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Another sensational discovery in Pompeii excavations. A small reptile was found, with its head untouched like a tail and one leg. It is a terrestrial turtle with its egg.
When Mount Vesuvius erupted nearly 2,000 years ago, the ancient inhabitants of Pompeii were frozen to ashes. Likewise, it turns out that it was also the flora and fauna of the city, including a pregnant turtle with its egg.
Archaeologists have found the remains of reptiles buried under the ashes and rock where it was placed undiscovered since 79 AD. The turtle was sheltering under an already destroyed building when the volcanic disaster struck.
Archaeologists found the remains during the excavation of an area of the city that its ancient inhabitants had rebuilt after a previous earthquake that destroyed Pompeii in 62 AD. About 2000 years ago, the 14 cm turtle was dug into a small underground nest under a shop destroyed in that previous earthquake.
Oxford University archaeologist Mark Robinson, who discovered the remains of another turtle at a nearby site in Pompeii in 2002, told the BBC there were two explanations for how the reptile got there. He said:
One is that it is a domestic turtle, which has probably escaped and gone to the ruins of the great earthquake. A greater possibility is that it was a turtle from the nearby village that had entered the ancient city. Pompeii was severely damaged and could not be rebuilt anywhere after the earthquake. Flora and fauna from the surrounding villages had been relocated to the city.
Experts say the discovery illustrates the richness of Pompeii’s natural ecosystem in the post-earthquake period. The general director of Pompeii, Gabriel Zuchtriegel, said:
The whole town was a construction site and apparently some spaces were so unused that wildlife could roam, enter and try to lay their eggs.
A visitor to Pompeii, a Finnish doctoral student who happened to be passing by when the discovery was made, described what he saw on the BBC as “spectacular”. Joonas Vanhala tha:
They had just removed the animal shell, so what it looked like was the skeleton and the egg. It was a light brown, sandy brown. I would not have known it as an egg if I had not been told.
Human waste researchers from Pompeii have extracted genetic secrets from the remains of a man and a woman who were buried when the Roman city was engulfed by volcanic ash. This first Pompeian human genome is an almost complete set of genetic instructions from victims, encoded in DNA extracted from their bones. Ancient DNA was stored in bodies that were wrapped in time-hardened ash. The findings are published in the journal ‘Scientific Reports’ ./ topalbaniaradio
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