Secret tomb containing remains of 12 skeletons discovered at Petra site in Jordan
The remains of 12 ancient skeletons and grave offerings were found in a hidden tomb beneath the Treasury monument in Petra, Jordan.
Tuesday 15 October 2024 20:06, UK
Archaeologists have discovered a secret tomb at the Treasury monument in Petra, Jordan - one of the Seven Wonders of the World.
A long-buried tomb containing the remains of 12 ancient skeletons and grave offerings were found beneath the monument after research teams used remote sensing technology.
The discovery comes more than two decades after similar tombs were found on the other side of the famous monument, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and attracts more than a million visitors a year.
The Treasury sits as the centre of an entire city carved by hand into the walls of a desert canyon by the Nabataean people about 2,000 years ago.
It is still not clear what its true purpose is.
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British and American researchers from the University of St Andrews, the Jordanian Department of Antiquities and the American Center of Research had been given permission to conduct remote sensing in and around the monument.
They were aiming to assess the condition of the areas around the site using electromagnetic conductivity and ground penetrating radar - but ended up making a much more exciting discovery.
When the survey found what appeared to be underground chambers, the researchers carried out an excavation and found the tomb.
One of the skeletons discovered was grasping the top part of a broken jug that most likely dates to the first century BC.
Richard Bates, a geophysicist and professor at the University of St Andrews, told Sky News' partner network NBC News the remains most likely include both men and women and range in age from children to adults.
The researchers believe the discovery could provide new insight into the Treasury and the people of the Nabataean Kingdom.
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"The discovery is of international significance as very few complete burials from the early Nabataeans have ever been recovered from Petra before. The burials, their goods, and the human remains can all be expected to help fill the gaps of our knowledge in how Petra came to be and who the Nabataeans were," Professor Bates said.
Archaeologists found the walls within the tomb were dated to between the mid 1st century BC and the early 2nd century AD.
The excavation of the newly revealed tomb was featured in a two-part episode of the American reality television series Expedition Unknown that aired on Discovery Channel.
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Digging up the past
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Researchers at the University of St Andrews have discovered what they think are the remains of our earliest known ancestor.
The scientists were part of an international team to have uncovered what they think is proof of the first animal to have existed on Earth. The important find, made during geological research in the Namibian desert, could push the emergence of animal life back many tens of millions of years.
St Andrews’ geologists Dr Tony Prave, Donald Herd and Stuart Allison played a key role in the discovery and subsequent documentation of the sponge-like fossil found in the ancient Namibian rocks. Known to be between at least 760 and 550 million years old, the fossils appear to be ‘hollow globs’, the remains of what could be classed as the stem group organism, the ancestor of all animals.
The discovery of the oldest animal fossil found to date was made by palaeoanthropologist Dr Bob Brain, from South Africa’s Ditsong Museum, along with Dr Prave and Mr Karl-Heinz Hoffmann of the Namibian Geological Survey. They made the find in Namibia’s Etosha National Park, a huge flat area of land known as ‘the place of dry water’.
The fossil Otavia.
Named Otavia antiqua , the submillimetre-sized fossilis a sponge-like organism that was preserved in ancient marine rocks. It is thought to date to a time when the most extreme climatic changes in Earth’s history – the ‘snowball Earth’ glaciations – occurred, up to 700 million years ago.
Until the discovery, it was thought that the first animals emerged between 600 and 650 million years ago. The team’s findings echo the predictions of the key dates of early life forming by geneticists studying the ‘molecular clocks’ of other species.
Dr Prave, who has worked on ancient rocks around the world, commented, “The findings are a tribute to the labours of Bob Brain who has worked tirelessly for the better part of two decades hunting for such fossils. It was deeply satisfying to hold them in the palm of your hand and realise that these could mark the advent of animals.”
The findings, published this week in the South African Journal of Science, involved a team of ten scientists from Namibia, South Africa, Australia and the UK.
Dr Prave, a co-author of the paper, said that the tiny creatures were pierced by different-sized openings that were probably used to pass nutrients into their bodies. They also found a ‘network of internal passageways’ thought to be a primitive gut.
He continued, “What is remarkable is that this organism appears to have evolved before, and survived through, the environmental extremes of snowball Earth. This implies that the causes and conditions for the evolutionary leap from bacteria to animals have to be searched for much deeper in time than previously thought.”
Namibian rocks, similar to those where the fossil was uncovered.
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Dr Prave is available for interview on 07770 904 778.
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Issued by the Press Office, University of St Andrews Contact Gayle Cook, Senior Communications Manager on 01334 467227, email [email protected] Ref: Fossil find 080212 View the latest University news online at www.st-andrews.ac.uk/news
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