Bones of 'living fossil' found in Texas

From UPI.com:  Bones of 'living fossil' found in Texas

UNIVERSITY PARK, Texas, Oct. 24 (UPI) -- A 100-million-year-old coelacanth fossil discovered in Texas is that of a new species of the fish often called a "living fossil," paleontologists say.
The coelacanth has one of the longest lineages -- 400 million years -- of any animal, and they were thought to have gone extinct 70 million years ago until live specimens were caught off the coast of Africa in 1938. Today, they can be found swimming in the depths of the Indian Ocean.
The coelacanth is often called a "living fossil" because it has not evolved significantly since reaching its current form about 400 million years ago.
Southern Methodist University paleontology graduate student John F. Graf discovered the Texas fossil, the first found in the state that has been dated to the Cretaceous period extending from 146 million years ago to 66 million years ago.
The new species, found in ancient marine sediments in North Texas and dubbed Reidus hilli, is now the youngest coelacanth fossil identified in the Lone Star State, he said.
Previously the youngest was a 200-million-year-old coelacanth from the Triassic.
"What makes the coelacanth interesting is that they are literally the closest living fish to all the vertebrates that are living on land," Graf said. "They share the most recent common ancestor with all of terrestrial vertebrates."
While coelacanth fossils have been found on every continent except Antarctica, few have been found in Texas, an SMU release said.

Team Oracle Boat Capsizes Near Golden Gate Bridge

From NBC Bay Area:  Team Oracle Boat Capsizes Near Golden Gate Bridge

High drama on the San Francisco Bay Tuesday afternoon after an Oracle Team USA boat 72 capsized.

A nearly $8 million, 72-foot catamaran used by the Oracle Team USA, the defending America's Cup champion, capsized during practice near the Golden Gate Bridge Tuesday and was severely damaged. There were no injuries but the $2 million wing of the new ship was was "damaged beyond recognition," team officials said.

The AC 72 boat, a massive vessel with a 13,000-pound hull and a 131-foot mast that launched this year, was towed back to the team's base at Pier 80, according to The New York Times. There were 14 people on the boat when it capsized about four miles offshore, all of whom were unhurt.

With winds blowing at 25 knots and a strong ebb current in the San Francisco Bay, the team attempted a move known as a bear-away at about 3 p.m.

Technician Tom Slingsby said in a statement that as the boat accelerated it pitch-poled. "When the nose went down, the wing hit and a few guys went in the water," he said. "We were unsure if the wing would snap, so we all climbed off the boat."

Speaking later at a press conference, Slingsby said the ordeal was "pretty scary, I guess. Surreal feeling."

By 4:30, the boat turned upside down, and by 5 p.m. it was breaking apart.

Tow boats weren't enough to move the vessel, which was sucked out past the Golden Gate in the early hours of the boat's rescue.

The wing of the ship appeared to break away from the boat just before 5 p.m. and was breaking into parts a few minutes later.

Four or five crew members remained on the boat, but it wasn't clear what they were trying to do. There were dozens of pieces of the boat floating nearby. 

The Coast Guard was available to assist, but Oracle Team USA said they performed the rescue operation on their own.

Team Oracle said what happened Tuesday will not impact their efforts to win next year's America's Cup race which will take place on the San Francisco Bay in Sept. 2013.

"A strong team will bounce back from that," said skipper Jimmy Spithill.

 

Spitfire WWII Fighter Planes In Myanmar Excavation Could Flood Vintage Plane Market

From HuffPost: Spitfire WWII Fighter Planes In Myanmar Excavation Could Flood Vintage Plane Market


