Artifacts from the Labyrinth

Hesperocyoninae/ Paraenhydrocyon/Caedocyon/

Amphicyon!

Big cat-like predator-

"During the absence of Cats in North America in the early Miocene Period, they filled the predatory niche."

http://www.fossil-treasures-of-florida.com/bear-dog.html

"Tasmanian tiger"

Extinct Australian thylacine hunted like a big cat

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13270381

Got niche ?

From a whatzit that is not a cat, not a dog, not a bear, not a weasel-
to another whatzit

Since its discovery in Patagonia in 1891, Necrolestes has been an enigma-

"Necrolestes is one of those animals in the textbooks that would appear with a
picture and a footnote, and the footnote would say 'we don't know what it is,"
says co-author John Wible, Carnegie Museum of Natural History mammalogist
and member of the discovery team that also includes researchers from
Australia and Argentina.

As recently as a few years ago, Necrolestes still could not be definitively classified in a mammal group.

A CAT scan of the ear region in 2008 led to another research team's hypothesis that Necrolestes was a marsupial.

Rougier uncovered characteristics of the skull anatomy that had previously gone unnoted. Based on these newly revealed
features, the research team came to the groundbreaking realization that Necrolestes belonged to neither the marsupial nor
placental lineages to which it had historically been linked.

Rather, Necrolestes actually belonged in a completely unexpected branch of the evolutionary tree which was thought
to have died out 45 million years earlier than the time of Necrolestes.

Discovered by co-author Rougier in South America, Necrolestes belongs to the Meridiolestida, a little-known group of extinct mammals
found in the Late Cretaceous and early Paleocene (100 million years ago) of South America.

Necrolestes was neither a marsupial nor a placental mammal, and was in fact the last remaining member of the Meridiolestida lineage,
thought to have gone extinct 45 million years earlier.

"Necrolestes's survival for 45 million years longer than expected challenges more than a century of scientific thought on the effects
of the Late Cretaceous extinction event in South America, and shows how scientific thought is constantly changing based on new
evidence."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/11/121119151318.htm

The world finds the whatzit worth noticing-

Mystery Molelike Mammal Survived Dino Extinction

http://news.yahoo.com/mystery-molelike-mammal-survived-dino-extinction-123155007.html

Necrolestes patagonensis, whose name translates in part to "grave robber," was among the mammals that lived through the
dinosaur mass extinction. The new study finds that the creature lived 45 million years longer than paleontologists realized.

Necrolestes' subterranean lifestyle may explain its lucky fate, the researchers reported Monday (Nov. 19) in the journal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"There's no other mammal in the Tertiary of South America that even approaches its ability to dig, tunnel, and
live in the ground," Wible said. "It must have been on the edges, in an ecological niche that allowed it to survive."

This is neither an impact crater nor a volcano. It is a perfect circular intrusion, about 10 km in diameter with
a topographic ridge up to 600 m high. The Kondyor Massif is located in Eastern Siberia, Russia, north of the city
of Khabarovsk. It is a rare form of igneous intrusion called alkaline-ultrabasic massif and it is full of rare minerals.

The river flowing out of it forms placer mineral deposits. Last year 4 tons of platinum were mined there.
A remarkable and very unusual mineralogical feature of the deposit is the presence of coarse crystals of
Pt-Fe alloy, coated with gold. This 3-D perspective view was created by draping a simulated natural color
ASTER composite over an ASTER-derived digital elevation model. The image was acquired on June 10, 2006,
and is located at 57.6 degrees north latitude, 134.6 degrees east longitude.

http://asterweb.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery-detail.asp?name=kondyor

The New Jersey, USA tunnels made for Joseph Bonaparte, were large enough, and tall enough to ride through, on horseback.

Much time has passed since Joseph lived there. The tunnels are now mostly at ground level. Were they buried ?
There are manhole covers, that mask the shafts that provided fresh air for the tunnels.

"For his daughter Zénaïde and her husband, Bonaparte built a three-story house beside the lake,
with an underground passage to the mansion to use in inclement weather.

http://www.napoleon.org/en/reading_room/articles/files/stroud_joseph_us.asp

The large estate built for him at Point Breeze NJ, worthy of an Emperor. Financed by the jewels that he brought, and the money
buried in Switzerland ?

