#beautifulcorpses

[beautifulcorpses]

Chapter ???

Before April 1st becomes April 2nd, and in the spirit of #BeautifulCorpses , I wanted to present to you a fine example of #NotFakeScience #AprilFools !

 Folks, meet what once was considered a very early member of the Homo genus: Homo diluvii testis !

Yeah, so... It’s known now to have been a giant Miocene salamander, dubbed Andrias scheuchzeri. An early representative of the species including the Chinese giant water salamander, amongst others.

 But when it was first uncovered in 1726, Swiss physician Johann Jakob Scheuchzer believed a man looked at him from the rock - its name literally translated to “Man, witness of the Deluge”.

Perhaps it could be compared to the Piltdown Man in England, in that it took a lot longer than what’d be normal for someone to call bullshit - 32 YEARS. That’s like an entire generation of people figuring that this was a person.

 From there, it flip-flopped from consideration as a catfish, a lizard, and finally a salamander - but never again a man. And thank God, honestly.

Some have claimed that, given the fragmentary appearance of the fossil, it could’ve been mistaken for a VERY destroyed human skeleton... though I wonder how much Mr. Scheuchzer might’ve been kidding, or at least not been serious... 

 I mean the guy was a DOCTOR

The lack of serious thought might’ve been endemic to the science at the time. For another example of this, we can point to the first dinosaur fossil ever discovered and described in Western science, Scrotum humanum.

(to whit: this was a piece of a leg bone of Megalosaurus, the first dinosaur described as such in the science. In a world where the first name managed to stay...)

I’ll close with this incredible interpretation by C. M. Koseman for “All Yesterdays”, of what a humanoid with A. scheuchzeri’s proportions would’ve *really* looked like...

 Happy #AprilFoolsDay everybody!!! Hope you enjoyed this brief #NotFakeScience adventure

[beautifulcorpses]

Chapter 1: Claws

On a crisp day in 1924, workers with Buxton Limeworks in Taung, South Africa, found some remains within exploded tufa-rock. The rock was full of secret spaces, so bones were no surprise.

This, however, was a head. The head was 2.3 million years old.

The head was put over the fireplace of the lime company’s director. If not for an intern at the University of Witwatersrand, it may have stayed there.

The head had belonged to a child about 3 or 4 years old at death. Due to their growth rate, they would have appeared 7.

2 million years ago, the tufa-rock of the limestone mines would have been mud, in a vast river floodplain. Megafauna would’ve shaped landscapes through their foraging. And between the trees, Australopithecus africanus did well to avoid them, in egalitarian family groups.

This child at Taung, like many their age at the time, would have traveled with their parents in one such group. One can imagine them sitting upon their parents’ back, chattering excitedly, watching the birds above go by.

Until one such bird came down to meet them.

Eagles today are known to catch primates, and eagles then were the same. A. africanus was not very large either - coming to about 3 feet. It would have been no surprise to watch a great bird carrying off someone.

But how it must have been to watch it happen to a child...

The head of the Taung Child is all that remains, but we can learn much through forensic analyses. Their tiny skull was peppered with ugly scratches, from talons able to pierce bone.

The child could even have watched the bird push its claws through right above their eye.

It would take decades before being more than an oddity, but today, it stands as one of the most important fossils in human evolution.

The Taung Child is a treasure-trove of data into our ancestors’ development - and a reminder of nature’s white-hot, dispassionate cruelty.

[beautifulcorpses]

Chapter 3: Stuck

Altamura - “The Other Troy”, once. A beautiful city amongst beautiful cities, almost 75,000 people calling it home. Famous for a storied history, and for exquisite bread.

It is also famous for a body discovered there, not 10 months after I was born.

Those living there knew of the cave Lamalunga - treacherous, but beautiful as well. But it was in October of 1993 when researchers came upon a karst sinkhole 30 feet deep. This led to a tunnel 200 feet long. This led to (in my opinion) one of the truly #BeautifulCorpses .

This corpse had belonged to a man, a man built more rugged even than others of his kind. The name of his kind is owed to the Neander Valley in France, yet 150,000 years ago, they were here. At his death, he had been 35 years of age - physically, 70 in Neanderthal-years.

Enough has told us that he wouldn’t have been alone in life. Neanderthals exhibited as much social complexity as we humans did in those early days. 150,000 strong, Homo neanderthalensis covered a large territory in small, but intimate groups.

So why was he alone in death?

Those with the Centro Altamurano Ricerche Speleologiche group had to find the karst sinkhole. Long before you, I, or Altamura’s Man, water had fallen across limestone and carved it through. C.A.R.S. had to find it with flashlight and tools.

All our Man had were his eyes.