YANGON, Myanmar — As many as 140 World War II Spitfire fighter planes – three to four times the number of airworthy models known to exist – are believed to be buried in near-pristine condition in Myanmar. A British-Myanmar partnership says it will begin digging them up by the end of the month.
The go-ahead for excavation came earlier this week when the Myanmar government signed an agreement with British aviation enthusiast David J. Cundall and his local partner. Cundall, a farmer and businessman, earlier this year announced he had located 20 of the planes, best known for helping the Royal Air Force win mastery of the skies during the Battle of Britain.
On Thursday, however, a retired Myanmar geology professor who has assisted in the recovery operation since 1999 said there are about 140 Spitfires buried in various places around the Southeast Asian country, which until 1948 was a British colony called Burma. He did not explain the discrepancy in estimates.
Soe Thein said the British brought crates of Spitfires to Myanmar in the closing stages of the war, but never used them when the Japanese gave up the fight in 1945. The single-seat version of the fighter plane was 9.14 meters (30 feet) long with an 11.3 meter (37 foot) wingspan.
The U.S. Army was in charge of burying the planes after British forces decided to dispose of them that way, he said, adding Cundall interviewed at least 1,000 war veterans, mostly American, to gather information about the aircraft's fate.
He said a ground search was started in 1999 using magnetometers and ground radar, but faced difficulties. Only in recent years did technology become advanced enough to be more certain of the finds, he said.
Each plane was kept in a crate about 12.2 meters (40 feet) long, 3.4 meters (11 feet) high and 2.7 meters (9 feet) wide, said Soe Thein.
The plans under a two-year contract are to recover 60 planes in the first phase: 36 planes in Mingaladon, near Yangon's current air base and international airport; 18 in Myitkyina in Kachin state in the north; and six in Meikthila in central Myanmar. Others are to be recovered in a second phase.
The Myanmar government will get one plane for display at a museum, as well as half of the remaining total. DJC, a private company headed by Cundall, will get 30 percent of the total and the Myanmar partner company, Shwe Taung Paw, 20 percent.

British Prime Minister David Cameron eased the way to an agreement when he visited Myanmar President Thein Sein in April.
Cundall has said his quest to find the planes involved 12 trips to Myanmar and cost more than 130,000 pounds ($210,000), not including the planned excavation expenses.
Spitfires in working shape are rare and popular with collectors. In 2009, a restored but airworthy Spitfire was sold by British auction house Bonhams for >1,739,500 ($2,544,130)
The excavation agreement was signed Tuesday by Civil Aviation Director-General Tin Naing Tun, Cundall on behalf of DJC, and Htoo Htoo Zaw, managing director of Shwe Taung Paw.
"It took 16 years for Mr. David Cundall to locate the planes buried in crates. We estimate that there are at least 60 Spitfires buried and they are in good condition," Htoo Htoo Zaw said Wednesday. "We want to let people see these historic fighters, and the excavation of these fighter planes will further strengthen relations between Myanmar and Britain."
The British Embassy on Wednesday described the agreement as a chance to work with Myanmar's new reformist government to restore and display the planes.
"We hope that many of them will be gracing the skies of Britain and as discussed, some will be displayed here in Burma," said an embassy spokesman, who spoke anonymously because he was not directly involved in the excavation agreement.
Myanmar from 1962 until last year was under the rule of the military, which changed the country's name from Burma in 1989. Thein Sein's reformist government has turned away from the repression of the military government and patched up relations with Western nations that had previously shunned it.
The state-owned Myanma Ahlin daily on Wednesday cited Transport Minister Nyan Tun Aung as saying the Spitfire agreement amounts to the British government's recognition of the democratic reforms.

In search of Kublai Khan's fleet

From theage.com.au :  In search of Kublai Khan's fleet

Digging for what remains of Kublai Khan's fleet. Photo: Photo courtesy of the Bach Dang Battlefield Research Group

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sac-red river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man

