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Ibis Mummies

21 November 2019
Archaeology

The ancient Egyptians mummified a number of different animals, from bulls to crocodiles. They also mummified the sacred Ibis bird – but did they harvest from the wild or were they domesticated. Rather than read the press release here is the full article in PLoS ONE online journal – go to https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0223964 … the authors claim to have discovered where they obtained so many Ibis – over the course of hundreds of years. Ibis played an important role in Egyptian religion.

 

On another tack we have the discovery of a fossilised shark (unlike any other shark) found in Kansas – in sediments belonging to the Interior Seaway (and dating to the Cretaceous). Se https://phys.org/news/2019-11-fossil-unexpected-discovery-million-year-o… … and we amy note it was found in central N America in what is regarded as a former sea (splitting N America in half).

At https://phys.org/news/2019-11-japan-uncover-fossil-bird-early.html … here we have more Japanese research. In this one Japanese and Chinese scientists have announced the finding and study of the fossilised remains of a Cretaceous era bird – not too different from modern birds. In fact, it even has the pygostyle, a bony triangular plate found at the back end of the backbone which occurs in modern birds (but not in some other Cretaceous bird fossils). It was found in a quarry in Japan.

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