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"Lee County, along the Missipi River" (people.com)

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"Lee County, along the Missipi River" (people.com)

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Siberian Ice Maiden: The Well-Preserved, Tattooed Mummy

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One of the greatest archeological discoveries of the twentieth century came only seven years before the new millennium. In 1993, Dr. Natalya Polosmak of Novosibirsk’s Institute of Archeology and Ethnography led a team of archeologists into the Eurasian steppe because of rumors of a grave robbery. The team began digging at a site on the

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Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (NAIT), 106 Street, Edmonton, AB, Canada

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Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (NAIT), 106 Street, Edmonton, AB, Canada

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Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (NAIT), 106 Street, Edmonton, AB, Canada

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Armoured Dinosaur Remains

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More than 110 million years ago, a lumbering 1,300-kilogram, armor-plated dinosaur ate its last meal, died, and was washed out to sea in what is now northern Alberta. This ancient beast then sank onto its thorny back, churning up mud in the seabed that entombed it-until its fossilized body was discovered in a mine near Fort McMurray in 2011.

Since then, researchers at the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology in Drumheller, Alta., Brandon University, and the University of Saskatchewan (USask) have been working to unlock the extremely well-preserved nodosaur's many secrets-including what this large armored dinosaur (a type of ankylosaur) actually ate for its last meal.

"The finding of the actual preserved stomach contents from a dinosaur is extraordinarily rare, and this stomach recovered from the mummified nodosaur by the museum team is by far the best-preserved dinosaur stomach ever found to date," said USask geologist Jim Basinger, a member of the team that analyzed the dinosaur's stomach contents, a distinct mass about the size of a soccer ball.

"When people see this stunning fossil and are told that we know what its last meal was because its stomach was so well preserved inside the skeleton, it will almost bring the beast back to life for them, providing a glimpse of how the animal actually carried out its daily activities, where it lived, and what its preferred food was."

There has been lots of speculation about what dinosaurs ate, but very little known. In a just-published article in Royal Society Open Science, the team led by Royal Tyrrell Museum paleontologist Caleb Brown and Brandon University biologist David Greenwood provides detailed and definitive evidence of the diet of large, plant-eating dinosaurs-something that has not been known conclusively for any herbivorous dinosaur until now.

"This new study changes what we know about the diet of large herbivorous dinosaurs," said Brown. "Our findings are also remarkable for what they can tell us about the animal's interaction with its environment, details we don't usually get just from the dinosaur skeleton."

Previous studies had shown evidence of seeds and twigs in the gut but these studies offered no information as to the kinds of plants that had been eaten. While tooth and jaw shape, plant availability and digestibility have fuelled considerable speculation, the specific plants herbivorous dinosaurs consumed has been largely a mystery.

So what was the last meal of Borealopelta markmitchelli (which means "northern shield" and recognizes Mark Mitchell, the museum technician who spent more than five years carefully exposing the skin and bones of the dinosaur from the fossilized marine rock)?

"The last meal of our dinosaur was mostly fern leaves-88 per cent chewed leaf material and seven per cent stems and twigs," said Greenwood, who is also a USask adjunct professor.

"When we examined thin sections of the stomach contents under a microscope, we were shocked to see beautifully preserved and concentrated plant material. In marine rocks we almost never see such superb preservation of leaves, including the microscopic, spore-producing sporangia of ferns."

Team members Basinger, Greenwood and Brandon University graduate student Jessica Kalyniuk compared the stomach contents with food plants known to be available from the study of fossil leaves from the same period in the region. They found that the dinosaur was a picky eater, choosing to eat particular ferns (leptosporangiate, the largest group of ferns today) over others, and not eating many cycad and conifer leaves common to the Early Cretaceous landscape.

Specifically, the team identified 48 palynomorphs (microfossils like pollen and spores) including moss or liverwort, 26 clubmosses and ferns, 13 gymnosperms (mostly conifers), and two angiosperms (flowering plants).

"Also, there is considerable charcoal in the stomach from burnt plant fragments, indicating that the animal was browsing in a recently burned area and was taking advantage of a recent fire and the flush of ferns that frequently emerges on a burned landscape," said Greenwood.

"This adaptation to a fire ecology is new information. Like large herbivores alive today such as moose and deer, and elephants in Africa, these nodosaurs by their feeding would have shaped the vegetation on the landscape, possibly maintaining more open areas by their grazing."

The team also found gastroliths, or gizzard stones, generally swallowed by animals such as herbivorous dinosaurs and today's birds such as geese to aid digestion.

"We also know that based on how well-preserved both the plant fragments and animal itself are, the animal's death and burial must have followed shortly after the last meal," said Brown. "Plants give us a much better idea of season than animals, and they indicate that the last meal and the animal's death and burial all happened in the late spring to mid-summer."

