A hobbyist with a metal detector stumbled onto thousands of silver coins buried in the Finnish countryside for roughly a thousand years, a find experts are calling the largest Late Iron Age coin cache ever discovered in Finland. Kalle Lappinen was sweeping a field near Sysmä, a quiet town in southern Finland, on September 3 […] The post Amateur archaeologist unearths Finland's largest Viking Age silver hoard with a metal detector appeared first on American Almanac .
A hobbyist with a metal detector stumbled onto thousands of silver coins buried in the Finnish countryside for roughly a thousand years, a find experts are calling the largest Late Iron Age coin cache ever discovered in Finland. Kalle Lappinen was sweeping a field near Sysmä, a quiet town in southern Finland, on September 3 when his detector signaled something beneath the soil. What he found was no stray relic. Buried about 18 inches underground, packed inside birch bark containers wedged between stones, lay a trove of Viking Age silver that professional archaeologists would spend the next day pulling from the earth, ABC News reported . By September 4, the retrieval team from Lahti Museums had recovered almost 10 pounds of silver from…Open
A geologist conducting routine field surveys in a San Mateo County preserve stumbled onto a fossilized Pacific mastodon molar in "immaculate condition", a find paleontologists are calling the most complete specimen ever recovered from the region. Brigid Lynch discovered the tooth partially submerged in a wooded creek bed while working on a California red-legged frog […] The post Fossilized mastodon tooth surfaces in California creek bed, stunning paleontologists appeared first on American Almanac .
A geologist conducting routine field surveys in a San Mateo County preserve stumbled onto a fossilized Pacific mastodon molar in "immaculate condition", a find paleontologists are calling the most complete specimen ever recovered from the region. Brigid Lynch discovered the tooth partially submerged in a wooded creek bed while working on a California red-legged frog habitat restoration project in a Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District preserve in the Santa Cruz Mountains. She initially thought it was an oddly shaped rock. It was not. Paleontologists later confirmed the fossil was an intact upper left third molar from an adult Pacific mastodon, ABC News reported . The tooth measures roughly 8.5 inches long, 7 inches deep, and 3…Open
A high school teacher volunteering on a fossil dig stumbled onto four connected Tyrannosaurus rex footprints in the North Dakota badlands, the first trackway ever confirmed from a full-grown T. rex. Kent Hups, an amateur fossil hunter, made the find in 2025 while working on a dig led by Dr. Tyler Lyson, senior curator of […] The post Paleontologists find first-ever adult T. rex trackway in North Dakota badlands appeared first on American Almanac .
A high school teacher volunteering on a fossil dig stumbled onto four connected Tyrannosaurus rex footprints in the North Dakota badlands, the first trackway ever confirmed from a full-grown T. rex. Kent Hups, an amateur fossil hunter, made the find in 2025 while working on a dig led by Dr. Tyler Lyson, senior curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. The site sits on U.S. Forest Service land near Marmarth, a small town in southwestern North Dakota close to the Montana border. A peer-reviewed paper describing the discovery was published this week in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. Before this find, only two isolated adult T. rex footprints had ever been confirmed anywhere on Earth, one in New…Open
A secret archaeological dig inside a Dutch church has led to drama worthy of Alexandre Dumas. Did Wim Dijkman really find the bones of the fourth musketeer? We may never know.
A scientist working to save a threatened frog species stumbled across a fossilized Pacific mastodon molar in a San Mateo County creek bed, a find experts are calling the most complete specimen of its kind from the region. Brigid Lynch, a geomorphologist at the consulting firm Balance Hydrologics, was surveying a wooded creek inside a […] The post Geomorphologist finds remarkably preserved mastodon tooth in San Francisco Bay Area creek appeared first on American Almanac .
