An eighteenth-century ship and a 100-pound anchor have been discovered at Ground Zero, the site of the former Twin Towers in lower Manhattan. The ship was probably used as landfill to expand the city into the Hudson River.

Genetic analysis of humans, monkeys, and other primates had placed the split between hominoids and Old World monkeys at 35 to 30 million years ago, but new fossils unearthed in Saudi Arabia suggest that the split occurred some 28 million years ago. “It’s not a monkey, it’s not an ape – it’s this intermediate, a precursor fossil for all apes and Old World monkeys,” said Iyad Zalmout of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.  Here’s more on the new fossil creature, dubbed Saadanius hijazensis.  

Researchers from the Carnegie Institution for Science have published a paper on the human impact on prehistoric climate change. “We’re not saying this was a big effect. … But it’s a human effect,” said Chris Field, director of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology.  

A large 3,000-year-old house is being excavated in southeastern Finland.  

The Lighthouse Archaeological Maritime Program team lifted a 250-year-old cauldron from a buried shipwreck off the coast of St. Augustine, Florida. A spoon may be stuck inside it. “It would be nice if it were a Spanish wreck. We don’t know. It might be British,” said museum director Kathy Fleming.  

Scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) broadcasted their efforts to map the wreck of the Montana, which sank in Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary in 1914. “We want to keep everything intact so that future divers can explore it. Just because something is a marine sanctuary doesn’t mean you should stay out. It’s like we say, ‘Take only pictures, leave only bubbles,” said maritime archaeologist Cathy Green. 

Continued excavation of Chimney Point, at the Vermont side of the new Lake Champlain Bridge, has revealed a French fort, pottery, musket balls, buttons, animal remains, a glass bottle dating to the Revolutionary War, and evidence of human occupation 9,000 years ago.  

Some of the German soldiers captured in North Africa during World War II were housed at Whitewater Lake internment camp in Canada, where they worked on logging projects. “These prisoners of war actually volunteered to go to this camp where they would be working, so they knew what to expect: better conditions, better food… but they would be working,” said archaeologist Adrian Myers, whose Ph.D. advisor Barbara Voss, called “one of the leaders in what is called contemporary archaeology.”  

A six-foot-long wooden pipe thought to have held early telephone cables in the late nineteenth century was uncovered in Wilmington, North Carolina.  

Precautions are being taken in order to prevent DNA contamination during the excavation of what could be a Bronze Age skeleton in Sedgeford, England. The ongoing Sedgeford Historical and Archaeological Research Project aims to discover the history of human settlement in the town. “We’ve almost pushed that back 2,000 years for people living in the area,” said project director Gary Rossin.  

In Turkey, a well-preserved Byzantine church has been found below ground level at the ancient city of Myra. “The church most probably belongs to the twelfth century A.D., but we will be able to determine its exact period once we enter the building,” said Engin Akyurek of Istanbul University.

An ancient Roman canal that may have connected Portus, on the mouth of the Tiber River, with Ostia has been found using ground-sensing equipment. It had been thought that goods coming into Rome on ocean-going ships from Africa had been carried overland on the Via Flavia. “We know of other, contemporary canals which were 20-40 meters wide, and even that was big. But this was so big that there seems to have been an island in the middle of it, and there was a bridge that crossed it. It was unknown until now,” said archaeologist Simon Keay.

A Roman cemetery containing 46 sets of human remains was found beneath a pub in Caistor, England, which was once home to a Roman fortress.  

A large village dating to AD 600 is being excavated in Illinois ahead of road construction. The team of archaeologists, students, and volunteers has not found any residences yet, but they have found trash and storage pits, including one that is bell shaped and floored with limestone.  

Visit Peru’s mountaintop fortress of Kuelap, built by the Chachapoyas, and the Leymebamba Museum with Frugal Traveler Seth Kugel.  

New radiocarbon dates for Ethiopia’s illuminated manuscripts known as the Garima Gospels suggest that they were made between AD 330 and 650. Scholars think that an analysis of the 20 different species of birds in the illustrations may help them pinpoint where the illuminations were completed. The text, written in the ancient Ethiopian language of Ge’ez, was probably copied in Ethiopia.  

The skeletons of two Habsburg soldiers, their clothing, and weapons have been uncovered on the outskirts of the German port of Stralsund. They were killed during the Thirty Years War, from 1618 to 1648, while besieging the city.