It took one false step, with shoes of hide, on limestone made slick with water. He would’ve fallen, down, down, down. Almost 250 feet, he would have fallen, until the tunnel became too slim to fit. He would have gotten caught, and he would have gotten stuck.

Upside down.

One can only hope that the fall broke his neck. The fall was rough, but not itself deadly. Altamura Man would have hung there, starving, thirsting. It can take days for such wasting to kill you. In the dark. Cold. Wet.

What strikes me personally, though, is his isolation.

Altamura Man spent his last moments in darkness, unable to move, without those he loved. Perhaps he called out, to no answer. Perhaps he begged whatever waited in the dark, to get it over with. In the end, nothing waited for him. He faded.

Then something amazing happened.

His clothing and flesh succumbed to bacteria - no worms this deep. His body piled up in a heap at his chin. Calcium carbonate dripped and pooled onto his bones, replacing some molecules but cradling others. It would result in an impossibly delicate, gorgeous preservation.

The preservation was so precise as to save the cartilage in his nose... let alone the first samples of Neanderthal DNA. It has since changed how we think of ourselves, and our relatives, as species on this earth. And it was through one man’s terror far beneath the earth.

[beautifulcorpses]

Chapter 5: [mystery]

What defines a mystery? Can it be a question that no one is alive to intimately answer?

We are piecing together a mystery now, made of bits and scraps of human meat. Several of these were found in Russia. The biggest was found hundreds of miles away.

Baishiya Karst Cave. A beautiful cavern overlooking the Xia River. A sanctuary for those who practice Buddhism in the Tibetan style. When we last saw karst, it trapped a man in Altamura.

Perhaps it is true to form, then, that a piece of someone’s head was found here, too.

In 1980, a part of someone’s jaw was reported to be found in the Baishiya Karst Cave by a meditating monk. Moving between hands, it came to the desk of Dong Guangrong at Lanzhou University. It was then recorded and stored. They did not have the resources to move forward.

Decades passed, perhaps there’s more we know now. Dong Guangrong’s pupil, Chen Fahu, certainly felt so. But what we don’t know of this one can fill a book all its own. How strange to come across a hole in our knowledge, of which we hadn’t known...

Here’s what we know now.

It is a piece of jawbone, the broad curve of an otherwise chinless face, huge teeth jutting up from the bone. The piece was loose, perhaps not as beautiful as those clutched in Altamura. A carbonate crust belies stone cradling the simplest pieces of flesh - protein...

From the carbonate crust, and the scraps trapped within rock, we have a greater picture. 160,000 years ago this one died, not long before Altamura’s man. Like him, too, did their pieces preserve.

But wasn’t of the kind from Neander Valley. This one was of Cave Denisova.

The pieces at Denisova Cave - named for a Russian hermit- read like samples from a serial killer’s trophy room. A finger, a tooth, a toe described as “robust”...The jaw at Xiahe is the largest we have. In fact, all that we know depends on the soft bits pulled from rock...

Simple DNA give us so much, so little we can read. 200,000 years separated this being at Xiahe from the man at Altamura. Those who live in Indonesia carry their mark. We may even have their face - though constructed through shaky methods.

We had no idea they were here.

We never had an inkling the Denisovans lived amongst us, yet here they were for a long time. They cohabited, they intermingled in so many places.

Baishiya Cave is a high-altitude, low-oxygen environment. This being predated the oldest human to do this by 120,000 years...

The name of the monk who found this piece hasn’t been adequately recorded. We know it was Jigme Tenpe Wangchug, the sixth Gungthang tulku, who recognized that this was a piece of someone so old that those studying the earth would be interested.

But what of who found it?

He’d been in a place known as peaceful. It’d be silent, save for the wind whistling through the karst. He’d be alone with the universe.

Then at some point, the universe would bring him a sign that he’s not alone - that he’s never been alone, amongst the unknowable dead.

The research that aligned this piece with the Denisovans - at this point, too new for an agreed-upon name - was conducted last year. We’re hungry for the knowledge we didn’t know was denied us. We’ve been combing through piece by piece.

Let’s hope we like what we find.

[beautifulcorpses]

Chapter 2: Over and Over

Madness is repetition.

Perhaps madness compelled a dusty tape recorder to belt “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” over and over, the evening of November 24th, 1974 - as 11 Westerners pored over the broken body they had found by the Awash River in Ethiopia.

The body was shattered into pieces, numbering in the hundreds. Less than half of the body recovered, and they delighted in every piece they found. Those from Ethiopia call the corpse “Dinkinesh” - “You are marvelous”. The Westerners took the tape-player’s cue that night.

