Drawing by Ben Cranshaw

The skeletons issue Dragonfly has an article describing a dinosaur dig. The author of the article, Rodolfo Coria, is a paleontologist. If you like old stuff and animals, you can become a paleontologist just like Rodolfo! Rodolfo searches for dinosaurs in Patagonia, which is located in southern Argentina in South America. Read the rest of this entry »

Come face to face with murderous life in the arena.

A cemetery discovered in Turkey has revealed the remains of Roman gladiators’ some of whom died battling in the arena.

Archaeologists, working in a graveyard in what was once the Roman city of Ephesus, have unearthed the remains of at least 68 individuals. Two sets of remains were those of a young woman (probably a slave) and a middle-aged man, but the rest were men who died in their 20s or 30s. Among these young men, 10 show signs of having died as a result of head wounds. Eleven others also suffered head wounds, but these apparently had healed before their deaths. By examining historical sources, Fabian Kanz and Karl Grossschmidt of the Medical University of Vienna were able to determine which type of gladiator weapon caused each wound.

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