Joseph had purchased the Chateau of Prangins on the lake of Geneva.

The Château de Prangins was built in the 18th century by Louis Guiguer, a Swiss banker living in Paris.

Château de Prangins, Purchased in 1814 by Napoleon’s elder brother, Joseph Bonaparte.

"Three museums – the National Museum Zurich, the Castle of Prangins and the Forum of Swiss History Schwyz –
as well as the collections centre in Affoltern am Albis – are united under the umbrella of the Swiss National Museum."
(SNM).

http://www.musee-suisse.ch/e/index.php

video-

Exposition "Noblesse oblige!" - Pierre et patrimoine

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjh5p65TvHE

Retired New Scotland Yard Detective Finds Original Hound of The Baskervilles and Sherlock Holmes Police Files

August 31, 2010

It was at an obscure Exeter (Devon, England) auction house that Freeburn discovered the dusty folio
containing the police notes including the autopsy reports and detective notes.

"I immediately knew I had come across something really special," says Freeburn. "All detectives naturally
know a lot about the Sherlock Holmes cases - especially The Hound. The detectives notes are particularly
fascinating as you can see the differences in procedure coupled with similar investigative techniques.
You can see straight away what a brilliant mind Holmes had."

http://uk.prweb.com/releases/2010/08/prweb4441064.htm

Why did Scotland Yard distrust Holmes ?

Posted by Kieron Freeburn on August 24, 2010 at 8:47am in The BSI Weekend
View Discussions

Let me set the scene for you. New Scotland Yard in Victorian London, the Criminal Investigation Department
was in its infancy, investigations carried out to rigid protocols, forms filled and boxes ticked, manuscripts
prepared in 'copperplate' handwriting.

Detectives themselves were mistrusted by uniform colleagues and viewed with greater suspicion by superiors
as they developed their craft and their sources by mixing in London's seedy underbelly.

Imagine the reaction to Mr Sherlock Holmes - an 'unqualified' 'consulting' detective - in their eyes a self publicist
and showman, 'solving' cases by the powers of deduction with no regard to the rules of evidence. Some senior
officers even ventured the suggestion that Holmes might be complicit in some of the crimes he professed to solve -
so complex were they that only someone with some involvement in the case could know the answer.

This is the working environment Mr Holmes had to endure.

http://sherlockholmes.ning.com/forum/topics/why-did-scotland-yard-distrust

The origin of Litster's blurt thread - Ancient graffiti from the 1st C ?

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/...an-italy-graffiti-colosseum-archeology-photo/

November 25, 2011

Those who love classical music in Florence held their breath over the past year during talk
of closing the Teatro della Pergola.

What would become of the space itself, the oldest opera house in Italy and the first to be built
in true Italian style, with rising tiers of boxes replacing the old Roman semicircular seating?
(commissioned in 1651 by Cardinal Giancarlo de' Medici and designed by architect Ferdinando Tacca)

It has been agonizing to imagine the frescoes and sumptuous red curtains of this theatre being
stripped away and the backstage dressing rooms of the artists, which are actually formed from
remains of the city's seventeenth-century streets, demolished.

http://www.theflorentine.net/articles/article-view.asp?issuetocId=7329

First time in almost 3,000 years!

A full size Bronze Age style sea-going boat has been launched in Britain.
(Full size 16-metre-long replica Bronze Age sewn-plank boat, based on the oldest remains ever found in Europe.)

"Volunteers have poured everything into transforming three oak trees into what we have seen and achieved today.”
( Using replica methods and tools, such as bronze headed axes! Not to mention, acquiring fibres from the branches of yew trees.)

The replica Bronze Age craft has been built, mainly by volunteers, under the direction of professional shipwright,
Brian Cumby, at the National Maritime Museum Cornwall in Falmouth – in collaboration with prehistorian Professor
Van de Noort.