“Lucy” wasn’t the first body found by the Awash, and wouldn’t be the last. Her mangled pieces toured the West for much of the late 2000s. She was laid behind glass in Addis Ababa, and has been there 6 years this May. Guests whisper, over and over: “You are marvelous”.

Dinkinesh is our Jane Doe - captivating to all, difficult to discern. She would’ve been 12 years when her body was broken - mature for her kind. As chance has it, she was a woman - or could carry child, as some women can. She stood at 3’7”, and saw out with familiar eyes.

Australopithecus afarensis saw over a world like Taung would a million years hence: dense forest, corralled by grass, serviced by megafauna. She may have spent more time in the trees, to avoid danger.

A twisted mind could call it funny then, how our Jane Doe fell to doom.

A body in so many pieces showed no signs of feasting, or even desperate scavenging. A single sharp tooth left a single mark upon her hip-bone, but folks have walked away from worse.

But perhaps Lucy didn’t walk towards death. Perhaps, 3 million years ago, she fell.

Force of impact would’ve started at her feet, moving up her body, shattering bones like dried clay. It is rare one could say “destroyed” of someone, but here it is.

It’s the damage that one sees in victims of accidents, suicides... or when one wants to fake the latter.

No suspects can be identified at this time. While this would’ve been the time when mates were selecting for compassion, anyone can tell you there is hatred in a small community. It would’ve been easy for some rival, jealous at her marvel, to give Lucy a gentle push...

The vertigo as Dinkinesh fell, down, down, down towards the cold ground... her stomach would turn and turn, over and over. It would have happened so quickly, but would the repetition have driven her mad? Could she still be feeling it, echoed through stone, into eternity?

A. afarensis has been known for over 45 years, and since has improved our understanding of our evolutionary context. She is a watershed in paleo-anthropological outreach, as well - so many have heard the name “Lucy”, over and over... “You are marvelous”, over and over...

[beautifulcorpses]

Beautiful Corpses:

Beginning/Intermission

It’s Friday the 13th, the first one of the year, 233 days till Halloween, that best of nights. It was about 132 days ago when I first began this, and soon it will be time to finish it.

Welcome to #BeautifulCorpses . Let me introduce myself.

My name is Thomas Rohrer. You may or may not know my usual tumblr @lusciouslusus , but lately I’ve been forgoing that for Twitter. There, I’ve been trying to blend my usual posting content (or liking content, more like) with a greater venture: science communication.

In my pursuit of higher education in anthropology and human evolution, I’ve been struck with the want to show the rest of the world why I find t so fascinating, and what unique stories can be told through this greater human condition.

Last year, I was inspired by taphonomy, the study of how fossils get to be how they are. In looking over some of the more famous fossils we have, I was struck with how tragic, even terrifying, many of them are. Drowned, buried, torn to pieces... these were once, more or less, people with their own stories to tell. At one point, they would’ve been a grisly sight.

So, I wrote a series of short pieces for the month of October, though late in that month. Remembering an old quote - “live fast, die young, and leave behind a beautiful corpse” -, I titled it as such you see here. I wrote 6 pieces, as Twitter threads, each highlighting a different individual- some known across the world, others whose stories aren’t as well-known but deserve to be told.

Each of these were posted in the days leading up to Halloween. I researched well, and posted each at midnight - the legendarily frightening hour. I don’t know if anybody noticed these posts. I have some learning to do about how to engage with social media, for maximum exposure.

But, all is not lost. It’s a project I knew I would want to return to. And, I’m returning to it this year, bigger, more ambitious...

That was #BeautifulCorpses2019 . This year, I’ll welcome you to #BeautifulCorpses2020 .

For all 31 days of October, I have planned to highlight a different fossil specimen, and give their story as one might give the victim of an awful crime. Some of these, in fact, have been, which we’ll see as we move forward. Many simply died quietly - but their stories will be told.

At the same time, I’ll be posting a fuller blog version to this blog. I’ll do my best to connect them, and perhaps put more information on this blog too - especially sources. Course, why would I be writing this now in March?

Luckily for all of you, I’ve archived #BeautifulCorpses2019 , and I’ll release it on here! This will give this part of the internet a small taste of what I intend to bring later this year, and perhaps I can better piece together the project as a whole.

Feel free to explore, to speculate, to enjoy. And brace yourselves. #BeautifulCorpses2020 is sure to delight. And, with hope, you’ll see these fossils and many like them as the #BeautifulCorpses they truly are.

[jeffreyjerfay]

This week's flowers! #nofilter #flowers #floral #florist #instaflowers #instaflorist #instafloral #purple #yellow #pink #alstroemeria #roses #gladiolus #sunflowers #pretty #beautifulcorpses #flower #flowerpower #uplifting #brightening #bright