25,000-year-old mammoth hunting site discovered in Austria
Excavations in this area, located northeast of St. Pölten, revealed the remains of at least five mammoths dating back 25,000 years, along with stone tools.
Researchers believe that dozens of these animals were processed here, with their meat utilised and ivory crafted by ancient hunters.
In February, a team led by Marc Händel from the Austrian Archaeological Institute (ÖAI) undertook further excavations slightly away from previous sites as part of the European research project MAMBA, which focuses on mammoth bone accumulations in Central Europe. \
They identified two zones, approximately 15 metres apart, containing multiple layers of bones, along with stone tools and waste from tool production.
While neither zone contained complete skeletons, one area revealed remains of at least three animals, including intact and fragmented tusks, but few vertebrae and long bones.
This suggests that ivory was likely processed there, possibly to create spear points. The second zone lacked ivory but included vertebrae and long bones from at least two additional mammoths.
Notably, both locations lacked rib bones, indicating that the ancient hunters sorted the remains.
Additionally, signs of Upper Paleolithic habitation have been found, such as fire pits and pits, which suggest that while butchering mammoths, the hunters remained in the area and left behind traces of their presence.
Händel noted that 25,000 years ago, during the late Ice Age, mammoth herds roamed Central Europe, utilising the Perschling Valley in Langmannersdorf as a transit and grazing area.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The National
4 days ago
- The National
Sleep like a hamster, wake up on Mars: Why hibernation is the future of deep space missions
The idea of astronauts snoozing their way to Mars may sound like something straight out of a Hollywood sci-fi movie, but scientists are exploring whether it could one day become a reality. Researchers in Europe and the US are studying whether slowing a person's metabolism could put them into a state of hibernation that lasts days, or even several weeks. The concept, known as torpor or synthetic hibernation, would involve reducing the body's metabolic activity to minimal levels, including lowering the heart rate and body temperature. Researchers believe this could help reduce the resources needed during space travel, while also protecting crew members from radiation and the effects of microgravity. 'Every kilogram launched into space is expensive,' said Dr Alexander Chouker, an academic director and physician at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and who works closely with the European Space Agency. 'We could cut down the need for food, water, oxygen and even space if you hibernate.' The agency commissioned studies looking at how hibernation could work during a mission to Mars, including theoretical designs of hibernation pods. The idea is to place astronauts into torpor for most of the journey, allowing them to wake up as they near their destination. What is torpor and how does it work? Some animals can enter a state of torpor naturally. It allows them to conserve energy by lowering their metabolism in response to environmental challenges such as cold or a scarcity of food. Dr Vladyslav Vyazovskiy, a professor of sleep physiology at the University of Oxford, has worked on studies involving mice and said they can enter a state of torpor when there is a lack of food. 'They calculate how much energy they need and enter this low-energy state for a few hours a day,' he told The National. 'Hamsters do it kind of proactively. They create conditions which remind them of winter. 'For example, when I make their day short and night long, they switch to winter mode, where they start entering torpor every day. My animals enter torpor at room temperature. You don't need to make it cold. The metabolic slowdown comes first, then the body cools down.' Even though there has been extensive research on animals, scientists still do not how to enable humans to enter the same state. Dr Vyazovskiy said sleep was one of the most important factors, but it is still not clear what kind of effect hibernation would have on a human brain. 'An important barrier is the dramatic change in physiology, in how the body and organism functions, and we need to be really sure that we do not produce a state which will affect the brain or the body negatively,' he said. 'I'm actually surprised that there is so much interest in introducing the state of torpor or hibernation, but nobody cares what the state does to you, so I think it's really important. 'And this is what I studied in my lab – what torpor does to the brain. Does the animal still have memories? Does the brain function is preserved before we can safely apply this to primates or humans?' Medical potential on Earth Dr Chouker said that more investment was needed to boost research and the development of technology that could help humans achieve a state of hibernation. He said it would revolutionise health care on Earth, with any benefits to space travel 'the cherry on the cake'. 'It will change medicine because you can control metabolism, including of a human who's waiting for a specific therapy that needs time," he added. "We could avoid any kind of intensive care or reduce intensive care degeneration and deconditioning effects.' Could humans hibernate? Dr Dominique Moser, a biologist also at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, said humans may one have had the ability to enter a state of torpor. 'There is some evidence from human history that showed capacity of going into torpor state,' she said. 'There were some bone findings in a cave in Atapuerca [in northern Spain] half a million years ago that showed signs of performing hibernation.' She said that theory was supported by genetic research that suggests hibernation is not controlled by a single gene, but a complex set of gene expressions triggered under specific environmental conditions. 'It might be that there's some kind of genetic programme that is encoded in plenty of animals, irrespective of species and phylogenetic relationships," Dr Moser said. 'This programme could be encoded in a huge set of mammals such as bears, hedgehogs, apes and even rodents, so why not humans?' Developing hibernation pods US company SpaceWorks Enterprises researches human hibernation for the purposes of space travel. It received grants from Nasa in 2013 and 2017 to develop a concept for a hibernation habitat for Mars missions. Dr John Bradford, chief executive of the company, told The National that it put together a medical team at the time to carry out the study, including researchers from the Mayo Clinic, animal hibernation experts and an astronaut. He said their findings showed it was possible to develop the sort of hibernation technology typically seen in movies. "It [hibernation] is kind of artificially induced, a low metabolic state, and it involves manipulating the thermal regulatory system of your body," he said. Among the challenges is finding the right drug combination to temporarily lower the body's thermal set point of 37°C by about 5°C or 10°C. "That's one of the challenges ... is finding the drugs that can override your body's tendency to basically always keep itself warm and active there, so that you spend a lot of energy doing that," Dr Bradford said. But even when such medicine and technology is invented, Mr Bradford said there would have to be many human experiments before it can be considered reliable for deep space missions, including tests on the ground and in Earth's orbit. Astronaut hibernation The process of inducing human torpor would probably involve several stages – preparation, induction, maintenance and reawakening. Bears, for example, take three to four weeks to fully enter hibernation, suggesting it is a gradual biological process. 'You'd need to get the body ready, perhaps through a combination of environmental cues and pharmacological support,' Dr Chouker said. 'The induction might involve drugs, while the maintenance phase could be supported by automated technology regulating temperature and humidity.' Light, noise, temperature changes or medication could be used to bring people back out of that state. Missions to Mars Space agencies are working towards sending humans back to the Moon, and eventually to the surface of Mars. Missions to the Red Planet would take seven to 10 months and studies are continuing on how extended deep space missions would affect human psychology and physiology. SpaceX is developing its Starship rocket, with the aim of sending crewed missions to Mars, or even deeper into space. Placing astronauts into state of hibernation could help them cope with the challenges of long space missions.
