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.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Thursday, July 15, 2010. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

Comments posted here do not represent the views or policies of the Archaeological Institute of America.