Category: Archaeology World

In recent times, India has strengthened its reputation through some phenomenal finds made in a number of caves in the Bihar region. India is one of the oldest cultures in the world.

India is the country where you discover every day a lot of temples and artifacts that are so advanced for the era in which they were built that scientists cannot explain.

Remember the Padmanabhaswami temple or the Weerahhadra temple where a 2000-year-old image of a bicyclist can be seen carved on one of the walls? Two artificial bunkers were recently discovered in Barabar and Nagarjuna, both located in the Bihar area.

According to the researchers, these bunkers were made 2600 years ago.

According to the inscriptions found inside these bunkers, it appears that some sort of ascetic Buddhist or Hindu would have been sheltered there.

The details regarding the construction of these bunkers are extremely interesting. The finishes are perfect. Perfect cuts and angles in stone.

Considering the huge age of these bunkers, they were almost impossible to build with the technology of that time. These details, I’m thinking of technology unknown to the people of that time.

Maybe even assuming that these bunkers could be built with extraterrestrial technology.

Researchers argue on the purpose of these bunkers, but my question is who built them?

In many cases, the world below us is just as fascinating as the ground we walk on. Across Europe, there is a hidden, often millennia-old subterranean realm of tunnels stretching from the north in Scotland leading down to the Mediterranean.

A Vast Underground City Where You Can Get Lost

This vast labyrinth of 12 hectares lies beneath the plateau of Limanu. Researchers started to investigate the place in 1916 and discovered traces left by humans, carved walls and ceilings, and ancient ceramic fragments.  Drawings and inscriptions in Roman and Cyrillic alphabets on the walls prove the cave was inhabited between the 1st century BC and 10th century AD.

The labyrinth is vast, with a total length of passages approximately 3.5 km. Dacians used it to hide from the Roman proconsul Marcus Licinius Crassus (c. 115 B.C. —53 BC), who played a vital role in transforming the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire. The cave’s early inhabitants used a marking system to avoid getting lost.

Approximately 4,000 meters in length, Limanu Cave is the longest in Dobrogea. It has a chaotic branching of galleries, like the street network of an ancient city. Some researchers believe that at least some of the galleries were entirely dug by human beings, as there are tooling marks on the walls. Certainly, Limanu Cave represented an important human refuge, even since Dacian times.

The network of galleries resembles a city street map, like the street network of an ancient city developed chaotically, thus the impression of an underground city.

Remarkable Galleries

Some of the galleries have rectangular, very regular sections, and it seems humans carved them as signs of chiseling are visible. In order to avoid the collapse of ceilings, supporting walls and pillars were built in limestone slabs.

The drawings of galloping horses are of particular interest, while their riders have faces displayed from the front. Their silhouette and presentation strikingly resemble those of Dacian riders depicted on pottery discovered in many settlements in the area inhabited by Thraco-Dacians.

The earliest drawings are very likely from the prosperous time of the Geto-Dacian culture, the time when the cave was furnished as well. Other pictures show Christian religious symbols, letters, or words in the Cyrillic alphabet. This artwork belongs to the Roman-Byzantine period and the subsequent times.

According to Ph.D. Adina Boroneant, “Vasile Pârvan” Institute of Archaeology, Romanian Academy, the Limanu Cave was a shelter for the local population until later, 10th-11th centuries AD.

Surveys have revealed archaeological material proving that local Dacians inhabited the cave even in that era. Existing evidence allows us to assume that a local Geto-Dacian authority ordered the maze of Limanu as a defense measure against the Roman danger.” The account of Dio Cassius shows that the cave was a place of refuge, purposefully chosen and renovated, not some adventitious cavern,” Ph.D. Boroneant writes in his ‘Labirintul subterrane de la Limanu’ (The Underground Labyrinth of Limanu).

Tales  Of Mysterious Sounds Coming From Underground Realms

Local stories mention strange and frightening wails like a prolonged high-pitched cry of grief, pain, or anger coming from the depths of the earth.

A scientific explanation for these strange sounds provided by speleologists is that the eerie wails are produced by the wind that sweeps through many underground galleries at Limanu. This noise affects the human psyche.

The cavern has a unique characteristic: although it is located on a complex of lakes and close to the Black Sea, it is so impenetrable that not even water can pass through.

