Paleontologist Alisa J. Winkler of Southern Methodist University says that human ancestors lived among abundant rodent populations. “Many paleoanthropologists are very interested in the faunal and ecological context in which our own species evolved,” she said.

Ten ancient coins have gone missing from a locked display case at the Anuradhapura Museum in Sri Lanka.  

A late nineteenth-century ship that ran aground in the 1920s has been exposed at Patea Beach, on New Zealand’s northern island.  

Can you spot a fake artifact? Discovery News and The Royal Ontario Museum want to know.  

National Geographic Daily News has more information on the discovery of children’s skeletons that bear evidence of ritual bloodletting sacrifice. The bones, which were cut with metal knives, were found with seeds from a paralytic and hallucinogenic plant at the site of Cerro Cerillos in northern Peru. 

Happy New Year! The news will return on Monday, January 3.

A Greek amphora manufactured on the isle of Lesbos has been unearthed at Tel Qudadi in Israel. Archaeologists from Tel Aviv University think the fortress was built by the Assyrian empire and used as a station for trade ships traveling between Egypt and Phoenicia.

A sixteenth-century ivory mask from West Africa has been pulled from a Sotheby’s auction because the Nigerian government claims it was looted from the country by British troops in the nineteenth century.  

Spiegel Online has photographs of the Celtic noblewoman’s tomb discovered in Germany’s Heuneburg hill fort site.  

Photographs of Allianoi, a second-century Roman spa city in Turkey, are posted at National Geographic Daily News. The city was reburied and will be flooded by the waters of the Yortanli Dam.  

Satellite imagery and digital maps of the Sahara Desert indicate that the largest hot desert in the world was once covered by a dense network of rivers, lakes, and inland deltas. Early modern humans may have been able to cross the Sahara using ancient waterways in order to migrate out of Africa.  

Bits of pottery inscribed with the names of priests have been uncovered at a temple dedicated to the crocodile god Soknopaios in Egypt’s Fayoum oasis. The fragments were used in ballot draws to assign religious roles.  

Archaeologists will investigate a Viking site in England’s Sherwood Forest known as Thynghowe.  

Thomas P. Campbell, director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, has written to The New York Times in response to the Op-Ed article, “Museums Should Dig In,” by archaeologist Bernard Frisher.  

Six archaeologists who study North American cultures released a letter objecting to the way their taped interviews have been edited by the producers of a DVD titled The Lost Civilizations of North America. The show claims that “Old World” and “New World” people made contact. “We want to make it clear that we do not support the theories presented in The Lost Civilizations of North America DVD,” they wrote.