{"id":14399,"date":"2018-02-23T18:55:04","date_gmt":"2018-02-24T00:55:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=14399"},"modified":"2018-02-23T18:55:04","modified_gmt":"2018-02-24T00:55:04","slug":"theres-more-than-one-way-to-identify-ancient-critters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2018\/02\/23\/theres-more-than-one-way-to-identify-ancient-critters\/","title":{"rendered":"There&#8217;s More Than One Way To Identify Ancient Critters"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I thought this was an innovative approach, if a trifle chancy, to identifying ancient animal populations. <em><strong>NewScientist<\/strong><\/em> (10 February 2018, paywall) <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newscientist.com\/article\/2160419-ancient-rock-art-rewrites-the-natural-history-of-arabia\/\">reports<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Art carved into rock by prehistoric people can tell us a lot\u00a0about the places they lived. Now rock engravings in north-west Saudi Arabia suggest that the region was once home to a host of\u00a0unexpected animals. &#8230;<\/p>\n<p>To find out, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.researchgate.net\/profile\/Maria_Guagnin\">Maria Guagnin<\/a> at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany, and her colleagues studied rock art at Jubbah and Shuwaymis, <a href=\"http:\/\/whc.unesco.org\/en\/list\/1472\">a joint UNESCO World Heritage Site<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The team examined more than\u00a01400 rock engraving panels, some\u00a0dating back to 8000 BC. The\u00a0pictures contain around 6600 depictions of wildlife. The team could identify the exact species shown.<\/p>\n<p>Some of the art showed animals\u00a0that have never been seen in the local archaeological record. For example, antelope called <a href=\"http:\/\/eol.org\/pages\/1038789\/overview\">lesser kudu<\/a> appeared in the engravings, given away by their distinctive spiral horns. Before now, there was little evidence that they ever left Africa.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Of course, this is, in a way, a <em>secondary source<\/em> &#8211; to be viewed with some skepticism by the wise scholar. But I like it! And it suggests that another current-desert was once quite a different landscape.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I thought this was an innovative approach, if a trifle chancy, to identifying ancient animal populations. NewScientist (10 February 2018, paywall) reports: Art carved into rock by prehistoric people can tell us a lot\u00a0about the places they lived. Now rock engravings in north-west Saudi Arabia suggest that the region was \u2026 <a class=\"continue-reading-link\" href=\"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2018\/02\/23\/theres-more-than-one-way-to-identify-ancient-critters\/\"> Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr; <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14399"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14399\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14400,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14399\/revisions\/14400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}