Being located near the border with Bulgaria, Limanu cave had the reputation of a tunnel carrying fugitives across the border, particularly during the communist time.

There are many reasons to suspect the Dobrogea caves are hiding mysteries still waiting to be discovered.

An enormous system of caves, chambers and tunnels lies hidden beneath the Pyramids of Giza, according to a British explorer who claims to have found the lost underworld of the pharaohs. Populated by bats and venomous spiders, the underground complex was found in the limestone bedrock beneath the pyramid field at Giza.

Collins, who will detail his findings in the book “Beneath the Pyramids” to be published in September, tracked down the entrance to the mysterious underworld after reading the forgotten memoirs of a 19th-century diplomat and explorer.

“In his memoirs, British consul general Henry Salt recounts how he investigated an underground system of ‘catacombs’ at Giza in 1817 in the company of Italian explorer Giovanni Caviglia,” Collins said.

The document records that the two explored the caves for a distance of “several hundred yards,” coming upon four large chambers from which stretched further cave passageways.

With the help of British Egyptologist Nigel Skinner-Simpson, Collins reconstructed Salt’s exploration on the plateau, eventually locating the entrance to the lost catacombs in an apparently unrecorded tomb west of the Great Pyramid.

Indeed, the tomb featured a crack in the rock, which led into a massive natural cave.

“We explored the caves before the air became too thin to continue. They are highly dangerous, with unseen pits and hollows, colonies of bats and venomous spiders,” said Collins.

According to Collins, the caves — which are tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of years old — may have both inspired the development of the pyramid field and the ancient Egyptian’s belief in an underworld.

“Ancient funerary texts clearly allude to the existence of a subterranean world in the vicinity of the Giza pyramids,” Collins told Discovery News.

Indeed, Giza was known anciently as Rostau, meaning the “mouth of the passages.”

This is the same name as a region of the ancient Egyptian underworld known as the Duat.

“The ‘mouth of the passages’ is unquestionably a reference to the entrance to a subterranean cave world, one long rumoured to exist beneath the plateau,” Collins told Discovery News.

Collins’ claim is expected to cause a stir in the Egyptological world.

Zahi Hawass, chief of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, has dismissed the discovery.

“There are no new discoveries to be made at Giza. We know everything about the plateau,” he stated.

But Collins remarks that after extensive research, he found no mention of the caves in modern times.

“To the best of our knowledge, nothing has ever been written or recorded about these caves since Salt’s explorations. If Hawass does have any report related to these caves, we have yet to see it,” Collins said.

The Theopetra Cave is an archaeological site situated in Meteora, in the central Greek region of Thessaly. As a result of the archaeological excavations that have taken place over the years, it has been revealed that the Theopetra cave was inhabited by human beings as early as 130,000 years ago.

In addition, evidence of human habitation in the Theopetra Cave can be dated without interruption from the Middle Palaeolithic to the end of the Neolithic period.

This is significant, as it allows archaeologists to have a better understanding of the prehistoric period in Greece.

The archaeological excavation of the Theopetra Cave began in 1987 and continued up until 2007. This project was directed by Dr Nina Kyparissi-Apostolika, who served as the head of the Ephorate of Palaeoanthropology and Speleography when the excavations were being carried out.

It may be mentioned that when the archaeological work was first conducted, the Theopetra Cave was being used by local shepherds as a temporary shelter in which they would keep their flocks.

It may be added that the Theopetra Cave was the first cave in Thessaly to have been archaeologically excavated, and also the only one in Greece to have a continuous sequence of deposits from the Middle Palaeolithic to the end of the Neolithic period. This is significant, as it has allowed archaeologists to gain a better understanding of the transition from the Palaeolithic to the Neolithic way of life in mainland Greece.

Several interesting discoveries have been made through the archaeological study of the Theopetra Cave. One of these, for instance, pertains to the climate in the area when the cave was being occupied.

By conducting micro-morphological analysis on the sediment samples collected from each archaeological layer, archaeologists were able to determine that there had been hot and cold spells during the cave’s occupation. As a result of these changes in the climate, the cave’s population also fluctuated accordingly.

Another fascinating find from the Theopetra Cave is the remains of a stone wall that once partially closed off the entrance of the cave. These remains were discovered in 2010 and using a relatively new method of dating known as Optically Stimulated Luminescence, scientists were able to date this wall to around 23000 years old.