Down to a sunless sea…
So wrote the opium-addicted 18th-century English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge after a dream about the great Mongol ruler Kublai Khan. A grandson of Genghis Khan, Kublai's realm stretched from the Pacific Ocean to the Black Sea, covering a fifth of the known world.
In 1279, he became the first non-Chinese emperor, establishing the Yuan Dynasty and ruling over China, present-day Mongolia, Korea and other Asian regions. But his ambition to occupy more lands led to one of his worst defeats when he sent his warships to invade Vietnam in 1288.
Now, 725 years later, Australian archaeologists are helping excavate the site where the mighty Kublai Khan's invasion fleet of 400 was destroyed by the Vietnamese. They had lured the Mongols up the Bach Dang River just as the tide was starting to ebb. The Vietnam army had driven hundreds of sharpened wooden stakes into the bed of the river that were invisible at high tide; when the tide turned and began to ebb, the entire fleet was holed and sunk, captured or burnt by fire arrows.
"The Bach Dang battlefield research project came about after Jun Kimura, one of my PhD students now at Murdoch University, was asked to go to Vietnam in 2008," says Dr Mark Staniforth, a senior researcher in archaeology at Monash University. "I had been looking for an opportunity to do some research there on the site where Kublai Khan's fleet was defeated and went with him initially to help record a couple of wooden ship's anchors found in the Red River. That gave me the chance to spend a few days in Bach Dang looking at the site and where we discovered the Vietnamese had been working since the 1950s. They were doing a good job but suffered a few problems — mainly not having much in the way of equipment or money."
Since that first visit four years ago, Dr Staniforth, Dr Kimura and other international marine archaeologists have been assisting the Vietnamese, offering their expertise as well as funding raised from Monash, the Australian Academy of the Humanities, the National Geographic Society and other sources. He says his aim all along had been to help the Vietnamese start preserving their underwater cultural heritage because so little had been done.
"Their archaeologists do really good work on the land but underwater they have only used treasure hunters to dive on wrecks collecting and selling the most valuable items, mostly Chinese ceramics, leaving the rest to be held by local museums while in the process destroying the sites," he says.
"The government decided 11 years ago this was not a good idea and legislated to stop the plunder. But while they know what not to do with shipwrecks and other marine archaeological sites, they don't know what to do: they don't have the trained people or equipment so they've been struggling."
Dr Staniforth was a chief investigator on last April's excavation of the wreck of the Clarence, the earliest and best-preserved example of an Australian-built trading vessel yet located in Victoria. (See Cutting Edge theage.com.au/national/education/wreck-reveals-its-bounty-20120416-1x3az.html). It was one of Australia's largest underwater research projects, with a team of 60 scientists, students and volunteers involved in the month-long study of the Clarence's remains on the site in Port Phillip Bay where it disappeared more than 160 years ago.
He says at least 8000 ships have been wrecked around Australia and more than 700 in Victorian waters, but laughs when asked about the likely number in Vietnam. With a 3600-kilometre coastline, in a country next door to China whose ships have been sailing along that coast for more than 3000 years, he says the number of wrecks would be incalculable.
"Given the trade with Asian countries that China was involved with over the centuries, Vietnam had to be one of the big players. There is so much evidence early civilisations had to be connected by sea and not by land that the number of shipwrecks would be huge. But no one has gone looking: Vietnam was essentially closed to the outside world until 1992 and even after the war they closed their borders so no one had done much archaeological work until 20 years ago."
Having helped locate more of the wooden stakes that sank Kublai Khan's fleet, the international team of archaeologists working on the Bach Dang battle project will next month start offering training programs aimed increasing awareness at local and national levels about the extent of Vietnam's underwater and maritime cultural heritage.
"We're there to donate our time and our expertise to train people," Dr Staniforth says. "We've had up to 20 archaeologists involved at various times on the Bach Dang project, although three or four key players go each year. Next month we'll have six and we'll be running one-day and two-day courses at the end of our research for the Vietnamese. As well as an introduction to the basic principles of archaeology, we will also introduce the range of sites covered under the title 'nautical' or 'maritime' archaeology, not just shipwrecks and certainly not all underwater."
He says the courses will be run at the Institute of Archaeology building in Hanoi but that the institute has also invited three of the visiting archaeologists to investigate the latest shipwreck to be found: a 14th-century trading vessel located in Quang Ngai and discovered last month by local fishermen who had stolen various objects from the wreck to sell. The ship contains ceramic wares made in China during the 14th and 15th centuries, as well as coins from the 12th and 13th centuries.
"We'll have a look at the wreck and offer some recommendations; it's in shallow water just off shore but we don't know what the site is like or the water quality. Seeing the site will tell us a lot and we'll let the Vietnamese know what they are getting themselves into!" Dr Staniforth says. "Excavation projects in Australia cost tens of thousands of dollars — even at the cheap end of town — and to do that in Vietnam won't be a whole lot cheaper."
He says the main challenge confronting Vietnamese archaeologists is that with few dive shops, there is little or no equipment to hire and no money to buy it. Shipping the weight of equipment that would be required from Australia would cost more money than the Vietnamese or Australians could afford.
"The problems the Vietnamese face are tremendous, which is why we are taking it one step at a time and, until we get a lot more funding or support from somewhere, we'll run these training courses. Archaeology is taught at many universities in Vietnam and at the Institute of Archaeology, but not marine archaeology. After these introductory courses, the institute may be interested in teaching it at a higher level. But how that might be funded is still up for discussion."
Five miles meander-ing with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean

Old logs in river a sunken treasure for one company

From WWay News Channel:  Old logs in river a sunken treasure for one company

WILMINGTON, NC (WWAY) -- There's much more to the Cape Fear River than meets the eye. Beneath the surface, there's hundreds of years of history that one local company is turning into a flourishing business.
Underneath the murky Cape Fear River water, there's a hidden treasure.
"They were floating them down the river, and the very best logs were the ones that were so dense, and if they got away from the raft that they were built into they just sank," said Bill Moore, owner of Cape Fear Riverwood, which is trying to recover old logs that sunk years ago in the river.
These long leaf pines are a part of our history, chopped down hundreds of years ago, but the lost ones can be reclaimed and turned into something new.
Using sonar and GPS, Cape Fear Riverwood can find them and set up shop.
To get the logs out of the river and onto the barge, the crew uses a grapple, a huge giant claw that weighs about 13,000 pounds, that scoops the logs up and gets them out.
With high-quality wood like this, woodworkers can turn it into almost anything.
"A lot of flooring, a lot of paneling," Moore said. "We do a lot of counter top work, as well as custom furniture and custom moldings."
These logs get a chance to sprout anew when they come up for air; fulfilling their original purpose from a huge industry from years ago.
"There still could be millions of board feet left in the Cape Fear River Basin," Moore said.
That means these logs could be the gift that keeps on giving, for a long time.
While digging out the logs, many historic artifacts come up too. Cape Fear Riverwood teams up with the North Carolina Underwater Archeological Center at Fort Fisher to preserve anything crews find.

 

Treasure hunters prowl unclaimed baggage

From SFGate:  Treasure hunters prowl unclaimed baggage

The Unclaimed Baggage Center in Scottsboro, Ala., which sells cargo and luggage that have gone unclaimed at airports, is the size of a city block. Photo: Jane Engle, Los Angeles Times / SF 

 

 Some of Brenda Cantrell's favorite stories from working at the Unclaimed Baggage Center, a 40,000-square-foot warehouse in Scottsboro, Ala., that sells lost treasures abandoned by - or never reunited with - airline passengers, are the items that didn't make it onto the sales floor. Like a shrunken head.
"It was in this old worn-out suitcase with a bunch of Egyptian artifacts and a mummified falcon," she remembers. "How do you sell a shrunken head? That's not really something you can put a price tag on."
And then there was the time the store's handlers opened a box and discovered a live, hungry and very angry rattlesnake.
"We don't know how the snake got in there," she says. "We'll never know if someone meant to put it there, or if it somehow found its way in during the transportation process. It's like the wedding dresses we find occasionally. We can only guess at the backstory. Was the dress on its way to a wedding or coming back from a wedding?"
They released the snake in the cemetery behind the store. "That's not something you put up for sale," she laughs. "Although at this place, it'd probably have a few takers."