"Taken together, these findings enable us to make inferences about the ecology of the animal, including how selective it was in choosing which plants to eat and how it may have exploited forest fire regrowth. It will also assist in understanding of dinosaur digestion and physiology."

Borealopelta markmitchelli, discovered during mining operations at the Suncor Millennium open pit mine north of Fort McMurray, has been on display at the Royal Tyrrell Museum since 2017. The main chunk of the stomach mass is on display with the skeleton.

Other members of the team include museum scientists Donald Henderson and Dennis Braman, and Brandon University research associate and USask alumna Cathy Greenwood.

Research continues on Borealopelta markmitchelli -the best fossil of a nodosaur ever found-to learn more about its environment and behavior while it was alive. Student Kalyniuk is currently expanding her work on fossil plants of this age to better understand the composition of the forests in which it lived. Many of the fossils she will examine are in Basinger' collections at USask.

The above story is based on materials provided by University of Saskatchewan.

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Dinosaur Remains Reveal Surprising Remnants In Its Stomach

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Dinosaur Remains Reveal Surprising Remnants In Its Stomach. The holotype specimen on display at the Royal Tyrell Museum More than 110...

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Titanic - British ocean liner that hit an iceberg and sank in April 1912, in the North Atlantic Ocean. -Scott R

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Mungo Man, 42,000 years old found in lake mungo.

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Angkor Wat is a large and complex Hindu-Buddhist temple. It is considered the largest religious monument in the world.

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Tollund man found in 1940 is a "bog body." -- Tristan R.

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A Mummified Saber-Toothed Kitten Emerges in Siberia

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The Homotherium cub was preserved in Siberian permafrost with its dark fur and flesh intact.

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Ancient Egyptian teenager died while giving birth to twins, mummy reveals

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An ancient Egyptian mummy with a fetus tucked between its legs and another lodged inside the chest cavity — the first known of its kind — shows the mother died while giving birth to twins.

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When you hear the word "mummy", we bet your mind goes straight to the dried and bandaged remains of long-preserved Egyptian pharaohs. However, despite their fame, these specimens are not the oldest mummies in the world. That title belongs to the Chinchorro people of Chile's Atacama Desert who mummified their dead 7,000 years ago.

The Chinchorro people, an ancient culture of marine hunter-gatherers, were the first to settle in the north of Chile and the south of Peru, around 5450 BCE. Soon after their arrival, the Chinchorro began a novel funerary practice of preserving their dead in the dry desert sands that surrounded them.

These ancient cemeteries are now inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List for their archaeological value, as they not only provide insights into this strange form of mummification, but also how the Chinchorro communities functioned, and how they were socially and spiritually structured. Importantly, unlike the Egyptians who reserved mummification for their social elite, the Chinchorro offered it as a ritual for everyone.

So how did the Chinchorro mummify their dead? Well, the process was different to how the Egyptians approached it. First, the body would be stripped of its skin and its organs removed. Once the body's cavities were dry, the skin would be sewn back on. The bodies were also sometimes wrapped in elaborate materials, such as reeds, sea lion skins, and alpaca wool.

Then, the faces would be covered in clay, where a mask was then placed that had openings for the eyes and mouth. Finally, the mummies were given wigs made of human hair before being buried in the desert, the hope being that the arid conditions would preserve them forever.

The first Chinchorro mummy was documented in 1917 by Max Uhle, a German archaeologist who discovered some of the bodies on a beach. Clearly these specimens were old, but, at the time, it was not possible to date them accurately. Then, with the development of carbon dating techniques, it was possible to date the mummies to being more than 7,000 years old.

Since the first discovery over 100 years ago, hundreds of other mummies have been found in the desert. Some of these have been discovered during building works or unearthed by curious animals.

The communities living in Arica, in northern Chile, have been aware of these special bodies for a long time. This is because the bodies are close to the surface, so they are easy to discover. As such, these people have learnt to live with the dead that are scattered throughout their hometowns. They see them as part of their heritage and feel responsible for taking care of them.

Unfortunately, due to climate change, many of the Chinchorro graves are being unearthed by abnormal weather events, which exposes the bodies to the elements. This will have serious impacts on their conservation for the future as archaeologists struggle to fund efforts to recover and preserve them.

"The museums are a bit overwhelmed with all this material," Bernardo Arriaza, a leading expert on the Chinchorro at the University of Tarapacá in Arica, told the Guardian.

Even those held within museums are now threatened by changing climate conditions. The rise in ambient humidity has led some mummies to sprout mould, while others have fallen to dry rot or hungry insects. All these challenges are exacerbated by the variety of materials that cover the mummies, each needing its own conditions for storage.