The age of this wall, which coincides with the last glacial age, has led researchers to suggest that the wall had been built by the inhabitants of the cave to protect them from the cold outside. It has been claimed that this is the oldest known man-made structure in Greece, and possibly even in the world.

A year before this incredible discovery was made, it was announced that a trial of at least three hominid footprints that were imprinted onto the cave’s soft earthen floor had been uncovered.

Based on the shape and size of the footprints, it has been speculated that they were made by several Neanderthal children, aged between two and four years old, who had lived in the cave during the Middle Palaeolithic period.

In 2009, the Theopetra Cave was officially opened to the public, though it was closed temporarily a year later, as the remains of the stone wall were discovered that year. Although the archaeological site was later re-opened, it was closed once again in 2016 and remains so due to safety reasons, i.e. the risk of landslides occurring.

Some 30 years of archaeological and other types of scientific research around the ancient artefacts and human remains in the Grotte Mandarin, located in the Rhone River Valley in southern France, has revealed that humans may have arrived in Europe about 10,000 years earlier than originally thought.

This conclusion, drawn by an international team of researchers including Jason Lewis, PhD, of Stony Brook University, will help scientists rethink the arrival of humans into Europe and their replacement of and interactions with Neanderthals who also lived in the cave.

The research is detailed in a paper published in Science Advances.

Previous studies have suggested that the first modern humans reached the European continent – originally from Africa and via the Levant, the eastern Mediterranean crossroads – between 43,000 and 48,000 years ago.

But this discovery of modern human presence in the heart of the Rhone River Valley at Grotte Mandrin points to about 54,000 years ago.

The area of the cave excavated and analyzed that proved the evidence of modern human presence is Mandrin’s Layer E. It is sandwiched between 10 other layers of artefacts and fossils that contain evidence of Neanderthal life.

“The first curious signal to emerge during the initial decade of excavations were thousands of tiny triangular stone points, resembling arrowheads, some less than a centimetre in length,” explains Lewis.

“These had no technical precursors or successors in the surrounding Neanderthal layers.”

Lewis explained that the well-preserved cave, discovered in the 1960s, includes uppermost layers that contain materials from the Bronze Age and Neolithic periods. But over the past quarter-century, the international scientific team has analyzed three meters of sediment and evidence from the Paleolithic – a period when Neanderthals and their ancestors occupied Europe and periodically had contact with evolving modern humans.

The consensus theory until now was that these modern humans expanded into the southeastern European region about 50,000 years ago and the Neanderthals progressively disappeared.

The research involved analyses of various types of hundreds of fossils, stone tools, and ancient human teeth.

The team used radiocarbon and luminescence dating, DNA and another molecular testing, and lithic technological analysis.

Co-author Marine Frouin, PhD, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geosciences at Stony Brook University, completed luminescence dating work at Mandarin that helped estimate dates when humans occupied the cave.

“I joined the team in 2014 to obtain the first luminescence dates at the site,” explains Frouin.

“Due to advances in our dating methods and new collaborations that developed a few years later, we were able to put together a precise and robust timeline for when modern humans and Neanderthals were there.”

“Our overall discovery changes the landscape regarding the time humans arrived in Europe and raises other questions, some of which we think we can answer and others that require more investigation,” adds Lewis

Such questions are: How did modern humans know about the stone resources around the cave in France around the varied landscape in such a short time? Did they have relationships with Neanderthals, such as exchanging of information, and goods and acting as guides? Did these two hominin groups interbreed more frequently than science has previously suggested? Additional discoveries from Mandarin will soon be announced that will shed light on these and other questions about our ancient ancestors.

Separated by 10,000 years but linked by DNA! A 9,000 year old skeleton’s DNA was tested and it was concluded that a living relative was teaching history about a half mile away, tracing back nearly 300 generations!

Four years before, when Adrian Targett, a retired history teacher from Somerset, walked into his local news-agent’s, he was startled to see a familiar face staring up at him. That face, appearing on the front page of several newspapers, belonged to a distant relative of his — around 10,000 years distant, actually — known as Cheddar Man.

