Iberian dinosaur fossil trove

A spectacular dinosaur "graveyard" containing thousands of fossils has been discovered in eastern Spain, scientists say.

Eight different dinosaur species, including several kinds of armor-clad plant-eaters that were among the world's largest types of dino, have been identified among the 8,000 fossils found to date, according to experts excavating the site.

Uncovered last June during the construction of a high-speed rail link near the city of Cuenca (see map), the fossil boneyard may represent the largest and most diverse dinosaur site known in Europe, scientists say.

The 70-million-year-old fossils show a stunning array of dinosaur diversity for a period that is very poorly known in Western Europe, said paleontologist José Luis Sanz of Autonomous University in Madrid.

Full article here.

Art Institute Gaugin: it's a fake

Here's some hot news, spotted via the Cranky Professor. As he notes, some of the most successful forgeries have been those that play the Anastasia card, purporting to be what is lost, and ardently hoped to be found:

The Art Newspaper can reveal that a Gauguin sculpture bought by the Art Institute of Chicago ten years ago and described by the museum as a major rediscovery and one of its most important acquisitions of the last 20 years, is a fake. The work was made recently in the north of England.

Last month three members of the Greenhalgh family based in Bolton, Greater Manchester, were sentenced over charges relating to the forgery of the Egyptian Amarna Princess sculpture, bought by Bolton Museum in 2003.

We posted on the Bolton fake here; you can bet this isn't the last we've heard of the Greenhalgh's work, either.

On 26 November Scotland Yard told The Art Newspaper that a forged Gauguin ceramic of The Faun had also been sold by the Greenhalgh family. The police said that the Gauguin's "current whereabouts are unknown". We then tracked it down to Chicago.

The sculpture has been prominently displayed since its acquisition, and has been the subject of much scholarly attention -- with nary a suspicion being voiced.

So why was it that no one seems to have questioned the Gauguin? The sculpture appeared to be based on a tiny drawing of a faun sculpture in a sketchbook which the artist used in Martinique in 1887. A work entitled "Faun" was also listed in a Gauguin exhibition held at the Nunès and Fiquet gallery in Paris in 1917. These references are noted in Christopher Gray's Gauguin sculpture catalogue (1963) and Merete Bodelsen's authoritative study of Gauguin's ceramics (1964).

It seems that the Greenhalghs set out to recreate this missing sculpture. What is astonishing is that they were able to design and fire such a successful stoneware forgery, which had no obvious features to reveal it as a modern fake.

You don't get that good doing just one.

Had the Greenhalghs not been prosecuted over the Amarna Princess, The Faun could well have remained on display as a Gauguin for decades, unrecognised as a modern forgery.

Full article here. There is a good article on the Greenhalghs (with plenty of further links) at Wikipedia, which notes:

Forty-four forgeries were discussed during the trial, and 120 were known to have been presented to various institutions. However, given the family's bank records only extended back for a third of the period they were operating, and Shaun Greenhalgh's high level of productivity, there are probably many more. On raiding the Greenhalgh home police discovered many raw materials and "scores of sculptures, paintings and artefacts, hidden in wardrobes, under their bed and in the garden shed." In fact, "there can be little doubt that there are a number of forgeries still circulating within the art market."

Chemically-enhanced athletes

When I read this:

The International Olympic Committee has stripped sprinter Marion Jones of her five 2000 Olympic medals after she admitted taking banned substances.

The American athlete's results dating back to September 2000 were erased last month by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF).

it got me wondering yet again if the threat of retroactive punishment would be enough to put a dent in what looks like rampant doping in any number of sports (cycling being only the most prominent and egregious). Perhaps elite athletes are so obsessed with winning in the here and now that they would pay no heed to the possibility of future penalties. Nonetheless, it seems to me that were there many more cases like Jones', the impact might be significant -- and especially if sponsors begin to demand millions in restitution and damages. Getting the word out that tests are getting more sophisticated by the year might also act as a deterrent, the upshot being that you might get away with doping for a while, but eventual detection would be inevitable.

Move over, T. rex

Fossils of a massive dinosaur unearthed a decade ago in the Republic of Niger, Africa, have been recognised as belonging to a new species.

Scientists say Carcharodontosaurus iguidensis was one of the largest meat-eaters that ever lived, rivalling T. rex in size and ferocity.

The 95-million-year-old fossils have been kept in a Chicago laboratory for several years, awaiting classification.

A student stumbled on the remains and realised they were important.

From the BBC.

Prodigies of mental calculation

Is this for real? Well, everyone's wired differently:

Alexis Lemaire used brain power alone to work out the answer to the 13th root of a random 200-digit number in 70.2 seconds at London's Science Museum.

The 27-year-old student correctly calculated an answer of 2,407,899,893,032,210, beating his record of 72.4 seconds, set in 2004.

The so-called 'mathlete' used a computer package to randomly generate a number before typing in the answer.

Mr Lemaire began demonstrating his mental calculation prowess by finding the 13th root of a random 100-digit number.

This feat soon became too easy for him and he abandoned trying to improve his time when he calculated an answer in less than four seconds in 2004.

From the BBC. More on how he does it here:

Lemaire explains that what he does is about transforming raw numbers into other structures so he can "see" the answer to the problem.

"When I think of numbers sometimes I see a movie, sometimes sentences. I can translate the numbers into words. This is very important for me. The art is to convert memory chunks into some kind of structure.

"I see images, phrases, actions. It's very tactile, sensitive. I have these associations between places and numbers. Some places are imaginary, I try to vary so I don't confuse the numbers. It's important to memorise. I have to be precise."

Lemaire's explanation is similar to that of British savant Daniel Tammet. Tammet set the world record for reciting pi at more than 22,000 digits at the museum in 2004.

To him, each number has a distinct colour and appearance, some beautiful, some not, with each complex calculation making up a landscape.

I have heard similar explanations from other mathematically gifted persons; ditto from the musically gifted. Alas, for me a number is just a number, a note, just a note.

Why the 13th root? Read more at Wikipedia, and at the 13th Root website.

Airburst over the Americas!

Startling evidence has been found which shows mammoth and other great beasts from the last ice age were blasted with material that came from space.

Seven tusks dating to some 35,000 years ago all show signs of having being peppered with meteorite fragments.

The ancient remains come from Alaska, but researchers also have a Siberian bison skull with the same pockmarks.

The scientists released details of the discovery at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco, US.

They painted a picture of a calamitous event over North America that may have severely knocked back the populations of some species.

From the BBC.

Bioterror in the Middle East!

Infected rams and donkeys were the earliest bioweapons, according to a new study which dates the use of biological warfare back more than 3,300 years.

According to a review published in the Journal of Medical Hypotheses, two ancient populations, the Arzawans and the Hittites, engaged "in mutual use of contaminated animals" during the 1320-1318 B.C. Anatolian war.

"The animals were carriers of Francisella tularensis, the causative agent of tularemia," author Siro Trevisanato, a molecular biologist based in Oakville, Ontario, Canada told Discovery News.

Also known as "rabbit fever," tularemia is a devastating disease which even today can be fatal, if not treated with antibiotics. Its symptoms range from skin ulcers, swollen and painful lymph glands to pneumonia, fever, chills, progressive weakness and respiratory failure.

From Discovery News.

Oldest polar bear?

What may be the oldest known remains of a polar bear have been uncovered on the Svalbard archipelago in the Arctic.

The jawbone was pulled from sediments that suggest the specimen is perhaps 110,000 or 130,000 years old. . .

The find is a surprise because polar bears are a relatively new species, with one study claiming they evolved less than 100,000 years ago.

From the BBC.