A scientist working to save a threatened frog species stumbled across a fossilized Pacific mastodon molar in a San Mateo County creek bed, a find experts are calling the most complete specimen of its kind from the region. Brigid Lynch, a geomorphologist at the consulting firm Balance Hydrologics, was surveying a wooded creek inside a Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District preserve in the Santa Cruz Mountains earlier this year when she spotted the nine-inch tooth sitting in plain sight. She was there for a habitat restoration project aimed at protecting the California red-legged frog, a threatened species. Instead, she found the remains of an animal that vanished from North America between 10,000 and 12,000 years ago. Lynch told…Open
A remarkable archaeological discovery and a centuries-old spiritual tradition take center stage in today's "Israel Update." Archaeologists in Israel have uncovered artifacts believed to date back to the Second Temple Period, including a ritual bath, a clay cooking pot, and a rare purple dye snail shell. Experts say the find sheds light on the deep historical connection between the Jewish people and the land of Israel. Plus, Israel correspondent Jodie Cohen reports from Jerusalem on Selichot, the late-night prayer services held in the weeks leading up to Rosh Hashanah. Worshippers explain why the tradition remains a powerful time for forgiveness, reflection, and national unity.
Scientists who analyzed rare Tyrannosaurus rex footprints in North Dakota say the fearsome predator strolled at roughly 3.5 miles per hour, a pace a healthy human could match without breaking a sweat. A team from Liverpool John Moores University and the Denver Museum of Nature & Science studied a 23-foot trackway preserved in the Hell […] The post A T. rex walked slower than most joggers, new fossil trackway study finds appeared first on American Almanac .
Scientists who analyzed rare Tyrannosaurus rex footprints in North Dakota say the fearsome predator strolled at roughly 3.5 miles per hour, a pace a healthy human could match without breaking a sweat. A team from Liverpool John Moores University and the Denver Museum of Nature & Science studied a 23-foot trackway preserved in the Hell Creek Formation of southwestern North Dakota. The trail holds four three-toed footprints, each about three feet long, spaced at a stride length of roughly 13 feet. Using 3D surface scanning and physical reproductions of the prints, the researchers calculated that the animal moved at between 3.5 and 4.5 miles per hour, barely faster than a brisk walk for a fit adult. Professor Peter Falkingham, who led the…Open
A scientist surveying a California creek bed for a frog habitat project accidentally discovered a pristinely preserved Pacific Mastodon tooth estimated to be 2.5 million years old, now headed to Stanford University for research. Brigid Lynch, a geomorphologist with Balance Hydrologics, was picking through rocks in a San Mateo County creek bed when one caught […] The post Geomorphologist stumbles onto 2.5-million-year-old mastodon molar in California creek bed appeared first on American Almanac .
A scientist surveying a California creek bed for a frog habitat project accidentally discovered a pristinely preserved Pacific Mastodon tooth estimated to be 2.5 million years old, now headed to Stanford University for research. Brigid Lynch, a geomorphologist with Balance Hydrologics, was picking through rocks in a San Mateo County creek bed when one caught her eye. She photographed the oddly shaped stone and moved on. The next day, reviewing the image, she realized she wasn't looking at a rock at all. It was a mastodon molar, an upper left third molar from a beast that roamed Ice Age California. The accidental find, The Sun reported , has now been donated to Stanford University's Doerr School of Sustainability, where researchers plan…Open
Archaeologists in Bulgaria have unearthed the skeleton of a young man who climbed into a storage jar to hide from attackers roughly 1,600 years ago, and never climbed out. Professor Lyudmil Vagalinski of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences announced the discovery on August 10, after his team dug through layers of construction debris at the […] The post Skeleton in a jar: archaeologists piece together a young Roman's final moments in Bulgaria appeared first on American Almanac .
Archaeologists in Bulgaria have unearthed the skeleton of a young man who climbed into a storage jar to hide from attackers roughly 1,600 years ago, and never climbed out. Professor Lyudmil Vagalinski of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences announced the discovery on August 10, after his team dug through layers of construction debris at the ancient Roman city of Deultum. Inside a burned-out defensive tower at the city's western gate, they found the lower half of a massive clay storage jar, and, crouched within it, the remains of a young man who had been sealed beneath a replacement floor for sixteen centuries. The find offers a grim, human-scale window into the collapse of Roman order along the empire's eastern frontier. Deultum, one of…Open