Ancient DNA from Cheddar Man, a Mesolithic skeleton discovered in 1903 at Gough’s Cave in Cheddar Gorge, Somerset, has helped Museum scientists paint a portrait of one of the oldest modern humans in Britain.

This discovery is consistent with a number of other Mesolithic human remains discovered throughout Europe. Cheddar Man is the oldest complete skeleton to be discovered in the UK and has long been hailed as the first modern Briton who lived around 7,150 BC. His remains are kept by London’s Natural History Museum, in the Human Evolution gallery.

The Cheddar Man earned his name, not because of his fondness for cheese, which likely wasn’t cultivated until around 3,000 years later, but because he was found in Cheddar Gorge in Somerset, England (which is, incidentally, where cheddar cheese originates).

Some 25 years ago, in an amazing piece of DNA detective work, using genetic material taken from the cavity of one of Cheddar Man’s molar teeth, scientists were able to identify Mr Targett, 62, as a direct descendant.

Analysis of his nuclear DNA indicates that he was a typical member of the Western European hunter-gatherer population at the time, with lactose intolerance, probably with light-coloured eyes (most likely green but possibly blue or hazel), dark brown or black hair, and dark/dark-to-black skin, although an intermediate skin colour cannot be ruled out.

There are a handful of genetic variants linked to reduced pigmentation, including some that are very widespread in European populations today. However, Cheddar Man had “ancestral” versions of all these genes, strongly suggesting he would have had a “dark to black” skin tone.

Now Cheddar Man is back in the headlines because a new study of his DNA, using cutting edge technology, has enabled researchers to create a forensic reconstruction of his facial features, skin and eye colouring, and hair texture. And the biggest surprise is the finding that this ancient Brit had ‘dark to black skin — and bright blue eyes. (A previous reconstruction, before detailed genetic sequencing tests were available, assumed a white face, brown eyes and a ‘cartoon’ caveman appearance.)

No one had thought to tell Mr Targett any of this or invite him to the unveiling of the new reconstruction of his ancestor at the Natural History Museum on Monday.

‘I do feel a bit more multicultural now,’ he laughs. ‘And I can definitely see that there is a family resemblance. That nose is similar to mine. And we have both got those blue eyes.’

The initial scientific analysis in 1997, carried out for a TV series on archaeological findings in Somerset, revealed Mr Targett’s family line had persisted in the Cheddar Gorge area for around nine millennia, their genes being passed from mother to daughter through what is known as mitochondrial DNA which is inherited from the egg.

To put it simply, Adrian Targett and Cheddar Man have a common maternal ancestor.

At less sunny latitudes, lighter skin would have conferred an evolutionary advantage because it absorbs more sunlight which is required to produce vitamin D, a nutrient vital for preventing disabling illnesses such as bone disease rickets. Later, when farming crops began to replace hunter-gatherer lifestyles and communities ate less meat, offal and oily fish — a dietary source of vitamin D — paler skins would have conferred an even greater advantage and accelerated the spread of relevant genes.

They report that over a period of 3,000 years, dark-skinned hunter-gatherers such as Mr Targett’s ancestors interbred with early farmers who migrated from the Middle East and who carried two genes for light skin (known as SLC24A5 and SLC45A2).

It is no surprise Cheddar Gorge remains Britain’s prime site for Palaeolithic human remains. Cheddar Man was buried alone in a chamber near a cave mouth. But it’s not just Adrian Targett who has links with him. Indeed for many modern Britons, Cheddar Man’s true face offers a uniquely close DNA encounter with their past. Modern Britons draw about 10 per cent of their genetic ancestry from the West European hunter-gatherer population from which Cheddar Man sprang.

Palaeontologists have made a massive discovery in the United Kingdom’s smallest county — the fossilized remains of a giant Jurassic sea creature. The fossil, which researchers said is “very well-preserved,” is said to be the “palaeontological discovery of a lifetime,” according to the Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust.

The fossil was found at the Rutland Water Nature Reserve in central England in February 2021, according to an announcement from the wildlife trust.

Joe Davis, who works on the water conservation team for the trust, found it during a routine draining procedure for re-landscaping.

At first, he said in a statement, he thought the remains were clay pipes sticking out of the mud, except that “they looked organic.” He told a colleague that they looked like vertebrae, and when they got closer, they saw “what indisputably looked like a spine” as well as a jawbone at the spine’s end.

