A South Carolina man pleaded guilty on Thursday to importing sperm whale teeth and bones from four countries and selling them in the United States, federal prosecutors said. The man, Lauren H. DeLoach, 69, of St. Helena Island, S.C., pleaded guilty to Lacey Act and Marine Mammal Protection Act charges for importing and selling sperm whale parts, according to the …

The banks of the Thames River have hosted human settlements for thousands of years, from Neolithic huts to the soaring skyscrapers of London. Evidence of bygone civilizations has been steadily deposited on the river’s muddy bottom for modern archaeologists to mine. Now, researchers in London have dated dozens of bones dredged from the river, creating a comprehensive database that has …