Twelve people have been arrested in Spain for looting local archaeological sites. Police recovered more than 9,000 artifacts during the raid.

The discovery of 100 Roman coins by local men using metal detectors has led archaeologists to England’s western-most Roman town. “It is the beginning of a process that promises to transform our understanding of the Roman invasion and occupation of Devon,” said Sam Moorhead of the British Museum.

A new study suggests that open grasslands dominated East Africa for six million years, influencing the evolution of human ancestors. It had been thought that the region was forested up until two million years ago. “This study shows that during the development of bipedalism – about four million years ago – open conditions were present and even predominant,” said Thure Cerling of the University of Utah.

The Cibali Cistern is located near Istanbul’s Golden Horn, beneath the campus of Kadir Has University. The university wants to restore the cistern, which was built in the eleventh century with columns taken from other structures.

Archaeologists and divers from Texas State University have found a seventeenth-century wooden ship, or what could be traces of privateer Captain Henry Morgan’s five lost vessels at the mouth of Panama’s Chagres River.

The 33,000-year-old skull of a dog in the very early stages of domestication  has been found in Siberia’s Altai Mountains. “At this time, people were hunting animals in large numbers and leaving large piles of bones behind, and that was attracting the wolves,” said evolutionary biologist Susan Crockford.

Skeletons have been unearthed outside the boundaries of a church cemetery in Kempsey, England. Some of the burials could date to 500 A.D. “We thought the graveyard boundary was static and had remained where it was since the church was first built but this clearly shows it was much larger. It indicates Kempsey was a lot more important than the smaller village we have now,” said Tom Vaughan of the Worcestershire Archaeology Service.

Fragments of 13 Inuit skeletons that were excavated 40 years ago are being returned to northern Labrador. The remains will be reburied on Rose Island.

Highway construction in southern Utah has revealed five ancient Pueblo structures.

Archaeology students from the University of California, San Diego, have transformed a Microsoft Kinect game system into a handheld 3D scanner that they think can eventually be used in the field.

The Athens Acropolis will not open on the evening of the August full moon this year, which is normally the only time when archaeological sites are open after sunset. Damage to the monument and visitor injuries are cited.