Scientists have identified fossilized hair from hyena coprolites found in South Africa. The hairs may have belonged to an early Homo sapiens or Homo heidelbergensis.

Carved stone tenon heads thought to be 4,000 years old were uncovered in Chupacoto, Peru.   

What could be a Viking ship has been spotted on the bottom of Sweden’s Lake Vanern. Sweden’s other Viking ships have all been uncovered in land burials.  

A newly discovered cave painting has revealed that Australia’s extinct marsupial “lion” had a striped back, a tufted tail, and pointed ears.  

In Honduras, an excavation at Copan has unearthed a skeleton that may have belonged to one of the first Maya kings. A roof in the temple of Oropendola had collapsed on top of the bones, leaving them in poor condition.  

Construction workers were demolishing a wall of a school that was once part of the Nazi death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau when they found a message in a bottle. “It was an attempt to leave a trace of our existence as we thought we were going to die,” said Waclaw Sobczak, whose name and the names of five other prisoners were written on the note, dated September 20, 1944.  

Four of Iran’s “salt men” will be fitted out with new protective cases. The natural mummies were uncovered at the Chehrabad Salt Mine, and have been damaged by moisture and insects in their current display cases.  

Some of the bacteria and fungi growing inside Lascaux Cave are becoming biocide resistant, according to microbiologist Claude Alabouvette of the University of Bourgogne. To complicate the efforts to protect the cave’s prehistoric paintings, the biocide breaks down into compounds that the damaging bacteria and fungi could use as nutrients. “Now we are wondering what is more dangerous, treating or not treating,” he said.  

The Acropolis Museum is set to open its doors on June 20, and Greek Minister for Culture and Athletics, Antonis Samaras, has reissued a request to the British Museum for the return of the Parthenon Marbles.  

Dan Vergano of USA Today investigates the lives of the Pazyryk people of the Altai Mountains.

In Iraq, local officials are rushing to prepare ancient monuments for tourists. “In Saddam’s time we dealt with officials who had a primary school education. They didn’t even know who Nebuchadnezzar or Hammurabi was. Now in some of these provinces we suffer from the same problem,” said Qais Hussein Rashid, chairman of the national board of antiquities. 

 A few foreigners have been allowed to excavate in China and collaborate with Chinese scholars since the reforms of the late 1980s. “China is a huge country that has a very long history and even longer prehistory all of which can be approached by archaeology. There is an infinite amount of work to be done,” said Rowan Flad of Harvard University.  

Construction workers uncovered a cave containing mammal bones and stone tools beneath a Buddhist temple in southern China.  

Here’s more information on Tell Heboua, the Egyptian mud-brick garrison at the ancient city of Tharu in the Sinai. “This city was used to protect Egypt and as a gate to the Delta. It was a post of control. If you wanted to cross the Nile, you asked for permission before you crossed the bridge,” said archaeologist Abdul Maqsoud.   

The Philippine Information Agency retells the story of the 1991 discovery of anthropomorphic burial jars in a cave in Mindanao. The jars date between 500 B.C. and 500 A.D.  

The Associated Press tracked down the woman who returned a slab of terra cotta that she and her husband took from Rome 25 years ago. “I was Googling online, trying to figure out if it was a crime first of all. I saw a line about stone robbers and went, ‘Oh my gosh,'” she said.  

Do you think the bust of Nefertiti could be a fake?