In 2022, a new climate-controlled museum near Arica was being constructed to house the Chinchorro mummies. It is hoped that this sophisticated facility, worth around $19 million, may help protect these valuable artifacts from the distant past.

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Chile's Ancient Mummies Are Thousands Of Years Older Than The Egyptians'

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The Egyptians may have the most famous mummies, but they are not the oldest by any means.

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The preservation of Egyptian mummies was a religious ritual meant to provide those who had passed with their worldly possessions as they journeyed into the afterlife and reincarnation. Many other ancient societies practiced mummification as well. In the Incan civilization, bodies were interred with food, bowls, and other items meant to assist the departed on their postmortem journey. The wrapping of the body and its personal effects in cotton (and/or other fabrics) concluded a rite that came to be known as the Incan mummy bundles.

Not relegated solely to royalty, Incan mummification included other high-ranking members of society as well as common folk and was often the result of human sacrifice. Some of the sacrifices were preserved on the frozen mountains where their lives ended, their offerings of food and provisions packed beside them. Perhaps the most stunning discovery of this kind was the Lima mummies that make up an Incan cemetery in Peru.

Called Puruchuco, the cemetery held the "Cotton King," a mummy wrapped in 300 pounds of the titular textile. The Cotton King mummy provided the most epic example of the Incan burial process, presenting mysteries that remain unsolved to this day.

Discovered by archaeologists in their 1999 pursuit to preserve an Incan burial ground named Puruchuco, the Cotton King was wrapped in 300 pounds of the material from which he earned his name. The Cotton King is thought to have been a ruler of the Incan people based on his bundle, which contained a headpiece created from multiple colorful feathers - a sign of cultural importance - as well as oyster shells that adorned his covering.

A child also shared the intricate shroud with the Cotton King, as did 70 artifacts from his highness's life. The Cotton King wore sandals - a sign of wealth - and was buried alongside animal furs, food, and a variety of other high-value items.

Egyptian mummification was mainly practiced on kings and queens, as well as the society's very wealthy. In stark contrast, the Inca Empire provided mummification to all members of its community - even those sacrificed to the gods. Human sacrifices were preserved by natural elements found on the mountaintops where they passed. Other Incans were freeze-dried or preserved by corn alcohol, with their remains later contorted into the fetal position and surrounded by their bundling material - baskets, textiles, or ceramics.

Nonetheless, the Inca process and the burial bundle still differed according to social status. Those of great wealth or power (i.e., emperors) were more likely to find themselves bundled with precious metals and stones and wrapped in exotic fabrics. This more elaborate mummification process didn't end there, according to Ancient History Encyclopedia:

Rather than the simple desiccation method, royal mummies got the deluxe treatment of entrails and organ removal, embalming, and skin tanning; they could even be set for eternity in a life-like posture.

Inca warriors took their shields with them into the afterlife and were honored with colorful headdresses made from feathers. In 2011, a mummy buried with tools such as spindles and needles was found in an undisturbed tomb in Peru. Based on the items found with the body, scientists concluded that she worked as a weaver during her life.

One discovery made during the excavation of the mummy bundles was that some bodies had false heads appended to them. This was an adornment provided only to the most elite of the Inca Empire. Sometimes, the heads had fake hair, masks, or even false eyes designed to suggest an appearance of life.

The mummies found with false heads also appeared larger than the other bundles. Those bestowed with heads were composed of more expensive materials than the others and contained artifacts like jewelry or shields.

When the Spanish entered the capital of the Inca Empire, Cusco, in 1533, they found a king and queen mummified upon their thrones. Alongside the pair sat all of their worldly wealth and possessions, as well as servants keeping flies from gathering on their desiccated bodies.

The mummies of Inca royalty were treated as if they were still alive. They even took part in parades, leaving their thrones as attendants carried them behind the current rulers. Their families still sought them out for advice and blessings.

Wealth, however, did not travel down the family line as an inheritance. Instead, it remained buried with its mummified owners - at least until the conquistadors looted it during their sacking of the empire.

Mummies left accessible to the Inca public served to remind the living of their ancestry and common connections. Some spent their days in caves, where they wore new clothing and received offers of food and drink as a way to guarantee a bountiful harvest for the living.

Royal mummies rode in parades behind current rulers and took part in ceremonies such as the celebration of the solstice. These former kings and queens also served as oracles, providing approval for marriages and new kings, among other ventures.

Many members of the Inca Empire were mummified in areas accessible to their family and others. A king and queen could be found sitting on their thrones post-mortem, surrounded by servants and material wealth. Their knowledge was sought by relatives and they still received worship from their kingdom.

Other open tombs, called chullpas, allowed family members to visit their dearly departed and praise them with gifts. Sometimes, they were removed from their caves or towers in order to enjoy food, drink, and other pleasures of the living.