“We couldn’t quite believe it,” Davis said. “The find has been absolutely fascinating and a real career highlight. It’s great to learn so much from the discovery and to think that this amazing creature was once swimming in seas above us.”

The fossil was excavated in August and September and has since been identified as an ichthyosaur, a marine reptile that somewhat resembled dolphins.

This particular fossil found nearly complete, is nearly 33 feet long and is roughly 180 million years old, researchers said. Its skull measures more than 6.5 feet long.

Davis told the BBC that the fossil was “very well-preserved, better than I think we could have all imagined.”

Ichthyosaur expert Dean Lomax, who helped with the fossil’s research, said that the find is the “largest ichthyosaur skeleton ever discovered in Britain.”

“These animals, they first appeared in a time called the Triassic period around roughly 250 million years ago,” Lomax said in a video for Rutland Water Nature Reserve. “Our specimen, the Rutland Ichthyosaur, or the Rutland Sea Dragon, is the biggest complete ichthyosaur ever found in Britain in over 200 years of collecting these things scientifically, which is an incredible feat.”

Ichthyosaurs are not swimming dinosaurs, he clarified.

According to the company Anglian Water, which helps maintain the reservoir in which the fossil was found, ichthyosaurs of this size and completeness are “incredibly rare,” especially in the U.K., with most comparable examples being found in Germany and North America.

Alicia Kearns, who represents Rutland Melton in Parliament, said the discovery “surpassed every possible expectation.”

“It is utterly awe-inspiring,” she said.

Though the largest, this was not the first ichthyosaur fossil found in the reservoir. The Wildlife Trust said that two incomplete and “much smaller” remains were found in the ’70s when the reservoir was first being constructed.

The palaeontologists working on the remains are continuing their research and are working on an academic paper about the findings.

People with blue eyes have a single, common ancestor, according to new research. A team of scientists has tracked down a genetic mutation that leads to blue eyes. The mutation occurred between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago. Before then, there were no blue eyes.

“Originally, we all had brown eyes,” said Hans Eiberg from the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine at the University of Copenhagen.

The mutation affected the so-called OCA2 gene, which is involved in the production of melanin, the pigment that gives colour to our hair, eyes and skin.

“A genetic mutation affecting the OCA2 gene in our chromosomes resulted in the creation of a ‘switch,’ which literally ‘turned off’ the ability to produce brown eyes,” Eiberg said.

The genetic switch is located in the gene adjacent to OCA2 and rather than completely turning off the gene, the switch limits its action, which reduces the production of melanin in the iris. In effect, the turned-down switch diluted brown eyes to blue. If the OCA2 gene had been completely shut down, our hair, eyes and skin would be melanin-less, a condition known as albinism.

“It’s exactly what I sort of expected to see from what we know about selection around this area,” said John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, referring to the study results regarding the OCA2 gene. Hawks was not involved in the current study.

Baby blues

Eiberg and his team examined DNA from mitochondria, the cell’s energy-making structures, of blue-eyed individuals in countries including Jordan, Denmark and Turkey. This genetic material comes from females, so it can trace maternal lineages.

They specifically looked at sequences of DNA on the OCA2 gene and the genetic mutation associated with turning down melanin production.

Over the course of several generations, segments of ancestral DNA get shuffled so that individuals have varying sequences. Some of these segments, however, that haven’t been reshuffled are called haplotypes.

If a group of individuals shares long haplotypes, that means the sequence arose relatively recently in our human ancestors. The DNA sequence didn’t have enough time to get mixed up.

“What they were able to show is that the people who have blue eyes in Denmark, as far as Jordan, these people all have this same haplotype, they all have exactly the same gene changes that are all linked to this one mutation that makes eyes blue,” Hawks said in a telephone interview.

Melanin switch

The mutation is what regulates the OCA2 switch for melanin production. And depending on the amount of melanin in the iris, a person can end up with eye colours ranging from brown to green.

Brown-eyed individuals have considerable individual variation in the area of their DNA that controls melanin production. But they found that blue-eyed individuals only have a small degree of variation in the amount of melanin in their eyes.

“Out of 800 persons we have only found one person which didn’t fit — but his eye colour was blue with a single brown spot,” Eiberg told LiveScience, referring to the finding that blue-eyed individuals all had the same sequence of DNA linked with melanin production.