The project has been funded predominantly by a £177,000 grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

http://www.nmmc.co.uk/index.php?/whatson/news/buoyant_bronze_age_boat_makes_history_in_cornwall/

"I could turn her easily and it was more seaworthy than I expected."
- Professor Van de Noort

Nice pics!

https://www.facebook.com/2012BCBronzeAgeBoat#!/2012BCBronzeAgeBoat

Boston Public Garden

On Oct. 16, 1846, Dr. John Collins Warren and a dentist named Thomas A. Morton administered ether
to a 20-year-old patient at Massachusetts General Hospital before painlessly removing a tumor from
his neck. The Ether Monument commemorates a public demonstration of the power of anesthesia.

It was dedicated in 1868. September 27, 06 Doctors and public officials held a re-dedication after
an almost 20-year restoration effort. The granite has been cleaned and the antiquated plumbing
has been replaced so water is once again flowing from the four fountain heads.

The 40-foot tower is topped by a sculpture representing the parable of the Good Samaritan in the
Gospel of Luke. An older man holds a younger man who has been overcome by an illness --
"an allegory of mercy and good will."
-Dr. Rafael Ortega, author of "Written in Stone: An illustrated history of the Ether Monument"

The figures rest on marble columns atop a square pedestal adorned with four marble reliefs. One of
the panels represents the triumph of science with a woman sitting atop of throne of test tubes and
other medical equipment. Two of the other carvings show the use of ether during the Civil War. The
fourth frieze depicts the angel of mercy descending to a man stricken with disease.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/city_region/breaking_news/2006/09/the_worlds_only.html

25 July 2012

amphioxus

50 million years ago, something unusual happened

Researchers have been able to compare the human genome to the recently decoded genetic sequence of the invertebrate amphioxus,
a tiny creature still found in our seas and which can be regarded as a 'distant cousin' to our species.

http://rsob.royalsocietypublishing.org/

"We suggest a conceptual model for intracellular regulation involving protein families whose evolution into signal multiplexing systems
was facilitated by 14-3-3 dimer binding to lynchpins, which gave freedom for other regulatory sites to evolve."

"While increased signalling complexity was needed for vertebrate life, these systems also generate vulnerability to genetic disorders."

Lighthouses and homes, are moved to different locations, for one reason or another-

John "Jack" Jouett's Ride

"Only after warning Jefferson, and being thanked by the then-governor with some "fine Madeira," did Jouett ride to
Charlottesville. Once in town, he immediately went to the Swan Tavern, owned by his father, to alert legislators
staying there of the approaching danger."

http://www.dailyprogress.com/lifest...cle_39382282-ae0c-11e2-8495-0019bb30f31a.html

"When the story about the Shanty appeared in The Progress on July 6, 1938, it already was gone."

Whales: Giants of the Deep at the American Museum of Natural History

From the Museum’s collection: Andrewsarchus mongoliensis

This close whale relative, a member of the hoofed mammal group that includes hippos and whales, is known from a single skull
discovered in 1923 during a Museum expedition to Mongolia and China. The rarely displayed specimen is now on exhibit in
Whales: Giants of the Deep. (The largest carnivorous land mammal that ever lived.)

Whales: Giants of the Deep was developed and presented by the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa.
This exhibition was made possible through the support of the New Zealand Government.

March 23, 2013 - January 5, 2014

“In fact, it is very difficult to totally cremate a body; organs such as the heart and intestines, which have a high water content, are very resistant to fire.
We see it all the time in forensics.”
- Philippe Charlier, a genetic specialist at the Raymond-Pointcaré hospital at Garches, west of Paris

"Vanilla is inconsistent with cremation. “Vanillin is produced during decomposition of a body. “You would find it in a mummy, but not in someone who was burnt.”
- Philippe Charlier

Joan of Arc's relics exposed as forgery
5 April 2007

Charlier and his colleagues didn't have much to work with: the relics comprise a charred-looking human rib, chunks of what seem to be carbonized wood,
a 15-centimetre fragment of linen and a cat femur — consistent with the medieval practice of throwing black cats onto the pyre of supposed witches.

The relics were discovered in 1867 in a jar in the attic of a Paris pharmacy, with the inscription “Remains found under the stake of Joan of Arc,
virgin of Orleans”.

Perfume ?-
The help of the leading 'noses' of the perfume industry: Sylvaine Delacourte from Guerlain, and Jean-Michel Duriez from Jean Patou.

