SCIENCE IN THE NEWS WEEKLY
A Mammoth Find in Iowa
A nearly complete mammoth skeleton has been found buried on an Iowa farm about 60 miles southwest of Des Moines. The bones were largely undisturbed, which has allowed scientists to gather evidence that could help show what the area was like more than 12,000 years ago, when the animal died.
In other news of the ancient past, a warship submerged for two centuries in the Patuxent River about 20 miles from Washington, D.C., could provide new insight into the War of 1812. Archaeologists are preparing to excavate the wreck.
Researchers say the world's oldest fish traps have been found off coast of Sweden. Wooden fish traps said to be some 9,000 years old have been found in the Baltic Sea. Marine archaeologists from Stockholm's Sodertorn University found finger-thick hazel rods grouped on the sea bed.
About 150 million years ago, insects of monstrous size met their doom battling the ancestors of modern birds. The epic struggle ended an era of insect growth spurts that coincided with upticks in the amount of oxygen in the air. Starting with the Cretaceous period, predators kept the sizes of insects down, researchers report online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Well-preserved remains of Shakespeare's original "wooden O" stage, the Curtain theater, where Henry V and Romeo and Juliet were first performed, have been discovered in a yard in east London. The Curtain theater in Shoreditch preceded the Globe on the Thames as Shakespeare's first venue, showcasing several of his most famous plays. But it was dismantled in the 17th century and its precise location lost.