Greek myths may have inspired prehistoric fossil

The femur of a large, extinct species was originally collected by the Greeks. It was 40 years ago rediscovered, but never went to the permanent exhibition. The fossil, which may have inspired certain animals in Greek mythology, now has a permanent home in England.

The bones of a large extinct creature, once guarded by the Greeks, has finally found a permanent home in England.

Known as the Nichoria bone, is the southern Greece the blackened fossil part of femur from a huge prehistoric mammal, perhaps a million years ago roamed. The bone was collected by Greeks and can even certain animals in classical Greek mythology helped inspire. It was rediscovered 40 years ago.

Since then, the fossil from the eyes of the public had largely disappeared.

"It was until 1998 lost." After my studies, the fossil was found stored in a basement at the University of Minnesota. It then ten years in various U.S. Labs spent, "said Adrienne Mayor research scholar in classics and history of science at Stanford University, Discovery News."

The historical fossil was of the curators at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England welcomes.

"These venerable bones earned appear." It is one of only two large vertebrate fossils, which were dug out and intentionally collected in ancient times by archaeologists in Greece, ", said Mayor."

Large fossil remains of prehistoric species, such as this fossilised femur, would have been the inspiration for many legendary beasts of classical mythology, according to Mayor, who described 2000 book "The first fossil hunters" the fossil for the first time in her.

The roots of several myths detection, showed the book, its revised edition of this month was published that prehistoric fossils in the very places available was in the myths about giant beings.

"Probably found the ancient Greeks the bones in the brown coal deposits of the basin megalopolis, known in antiquity as the battle of the Giants." "It, the dense concentration of large fossil bones inspired the belief that all armies were blown up flashes of giant of Zeus," Mayor told Discovery News.

Perhaps worshiped as the femur of a mythical giant, the Nichoria discovered bones of the ancient Acropolis in Nichoria between 1969 and 1975 by archaeologists of the Minnesota Messenia expedition.

The fact that it carefully on the Acropolis, the 35 km of the brown coal deposits booth where the bone was probably found, shows that a great interest in fossils had the ancient Greeks stored.

"The bone provides further confirmation, that the ancient Greeks already found such examples and special importance attributed to,", said Hans-Dieter sues, principal scientist and curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Smithsonian National Museum of natural history in Washington, D.C., discovery messages.

In 1978 as the femur "Pliocene elephants" identified, the bone was lost for two decades. Rediscovered in 1998 in the Archaeometry laboratory of the University of Minnesota Duluth, it remained recognized uncatalogued Mayor of its importance.

She took the fossil at the American Museum of natural history in New York, where it by paleontologist Nikos Solounias, expert on Greek fossils from the Miocene to Holocene was examined eras.

Solounias the bone as the distal end of femur identifies a woolly rhinoceros, or possibly a Chalicotherium, a large herbivores, and dated to the Pleistocene Epoch (2 million to 10,000 years ago).

According to Solounias shows the rusty black color of the fossil bone, that it most likely of the brown coal deposits in the vicinity of the ancient city of megalopolis collected. Worn by the Greeks on the sunny Acropolis Nichoria, and then two millennia later dug up the bones traveled much in the last ten years.

From Greece East went on the Mediterranean Sea and Atlantic Ocean, it to Minnesota, then Princeton, New Jersey and New York City by paleontologists are identified. Then West again in Bozeman, Montana, where it professionally, was stabilized by restorers in the Museum of the Rockies to prevent further breach.

"It was then transported over land, Palo Alto, California, where it rested on my desk as I home sought for a proper in a leading Museum," said Mayor.

This spring, the relic went back across the Atlantic, from California to its final home at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, where it appears in the Greek and Roman Antiquities Gallery.

View the original article here