Al Etihad
30-07-2025
- Al Etihad
EU urged to act on forests' faltering absorption of carbon
30 July 2025 21:19 PARIS (AFP)The amount of carbon dioxide absorbed by European forests has reduced dramatically in recent years putting the EU's climate targets at risk, researchers said Wednesday, calling for urgent action to halt the which cover 40 percent of the European Union's territory, are expected to play a crucial role in efforts to meet targets for overall reductions of the bloc's emissions of planet-warming human and climate pressures, from logging to extreme weather and insect attacks, means their ability to absorb CO2 is "rapidly declining", according to an article, led by the European Commission's Joint Research Centre."Reversing the decline in European forests' ability to store carbon is essential -- and still possible -- with bold, science-based action today," said co-author Giacomo Grassi, who is a member of the UN's IPCC expert task force on greenhouse gas include rapid reductions in carbon emissions, combined with efforts to improve management to make forests more resilient to climate impacts, and comprehensive European countries still rely on periodic inventories, which cannot keep up with rapid changes to forest authors emphasise the need to better understand forest call in particular for better measuring of carbon flows between the soil, vegetation, and atmosphere, as well as improving predictions of how extreme weather will affect carbon sinks in the future. Steeper Decline The research looked at official 2024 data showing that the amount carbon absorbed by Europe's forests, ecosystems and changes to land use plummeted by around a third in the 2020 to 2022 period, compared to 2010 to authors said 2025 figures "suggest an even steeper decline"."This trend, combined with the declining climate resilience of European forests, indicates that the EU's climate targets, which rely on an increasing carbon sink, might be at risk," the authors this week another study in the Nature journal Communications Earth & Environment found that land accounts for a quarter of global emissions reductions in countries' climate plans and warned that a lack of funding and conservation focus was putting these in have warned that it is still unclear how carbon sinks might behave as the planet warms in future, and exactly how much heat-trapping carbon dioxide they might soak up from the atmosphere. In April, research by Climate Analytics, a policy institute that independently assesses countries' climate plans, warned that major economies are overstating how much carbon their forests can absorb in a climate accounting fudge that could allow them to use even more fossil fuels.
What's On
21-07-2025
- What's On
6 minutes of darkness: Rare total solar eclipse to take place in 2027
These days, few world events can fully embody once-in-a-lifetime status, but this rarest of the rare solar eclipse is definitely one of them. August 2, 2027 will see a rare total solar eclipse, plunging parts of three separate continents into complete darkness for a whole six minutes, the longest in over a century, and casting a shadow of approximately 258 kilometres. Lasting up to six minutes and 23 seconds, this will be the longest eclipse visible from land between 1991 and 2114. This is an unmissable event for astronomers, star chasers, and the general public alike – most solar eclipses last under three minutes, but this incredible timing allows for extended observation of the solar corona. Where to watch the eclipse? According to Gulf News, the regions included in the path of totality include large parts of Africa and the Middle East, as well as some European regions. The eclipse will cross over southern Spain, northern Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, central Egypt, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Somalia, before ending over the Indian Ocean near the Chagos Archipelago. The most ideal viewing locations include countries like Libya and Egypt, with typically clear skies and dry conditions on the month of August. Cities like Luxor in Egypt are expected to witness the complete six full minutes of total darkness – perfect for unobstructed views of the sky. The local timings, of course, vary as the broad corridor moves along the equator. In southern Spain, totality is expected between 1.30pm and 2pm, Central European Summer Time.. In Egypt and Libya, the peak will occur between 2pm and 2.30pm, Eastern European Time. What's so rare about it? Aside from being significantly longer then the standard eclipse and the longest eclipse visible from land between 1991 and 2114, a whole century, this eclipse also indicates unique positioning of the Earth, and the alignment of several other rare astronomical phenomenon. At the time of the event, Earth will be near aphelion – its farthest point from the sun – which will make the sun appear slightly smaller in the sky. Meanwhile, the moon will be at perigee, its closest point to Earth, appearing slightly larger. The unusually long duration of the event can be explained by the eclipse's path running near the equator. This path causes the moon's shadow to move more slowly across the surface of the Earth, contributing to the long duration of totality. In the UAE The last total solar eclipse visible from anywhere in the UAE occurred on November 24, 2003. Since that date, residents in the UAE have only experienced partial solar eclipses, such as the annular 'ring of fire' event in December 2019 (also visible in the UAE, though not total) and partial eclipses in 2022 and earlier. Looking ahead, the next total solar eclipse visible from the UAE is expected on September 3, 2081, when the eclipse's path of totality will cross parts of the UAE. Images: Getty > Sign up for FREE to get exclusive updates that you are interested in