Odour analysis is a new technique for palaeopathology, but Charlier says that he hit on the idea after being struck by the variety of odours
of other historical corpses.

Other, more conventional, evidence pointing to a mummy origin quickly accumulated. Microscopic and chemical analysis of the black crust
on the rib and on the cat femur showed that they were not in fact burnt, but were impregnated with a vegetal and mineral matrix, with
no trace of muscle, skin, fat or hair. “I see burnt remains all the time in my job,” says Charlier. “It was obviously not burnt tissue.”

The black material was, however, consistent with an embalming mix of wood resins, bitumen and chemicals such as malachite. It was also consistent
with gypsum, which gives the mix its plaster smell. The linen cloth had a coating characteristic of mummy wrappings. And large amounts of pine pollen
were present. Pine trees did not grow in Normandy at the time that Joan of Arc was killed, but pine resin was used widely in Egypt during embalming.

Two other lines of evidence seem to clinch the mummy origin. Carbon-14 analysis dated the remains to between the third and sixth centuries BC.
And the spectrometry profiles of the rib, femur and black chunks matched those from Egyptian mummies from the period, and not those of burnt
bones.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v446/n7136/full/446593a.html

Duke and Duchess of Windsor's 1941 Cadillac to be auctioned in New York City

1941 Cadillac Custom Limousine that was designed for the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, will be offered at RM Auctions and
Sotheby’s exclusive Art of the Automobile sale, November 21, in New York City.

No single body panel on the Windsors’ car matched any other 1941 Cadillac. The hood, trunk, fenders, fender skirts, roof, and doors were all crafted by hand, and all of the interior appointments were hand-fitted. Inside, the car was upholstered entirely in rose-colored custom broadcloth, extending even to the headlining and sun visors. The floors were covered in Wilton wool carpet, custom-dyed to match and set against custom walnut finishes for the doors, cabinetry, and divider window. It was one of the first two Cadillacs to be equipped with power windows (the other being Alfred P. Sloan's personal car). They were fitted with satin privacy curtains that would roll away when not in use. Additional special fixtures included four brushed stainless-steel jewelry cases, each lined in velvet, to carry the Duchess’ famous jewelry purchases and, for the Duke, no fewer than three cigar lighters and two ashtrays, along with a humidor and custom rack for his favored Sasieni pipes. As the Duke was a well-known enthusiast of automobiles, it was expected that he would take the wheel of the car on occasion. As a result, unusually for a limousine at the time, the front compartment was detailed to be as elegant and opulent as the rear, including its own radio, with a manually controlled roof-mounted antennae and buttons preset to New York City AM stations of the era.

http://artdaily.com/news/65817/Duke...941-Cadillac-to-be-auctioned-in-New-York-City

http://www.waddesdon.org.uk/collection/special-projects/

The Livre de caricatures tant bonnes que mauvaises (‘The Book of Caricatures Both Good and Bad’) is a unique survival from an age of powerful censorship. If it were to have been discovered by the authorities, it would have been destroyed and its authors at the very least imprisoned in the Bastille

http://www.waddesdon.org.uk/collection/special-projects/st.-aubin

This extraordinary collection of prints about the French Revolution was acquired by Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild (1839-1898) in the 1890s. Bound into four large volumes, the prints record major events (such as the storming of the Bastille and the executions of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette), but also some of the more obscure episodes of the Revolutionary decade, often with a highly satirical, political eye

http://www.waddesdon.org.uk/collection/special-projects/tableaux

In 1891, Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild acquired a collection of printed paper ephemera to do with commerce. Most of the material came from the collection of his architect Gabriel Hippolyte Destailleur (1822–1893). After the prints arrived at Waddesdon, they were rearranged and pasted into four leather-bound volumes and this is how they appear today. The volumes contain over 700 trade cards (early shop advertisements) and related items, mostly from France, but also from Germany and elsewhere on the continent. They date from the early seventeenth to early nineteenth centuries and are for suppliers as diverse as hat-makers, stationers, goldsmiths, print-sellers and confectioners. Together they offer a unique insight into the commercial and social world of the past.