Sight unseen

Business has been good at the Unclaimed Baggage Center. According to a recent Air Transport Industry Baggage Report, 25 million pieces of luggage were lost just last year, or approximately 70,684 bags every day. If those bags aren't claimed by their rightful owners within 90 days, they're either disposed of or sold to the Unclaimed Baggage Center, which buys boxes of luggage by the pound, sight unseen.
"You never know what you're going to get until you open it up," Cantrell says. "It's a big gamble." Sometimes they get clothes, electronics, or books - items that can be easily sold. Sometimes they get collector's items such as a signed Salvador Dali print. And sometimes, well, there's a rattlesnake.
Cantrell, 35, has worked at the Unclaimed Baggage Center for 14 years, first as a concierge and now as the company's brand ambassador. As she grew up in Scottsboro, shopping at the center was a regular part of her upbringing. "I bought most of my school clothes here," she says. "I bought knick-knacks for my bedroom. This place is part of who I am. It's my second home."

Annual pilgrimages

That history of treasure-hunting makes it easy for her to identify with the store's regular shoppers. Visitors come from all 50 states and 40 different countries. Many make annual pilgrimages to the center. But the truly devoted live just a short car ride away, Cantrell says, and they visit weekly and sometimes daily.
"They're very passionate," she says. "It's not just about the discounts" - although she admits these are substantial, with many items selling for 50 to 80 percent below retail - "it's about finding something you'll never find anywhere else."
The center stocks anywhere from 5,000 to 7,000 new items every day, most of them gone within a month. "That's what makes it exciting," Cantrell says. "Every day, there could be some rare, priceless gem hidden in the store somewhere. Maybe you'll find a digital camera for half the price you'd get in a store. Or a $2,000 diamond ring, selling for $20."

Found money

It's not uncommon for customers to make a profit. Long before her time, Cantrell says, somebody bought a Barbie for her daughter, only to discover that the doll's body was filled with $500 in rolled-up bills. "There was a lady who purchased an oil painting for about $60," Cantrell says. "She did some research, and I guess it was painted by a famous artist and was actually worth around $20,000. Our loss is her gain."
Not all the best items are available for sale - at least not immediately. When Unclaimed Baggage handlers opened a box and discovered a replica of a 15th century suit of armor, it immediately became the star attraction at the center's museum, which also houses a Chinese opium scale, a violin from the 18th century, a NASA camera, and most famous of all, Hoggle, the dwarf-goblin gatekeeper from the 1986 David Bowie movie, Labyrinth.
"Nothing surprises me anymore," Cantrell says. "Sometimes you go, 'Oh, well that's different.' But it's never shocking. At this point, I feel like I've seen it all."

 

Long Beach couple finds buried treasure

From Q13Fox:  Long Beach couple finds buried treasure

There was no pirate map involved - just some remodeling at the Coastal Inn and Suites off Highway 101.
There's a lot of mystery surrounding the building itself. The new owners, Josh and Kristin Buehler, don't know when it was constructed; possibly the late 1950s.
But they do know it's ready for a makeover.
"I want a hot tub," Josh Buehler said.
In the process of tearing down the oldest parts of the building, they found something hidden under the foundation.
"It was in a huge wad of rust," Josh Buehler said. "We tore it out and had an idea that it was coins because there was some paper on some of them that had dates."
The couple rinsed the rust off the buried treasure and found dozens of coins - some dating back to the 19th century, others from foreign countries.
They also found women's jewelry, the most valuable: a necklace made from a 1920s silver dollar.
The Buehlers think a U.S.Navy ring may lead them to the rightful owner of the collection. The gold ring has a seven-digit service number and the name "W.E. Weaver" inscribed inside.
"We figure whoever owns the Navy ring owns the rest of the coins," Kristin Buehler said.
Phone calls have been pouring in to the Coastal Inn since the local paper covered the story this week.
Even so, a local appraiser told the Buehlers the old rusty coins aren't really worth that much.
"At this point we think it's much more interesting to find the actual story behind it," Josh Buehler said.