A student from Harvard University has unearthed an incense vessel in the shape of a bull’s head on an island off the coast of Bulgaria. The vessel, which is the only one of its kind to have been found in Bulgaria, dates to the sixth century B.C. “This really is the crown of our work on St. Kirik even just for this season,” said Kristina Panayotova, head of the excavation.

Volunteers digging at England’s Polesworth Abbey have uncovered Anglo-Saxon artifacts, including rare, decorated medieval floor tiles, a pin, a window frame, a lead cloth seal, coins, clay pipes, glass fragments, roof tiles, and pottery.

Hundreds of bones from extinct megafauna, including mastodons, mammoths, camels, horses, deer, and glyptodons, have been found at a construction site north of Mexico City. The bones could be between 10,000 and 12,000 years old. A tooth that may be human has also been recovered. “It is not strange because we know that man already lived in the central Mexico region during that period,” said archaeologist Alicia Bonfil Olivera of Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History.

A 2,000-year-old unfinished jaguar sculpture weighing nearly a ton has been discovered in Mexico’s Izapa archaeological zone. The stone “is only engraved on one of its sides with the form of a jaguar, with the front and back paws flexed as if it were lying down,” said Emiliano Gallaga of the National Anthropology and History Institute.

Recent heavy rains and flooding in Senegal have uncovered shell jewelry, pottery, and iron and stone tools at a construction site in Dakar. The artifacts could be between 4,000 and 9,000 years old. “The exact date will only be known after tests are carried out,” said Moustapha Sall of Cheikh Anta Diop University.

Scientists have mapped the complete genome of the Denisovans, an extinct relative of modern humans, from the tiny finger bone of a young girl. The first Denisovan fossils, which include only the finger bone and two teeth, were discovered in a Russian cave in 2008. “No one thought we would have an archaic human genome of such quality,” said Matthias Meyer of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Tuesday, September 4, 2012. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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