The highest honor bestowed upon the Incan mummies occurred when they were placed in the empire's capital of Cusco. There, the mummies received visitors who worshipped them and their contributions to the Inca way of life.

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All About The Cotton King And Other Incan Mummy Bundles

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The preservation of Egyptian mummies was a religious ritual meant to provide those who had passed with their worldly possessions as they journeyed into the afterlife and reincarnation. Many other ancient societies practiced mummification as well. In the Incan civilization, bodies were interred...

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High-altitude archeologists have discovered children sacrificed to the Inca’s mountain gods.

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Even after 2,200 years, the mummy of ancient Chinese noblewoman Xin Zhui a.k.a. Lady Dai remains so well-preserved that there's hair on her head and blood in her veins.

Now more than 2,000 years old, Xin Zhui, also known as Lady Dai, is a mummified woman of China's Han dynasty (206 BC-220 AD) who still has her own hair, is soft to the touch, and has ligaments that still bend, much like a living person. She is widely recognized as the best-preserved human mummy in history. This is her astonishing story.

The Shocking Discovery Of Xin Zhui, The "Lady Dai" Mummy

Xin Zhui was discovered in 1971 when workers digging near an air raid shelter near Changsha practically stumbled across her massive tomb. Her funnel-like crypt contained more than 1,000 precious artifacts, including makeup, toiletries, hundreds of pieces of lacquerware, and 162 carved wooden figures which represented her staff of servants. A meal was even laid out to be enjoyed by Xin Zhui in the afterlife.

But while the intricate structure was impressive, maintaining its integrity after nearly 2,000 years from the time it was built, Xin Zhui's physical condition was what really astonished researchers.

When she was unearthed, she was revealed to have maintained the skin of a living person, still soft to the touch with moisture and elasticity. Her original hair was found to be in place, including that on her head and inside of her nostrils, as well as the eyebrows and lashes.

Baffled Researchers Begin Studying The World's Best-Preserved Mummy

Scientists were able to conduct an autopsy, during which they discovered that her 2,000-year-old body - she died in 163 BC - was in similar condition to that of a person who had just recently passed.

However, Xin Zhui's preserved corpse immediately became compromised once the oxygen in the air touched her body, which caused her to begin deteriorating. Thus, the images of Xin Zhui that we have today don't do the initial discovery justice.

Furthermore, researchers found that all of her organs were intact and that her veins still housed type-A blood. These veins also showed clots, revealing her official cause of death: heart attack.

An array of additional ailments was also found throughout Xin Zhui's body, including gallstones, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and liver disease.

While examining Lady Dai, pathologists even found 138 undigested melon seeds in her stomach and intestines. As such seeds typically take one hour to digest, it was safe to assume that the melon was her last meal, eaten minutes before the heart attack that killed her.

So how was this mummy so well-preserved?

How Is Xin Zhui's Lady Dai Mummy So Well-Preserved?

Researchers credit the airtight and elaborate tomb in which Lady Dai was buried. Resting nearly 40 feet underground, Xin Zhui was placed inside the smallest of four pine box coffins, each resting within the one larger (think of Matryoshka, only once you reach the smallest doll you're met with the dead body of an ancient Chinese mummy).

She was wrapped in twenty layers of silk fabric, and her body was found in 21 gallons of an "unknown liquid" that was tested to be slightly acidic and containing traces of magnesium.

A thick layer of paste-like soil lined the floor, and the entire thing was packed with moisture-absorbing charcoal and sealed with clay, keeping both oxygen and decay-causing bacteria out of her eternal chamber. The top was then sealed with an additional three feet of clay, preventing water from penetrating the structure.

Who Was Xin Zhui Before She Became The Mummy We Know Today?

While we know all of this about Xin Zhui's burial and death, we know comparatively little about her life.

Lady Dai was the wife of a high-ranking Han official Li Cang (the Marquis of Dai), and she died at the young age of 50, as a result of her penchant for excess. The cardiac arrest that killed her was believed to have been brought on by a lifetime of obesity, lack of exercise, and an opulent and over-indulgent diet.

Nevertheless, her body remains perhaps the best-preserved corpse in history. Xin Zhui is now housed in the Hunan Provincial Museum and is the main candidate for their research in corpse preservation.
After learning about Xin Zhui a.k.a. Lady Dai, the world's best-preserved mummy, investigate whether or not the Victorians really did have mummy unwrapping parties. Then, read up on Carl Tanzler, the deranged doctor who fell in his love with patient and then lived with her corpse for seven years.

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Meet The Most Well-Preserved Mummy In Human History

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Also known as Lady Dai, Xin Zhui was an ancient Chinese noblewoman from the Western Han dynasty whose mummy remains startlingly intact after 2,200 years.