New mammal species discovered

A new species of mammal has been discovered in the mountains of Tanzania, scientists report.

The bizarre-looking creature, dubbed Rhynochocyon udzungwensis, is a type of giant elephant shrew, or sengi.

The cat-sized animal, which is reported in the Journal of Zoology, looks like a cross between a miniature antelope and a small anteater.

From the BBC.

Black Death mortality

Many historians have assumed that Europe's deadliest plague, the Black Death of 1347 to 1351, killed indiscriminately, young and old, hardy and frail, healthy and sick alike. But two anthropologists were not so sure. They decided to take a closer look at the skeletons of people buried more than 650 years ago.

Their findings, published on Monday in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggest that the plague selectively took the already ill, while many of the otherwise healthy survived the infection.

From the NY Times.

A thief in the archives

From today's NY Times:

Until two weeks ago, Joseph Romito, a history buff, was not a person who trolled the Internet for artifacts related to the statesman John C. Calhoun, a 19th-century vice president.

But on Jan. 17, he happened to type the name into a search field on eBay, saw a listing for an obscure handwritten letter signed by Calhoun in 1823, and recalled having seen it somewhere else. . .

Mr. Romito's discovery led quickly to a state investigation, and on Monday resulted in charges being filed against the would-be seller, Daniel D. Lorello. Mr. Lorello, 54, has worked at the New York State Archives in Albany for 29 years. The state attorney general's office has charged him with several criminal counts, including grand larceny, criminal possession of stolen property, and scheming to defraud.

In a handwritten confession that the authorities obtained from Mr. Lorello on Thursday, he said he had been illegally selling rare books and documents from the state's collections since 2002. . .

"I estimate that I've taken more than 300 or 400 items in 2007 alone," Mr. Lorello wrote.

As I've noted before, eBay has become thieves' best friend and their worst enemy -- not due to any initiative on eBay's part, but rather because how it empowers investigators, official and unofficial. Can you imagine what it would take to seek out a Calhoun letter in a single antiques show, let alone all the autograph, political, book, and ephemera shows held in even part of the USA over the span of a year? Tracking down thieves has also been faciilitated not only by how eBay creates a paper trail -- no more cash and carry -- but also how the collectibles food chain has been radically shortened by online trading. Before eBay, an item of specialist interest could easily change hands several times before finding its way to and end buyer. Nowadays, it's more typical that something coming straight out of an attic or garage will sell on eBay directly to a collector, or to a specialist dealer who will then sell it to a collector.

The original of Islam: a lost archive, rediscovered

On the night of April 24, 1944, British air force bombers hammered a former Jesuit college here housing the Bavarian Academy of Science. The 16th-century building crumpled in the inferno. Among the treasures lost, later lamented Anton Spitaler, an Arabic scholar at the academy, was a unique photo archive of ancient manuscripts of the Quran.

The 450 rolls of film had been assembled before the war for a bold venture: a study of the evolution of the Quran, the text Muslims view as the verbatim transcript of God's word. The wartime destruction made the project "outright impossible," Mr. Spitaler wrote in the 1970s.

Mr. Spitaler was lying. The cache of photos survived, and he was sitting on it all along. The truth is only now dribbling out to scholars -- and a Quran research project buried for more than 60 years has risen from the grave.

Read the rest in the Wall Street Journal. Spotted via Archaeologica News.