The SS Terra Nova has been found off the southern coast of Greenland by a crew from the U.S.-based Schmidt Ocean Institute, which was testing its acoustic sonar on the rugged seafloor topography of that area. The three-masted ship was built in 1884, and was best known for carrying British explorer Robert Falcon Scott and his expedition to Antarctica in 1910. Scott and four of his men died in 1913, but the ship was put to other uses until it sank in 1943.

Archaeologists think they may have found the outer stockade wall trench for the first fur trading fort constructed in Edmonton, Canada. “It’s actually one of the earliest non-native structures in the entire city,” said archaeologist Nancy Saxberg. Artifacts that may have been used by the Blackfoot tribe have also been discovered at the construction site. The fort was built in 1802.

Conservation biologist Joshua Drew studied weapons made from sharks’ teeth by the people of the Gilbert Islands in the nineteenth century. He identified three species of shark that no longer live in the waters around the Gilbert Islands. There’s no evidence to suggest that the people who lived on these remote islands traded for the teeth. He thinks later commercial fishing in the early twentieth century may have wiped the sharks out. “They’re large fish, they grow slowly, they don’t give birth until they’re fairly old, and when they do give birth they don’t give birth to a lot,” he explained.

A male skeleton has been found in a three-chambered burial complex at the Atzompa Archaeological Zone in Oaxaca, Mexico. The 1,200-year-old burial chambers were located above ground and one of them is decorated with a mural of a ball game, which is unusual in Zapotec burial practices. “We are dealing with a building where the remains of people with a very high status were placed. Who they were and what role they played in Zapotec society is still to be determined based on the findings that are being made and their later analysis,” said Nelly Robles Garcia of Mexico’s National Anthropology and History Institute.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Friday, August 17, 2012. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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