ASLAN Hub | Exploring our ancient world

Sunken realms – the lost lands of Wales

There are legends of flooded lands around the coast of Britain and Ireland, and no more so than in Wales. These lands were inundated by the sea, through gradual sea level rise or during catastrophic […]

Recent survival of dinosaurs?

Given the discovery of soft tissue in dinosaur bones, and a very well-preserved fossilised dinosaur, one question being asked is: could dinosaurs have survived into much more recent times? The longstanding consensus is that (non-avian) […]

Featured book: ‘The Old Stones’ edited by Andy Burnham

5 December 2018

Andy Burnham has edited a book called The Old Stones: A Field Guide to the Megalithic Sites of Britain and Ireland; published by Watkins Publishing as of September 2018. It is not the intention here […]

“Controversial but promising” – the Electrical Universe theory

2 November 2018

The Electric Universe theory has been described as “a controversial but promising theory where plasma and electric charge are responsible for most things that we take for granted”(1). If true, what implications does it have […]

The evolution of puppy dog eyes
on 17 June 2019 at 9:56 pm
Dogs have evolved new muscles around the eyes to better communicate with humans. New research comparing the anatomy and behavior of dogs and wolves suggests dogs' facial anatomy has changed over […]
Past climate change: A warning for the future?
on 17 June 2019 at 8:46 pm
A new study of climate changes and their effects on past societies offers a sobering glimpse of social upheavals that might happen in the future. The prehistoric groups studied lived in the Amazon […]
9,000 years ago, a community with modern urban problems
on 17 June 2019 at 8:46 pm
Bioarchaeologists report new findings from the ancient ruins of Çatalhöyük, in modern Turkey. The results paint a picture of what it was like for humans to move from a nomadic […]
Environmental oxygen triggers loss of webbed digits
on 13 June 2019 at 6:35 pm
Free fingers have many obvious advantages on land, such as in locomotion and grasping, while webbed fingers are typical of aquatic or gliding animals. But both amphibians and amniotes -- which […]
New 'king' of fossils discovered in Australia
on 13 June 2019 at 1:51 pm
Fossils of a giant new species from the long-extinct group of sea creatures called trilobites have been found on Kangaroo Island, South Australia. […]
Origins of cannabis smoking
on 12 June 2019 at 8:56 pm
A chemical residue study of incense burners from ancient burials at high elevations in western China has revealed psychoactive cannabinoids. The finding provides some of the earliest evidence for the […]
How multi-celled animals developed
on 12 June 2019 at 6:14 pm
New findings challenge the long-standing idea that multi-celled animals evolved from a single-celled ancestor resembling a modern sponge cell known as a choanocyte. […]
Rising sea levels destroyed evidence of shell middens at many prehistoric coastal sites
on 12 June 2019 at 6:14 pm
In a new study, researchers confirm a theory from the 1970s that coastal hunter-gatherers processed much of their shellfish at the beach before returning with their meat to camps on higher ground, […]
Old ice and snow yields tracer of preindustrial ozone
on 12 June 2019 at 6:13 pm
Using rare oxygen molecules trapped in old ice and snow, US and French scientists have answered a long-standing question: How much have 'bad' ozone levels increased since the start of the Industrial […]

Fossil teeth reveal ancient hyenas in the Arctic
on 18 June 2019 at 10:00 am
Modern hyenas are known as hunters and scavengers in Asian and African ecosystems such as the savanna. […]
Çatalhöyük: 9,000 years ago, a community with modern urban problems
on 17 June 2019 at 7:00 pm
Some 9,000 years ago, residents of one of the world's first large farming communities were also among the first humans to experience some of the […]
Oldest axial fossils discovered for the genus Australopithecus
on 14 June 2019 at 1:37 pm
Scientists have published an article describing the oldest axial fossils yet discovered for the genus Australopithecus. Dated 4.2 million years ago, […]
Proposal to mine fossil-rich site in New Zealand sparks campaign to protect it
on 14 June 2019 at 12:01 pm
An Australian company's application to mine a fossil-rich site in the south of New Zealand has been met with fierce criticism and a campaign to […]
Perfectly preserved head of Ice Age wolf found in Siberia
on 13 June 2019 at 8:30 pm
Russian scientists have found the furry head of an Ice Age wolf perfectly preserved in the Siberian permafrost. […]
New evidence suggests Scottish crannogs thousands of years older than thought
on 13 June 2019 at 1:40 pm
A pair of archaeologists, one with the University of Reading, the other the University of Southampton, has found evidence that suggests some crannogs […]
New statistical formulas for assigning sex to fossils
on 13 June 2019 at 1:18 pm
The CENIEH researcher Adrián Pablos is co-author of a paper which offers a methodology for assigning the sex to fossils of Homo sapiens and […]
New 'king' of fossils discovered on Kangaroo Island
on 13 June 2019 at 11:54 am
Fossils of a giant new species from the long-extinct group of sea creatures called trilobites have been found on Kangaroo Island, South Australia. […]
Rising sea levels destroyed evidence of shell middens at many prehistoric coastal sites
on 12 June 2019 at 6:00 pm
Archaeological remains of coastal occupation in the form of shell middens are commonly found on today's shorelines, and evidence for shellfish as a […]

Medieval Tower Discovered at Slovakian Castle 17 June 2019
MARKUŠOVSKÝ, SLOVAKIA—The Slovak Spectator reports that the base of a circular tower thought to date to the end of the thirteenth or beginning of the fourteenth centuries has been discovered at Markušovský Castle, which is located in eastern Slovakia. Markušovský Castle was first mentioned in historic documents dating back to A.D. 1284, when the Máriassy […]
Nineteenth-Century Artifacts Recovered in Canada 17 June 2019
NEWFOUNDLAND AND LABRADOR, CANADA—Archaeological investigation ahead of water and sewer maintenance work in the city of St. John’s has revealed a collection of 79 human teeth and other artifacts dating back to the nineteenth century, according to a report in The Chronicle Herald. The teeth were recovered from a wooden drain in the sewer system. […]
Colonial Tavern Site Uncovered in North Carolina 17 June 2019
GREENVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA—According to a report in The Charlotte Observer, researchers led by Charles Ewen of East Carolina University were investigating the colonial-era port of Brunswick Town when they discovered a cache of artifacts under the floorboards of a tavern that is thought to have burned down in the 1760s. The building’s walls collapsed over the […]

Giant Cambrian Trilobite Species Unearthed in Australia 14 June 2019
Paleontologists have unearthed fossils of a giant trilobite species that inhabited Australian waters approximately 500 million years ago (Cambrian period). Trilobites are a group of extinct marine arthropods that resemble modern-day horseshoe crabs and are related to modern crustaceans and insects. These creatures appeared in ancient oceans in the Early Cambrian period, about 540 million […]
30,000-Year-Old Head of Pleistocene Wolf Found in Siberian Permafrost 13 June 2019
A perfectly preserved head of a large wolf has been unearthed from the melting permafrost in eastern Siberia. The head of an adult wolf was found near the banks of the Tirekhtyakh River in the Yakutia region in 2018. The specimen was dug out of the permafrost by local man Pavel Efimov hunting for mammoth […]
Study: Pterosaurs Had Remarkable Ability to Fly from Birth 12 June 2019
Pterosaurs were winged flying reptiles that lived at the same time as dinosaurs, between 210 million and 65 million years ago. Previously, they were thought to only be able to take to the air once they had grown to almost full size, just like birds or bats. This assumption was based on fossilized pterosaur embryos […]

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