In 2004 it was recognised that this little known collection which is rich in research possibilities, should be made available to a wider audience. This catalogue is the result. It was made possible through Leverhulme and British Academy funded research projects which was a joint venture between the University of Warwick and Waddesdon Manor.

The catalogue is designed to be used by anyone interested in ephemera. All cards have been transcribed in their original language and translated into English. Cataloguing and indexing has been detailed in the hope that the data will be a valuable resource for a wide range of students and scholars

11 March 2014

The 9,000-year-old stone masks appear to have been modelled on skulls

A collection of the world's oldest masks, dating back to the dawn of civilization, have gone on display at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.

The 9,000-year-old stone masks are thought to have been made to resemble the spirits of dead ancestors.

It took 10 years of carbon-14 testing for experts to determine the authenticity and origin of the collection, the Associated Press news agency reports.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-26533994

Haunting photos of World War I reveal how little Europe has changed in 100 years

April 8, 2014

2014 marks the 100th anniversary of the start of World War I, the conflict that reshaped Europe, redefined international power structures, introduced the U.S. as a global superpower and fundamentally changed the role government played in people’s everyday lives.

Photographer Peter Macdiarmid collected modern photos from around Europe and overlaid World War I-era images, giving a sense of how much–and how little–has changed since the War to end all Wars.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/images-world-war-devastation-overlaid-modern-photos-france/

*tip of the hat, to thör*

Stockholm Cathedral, also known as Storkyrkan or Sankt Nikolai kyrka, is situated in central Stockholm, in Gamla Stan (old town). The church was built in Swedish Brick Gothic style. It is situated next to the royal palace. The church was mentioned first in a source dated 1279. It became a Lutheran Protestant church in 1527. Since 1942 it is the mother church of the Church of Sweden, Diocese of Stockholm. The last king to be crowned in the cathedral was King Oscar II in 1873.

Most famous treasure in the cathedral is a wooden statue of St George and the Dragon, that commemorates the Battle of Brunkeberg in 1471. It contains relics supposedly of St George and two other saints. The cathedral also houses the oldest known image of Stockholm. The painting Vädersolstavlan (The Sun Dog painting) is a 1632 copy of a lost original from 1535. The main altar is of ebony wood with scultured reliefs in silver in ascending order of the Last Supper, the Crucification of Christ, the burial of Christ, the harrowing of Hell of Christ and his resurrection.

The cathedral has been restored in the winter of 2009/2010.

there is a link to a Virtual visit, on this page!

http://www.nettyroyal.nl/victoriadaniel15.html

Tibetans live in a region that averages more than 4,000 meters above sea level

For people whose ancestors lived in milder altitudes, experiencing a dearth of oxygen at great heights causes the level of hemoglobin, the protein that carries oxygen in blood, to increase in attempt to compensate. But this raises the likelihood of cardiac events in the short term, and it is unhelpful for reproduction, as it increases the risk of preeclampsia (hypertension during pregnancy). Tibetans don’t have the same reaction to elevation: They have greater fitness and higher fertility even when there is little to breathe. This, along with other respiratory adaptations, allows them to thrive where others cannot.

By sequencing DNA from a group of Tibetans and comparing the code to other gene databases, the researchers have discovered that Tibetans are inheritors of an ancient trait that helps regulate the oxygenation in their blood. But surprisingly, this trait did not arise in Homo sapiens. Rather, it came from another group of humans, the Denisovans—mysterious, little-known hominid cousins that died out some 40,000 years ago.

The genetic basis for the Denisovan-inherited adaptation in Tibetans involves a protein called EPAS1 that controls oxygen regulation. (Andeans also have a beneficial oxygen regulatory mechanism, but through a different protein, evolved from a different lineage.) The new analysis shows that the particular sequence of genes encoding for how EPAS1 functions in Tibetans was not a random, auspicious mutation. In fact, the same genetic pattern is found in Denisovan DNA.

Subsequent research confirmed this: Melanesians’ and Australian aborigines’ genes are 3 to 5 percent Denisovan, and throughout Asia, genetic evidence of the lineage remains, though to smaller degrees.

http://www.slate.com/articles/healt..._adaptation_for_elevation_dna_for_living.html