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A sunny day on the Moon, 19 November 1969. (NASA)

Baby Dinosaur Skeleton Unearthed In Canada

The tiny, intact skeleton of a baby rhinoceroslike dinosaur has been unearthed in Canada.

The toddler was just 3 years old and 5 feet (1.5 meters) long when it wandered into a river near Alberta, Canada, and drowned about 70 million years ago. The beast was so well-preserved that some of its skin left impressions in the nearby rock.

The fossil is the smallest intact skeleton ever found from a group of horned, plant-eating dinosaurs known as ceratopsids, a group that includes the iconic Triceratops.

Rare find

Finding intact baby dinosaurs is incredibly rare.

"The big ones just preserve better: They don’t get eaten, they don’t get destroyed by animals," said study co-author Philip Currie, a paleobiologist at the University of Alberta. “You always hope you’re going to find something small and that it will turn out to be a dinosaur.”

Paleontologists had unearthed a few individual bones from smaller ceratopsids in the past. But without intact juvenile skeletons, such bones aren’t very useful, as scientists don’t really know how each bone changes during each stage of the animals’ lives, Currie said.

The team was bone-hunting in Dinosaur Provincial Park in Alberta when Currie came upon what looked like a turtle shell sticking out from a hillside. Upon closer inspection, the fossil turned out to be a frill, the bony decorative headgear that surrounds the back of the head in ceratopsids.

When the team excavated, they found the fossilized skeleton of a tiny dinosaur they identified as a Chasmosaurus belli, a species commonly found in the area.

amorbidblog

EXTRAORDINARY KURGAN BURIAL SHINES NEW LIGHT ON SARMATIAN LIFE

A Sarmatian burial mound excavated this summer in Russia’s Southern Ural steppes has yielded a magnificent but unusual treasure.

The artefacts contained within the mound are helping to shed light on a little-known period of the nomadic culture that flourished on the Eurasian steppe in the 1st millennium BC.

The archaeological study of this remarkable ancient tomb, or kurgan, was carried out by the expedition of the Institute of Archaeology (Russian Academy of Sciences), led by Professor Leonid T. Yablonsky.

(Source: Past Horizons)

browndresswithwhitedots

mortem-irena-blog

Cover of the Gospel Book of Otto III (with tenth-century Byzantine ivory panel) c. 1000

Detail from the Arch of Titus: Roman soldiers carry the menorah and other spoils from the Sack of Jerusalem 70 AD.

Destroyed Magnificence:

On the morning of 28 August AD 70, the Roman supreme military commander Titus called together his generals for a last briefing before the final assault on Jerusalem. The campaign to crush the rebellion of the Jews of the province of Judaea had stretched over three years, culminating in a grim five-month siege of Jerusalem itself.

The Temple dominated the city and the surrounding countryside. It was the largest and most awe-inspiring religious monument in the world. It glittered with gold and shining white stone, and its magnificence staggered even the hard-nosed Titus, the future Emperor of Rome. It was also the central, symbolic stronghold of the Jews.

When the fighting was over, the Romans, ever thorough, completely ploughed over the site. So thorough were they in fact that not one stone or artefact from the sacred building of the Temple itself has survived to the modern era. Among the other rich spoils, Titus took the Temple’s famous seven-branched golden candelabrum [menorah] back to Rome, where it was paraded in triumph before the citizens, a victory celebration recorded for posterity on the Arch of Titus.

-The Temple of Jerusalem, S. Goldhill

The Arch of Titus is located to the south-east end of the Roman Forum, and was constructed c. 82 AD by the Roman Emperor Domitian soon after the death of his elder brother Titus to commemorate his victories.

Photos courtesy & taken by Roger Ulrich.