“From this, we can conclude that all blue-eyed individuals are linked to the same ancestor,” Eiberg said. “They have all inherited the same switch at exactly the same spot in their DNA.” Eiberg and his colleagues detailed their study in the online edition of the journal Human Genetics.

That genetic switch somehow spread throughout Europe and now other parts of the world.

“The question really is, ‘Why did we go from having nobody on Earth with blue eyes 10,000 years ago to having 20 or 40 per cent of Europeans having blue eyes now?” Hawks said. “This gene does something good for people. It makes them have more kids.”

The femur of a giant dinosaur was found this week by French palaeontologists at an excavation site in southwest France where, since 2010, remains of some of the largest animals ever to live on land have been excavated.

The thigh bone of a giant dinosaur was found this week by French palaeontologists at an excavation site in southwestern France where remains of some of the largest animals that ever lived on land have been dug up since 2010.

The two-meter-long femur at the Angeac-Charente site is thought to have belonged to a sauropod, an herbivorous dinosaur with long necks and tails which were widespread in the late Jurassic era, over 140 million years ago.

“This is a major discovery,” Ronan Allain, a palaeontologist at the National History Museum of Paris told Reuters. “I was especially amazed by the state of preservation of that femur.”

“These are animals that probably weighed 40 to 50 tonnes.”

Allain said scientists at the site near the city of Cognac had found more than 7,500 fossils of more than 40 different species since 2010, making it one of the largest such finds in Europe.

Scientists believe that the bones are from a sauropod, which is the largest herbivorous dinosaur and first appeared in the late Triassic Period.

These reptiles were the largest of all dinosaurs and the largest land animals that have ever lived, they had a small head a long neck and a very long tail.

Scientists believe they would spend their time wallowing in shallow water that would help support their bodies.

The dinosaur bone was found covered in clay by volunteers from the National Museum of Natural History.

A dinosaur embryo perfectly curled up in its fossilized egg was analyzed by a team of researchers in southeastern China.

The rundown: The fossil, estimated to be between 72 and 66 million years old, belonged to an oviraptorosaur — a beaked, toothless and omnivorous theropod that existed during the Cretaceous Period of what is now Asia and North America.

Researchers published their findings in the journal Science.

The embryo was estimated to be 27 centimetres (11 inches) long from head to tail. Researchers said the dinosaur, which would have fed on plants, would be 2-3 meters (79-118 inches) long had it lived to adulthood.

The embryo was close to hatching as evidenced by its “tucking” posture, a behavior seen in modern birds. Chicks preparing to hatch tuck their heads under their right wing for stability as they crack the shell with their beak.

Modern birds are direct descendants of theropods, which are two-legged dinosaurs. Theropods include the Tyrannosaurus rex, spinosaurus and velociraptor, among others.

What the researchers are saying: Due to its complete structure, the fossil turned out to be one of the best dinosaur embryos found in history, the researchers told AFP. They called the creature “Baby Yingliang” after Yingliang Stone Nature History Museum, its current location.

“This skeleton is not only complete from the tip of the snout to the end of its tail; it is curled in a life pose within its egg as if the animal died just yesterday,” study co-author Darla Zelenitsky, an assistant professor of paleontology at the University of Calgary, told Live Science.

Lead author Waisum Ma, a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Birmingham, said dinosaur embryos happen to be some of the rarest fossils. Most non-avian embryos are also incomplete, with bones separated at the joints. “We are very excited about the discovery of ‘Baby Yingliang’ — it is preserved in a great condition and helps us answer a lot of questions about dinosaur growth and reproduction with it,” Ma said. “It is interesting to see this dinosaur embryo and a chicken embryo pose in a similar way inside the egg, which possibly indicates similar prehatching behaviours.”

The researchers said the embryo was found in Jiangxi province and acquired by Liang Liu, director of a Chinese stone company called Yingliang Group, in 2000. It was stored and forgotten until museum staff found it some 10 years later, during the construction of Yingliang Stone Nature History Museum, according to CNN.

Embryos that don’t adopt the tucking posture are more likely to die as a result of unsuccessful hatching. The team plans to study the fossil further using advanced scanning techniques, since part of its body remains covered by rock.