One of two 42-foot-tall statues of Amenhotep III is being unearthed at his 3,400-year-old mortuary temple in Luxor. The temple was destroyed by flooding and an earthquake in 27 B.C. 

A doctor at the University of Vermont’s teaching hospital made high-powered CT scans of a 14-year-old Egyptian girl’s mummy. Those detailed images inspired the medical examiner and prosecutors to have similar scans made of children and infants who have died mysteriously in order to determine if the children were victims of crimes. “It’s not always the pattern of injuries that we find suggesting somebody did something wrong. There could be findings that nothing wrong happened or the story fits. It’s in the interest of truth,” explained radiology resident Jason Johnson. 

Ryan Parr of Lakehead University has analyzed mitochondrial DNA taken from a tiny bit of bone and three teeth belonging to the Titanic’s “Unknown Child.” Parr’s results, and a pair of leather shoes that were saved by a Halifax police sergeant in 1912, identified the 19-month-old boy as Sidney Leslie Goodwin. 

In Guatemala, scientists have used three-dimensional mapping tools to reveal some 100 buildings in the Maya city of Holtun. The structures, which were constructed between 600 and 300 B.C., are covered by several feet of earth and jungle foliage. Looters have dug tunnels into the buried city. 

Archaeologists and the government of Somaliland are working to protect the ancient rock art in the ten caves in Laas Geel, located between two dry riverbeds. “We know that the painters were pastoralists who lived in a much better climate than the present,” said archaeologist Sada Mire. 

Did humans and cave bears battle it out over prime living space 30,000 years ago? “Paleolithic humans used to kill large animals during their hunts, so they were able to kill cave bears,” said Celine Bon of the Institute of Biology and Technology in Saclay, France. 

Nine aircraft crash sites in Scotland dating to World War II will be surveyed next month. 

A special new hall will house artifacts that were recovered after Iraq’s National Museum was looted in 2003. Another new hall will be dedicated to former museum head Donny George, who died earlier this year. “The hall bearing Dr. Donny George’s name will be dedicated to conferences,” said Abdulzahra al-Talaqani, spokesperson for Iraq’s Antiquities Department. 

The members of a youth wilderness therapy group discovered an intact, 1,000-year-old bowl in remote southern Utah. Craig Harmon of the Bureau of Land Management thinks the bowl was made by the Fremont culture. “There’s not a chip or a scratch on it,” he said.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Tuesday, April 26, 2011. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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