Archaeologists Find Huge, Well-Preserved Roman-Era Shoe
During ongoing excavations at the site located in Northumberland, England, near Hadrian's Wall, researchers came across a Roman-era leather shoe measuring 12.6 inches, which is a modern men's size 13–14. It's one of the largest shoes to be recorded so far in the Vindolanda Trust, which compiles all Roman footwear found to date.
"The sheer size of the shoe and guesses about who could have worn it dominated the conversation," said Rachel Frame, a senior archaeologist with the Magna Project "Could this one be the largest in the Vindolanda Trust collection? We certainly look forward to finding out!'
The shoe is actually one of several found during the excavation, all of which were remarkably well-preserved thanks to the oxygen-poor conditions which slowed the leather's decomposition. While the large shoe had only one sole layer, other pieces of footwear recovered contained several sole layers, allowing researchers to chart the evolution of ancient Roman footwear. The heel of the large shoe remained almost completely intact, allowing an unprecedented look at the craftsmanship.
"Multiple layers of leather were used to form the sole, held together with thongs, stitching, and hobnails,' Frame said. 'These also reinforced the outer surface for walking and are found on many styles of shoe."Adding a bit more mystery to the discovery is the fact that the largest shoe was found in an 'ankle-breaker' trench, which was designed to fell oncoming enemies. Scientists will conduct further research to determine how the soldier lost his shoe, whether in a violent incident or a willful abandonment.
A volunteer archaeologist identified as Jo, who assisted in the excavation of two shoes, was overcome with the magnitude of the discoveries. "It's always exciting to find anything that hasn't been touched for 2,000 years, but a shoe is such a personal item. It really puts you in touch with the people who used to live at the fort."
Archaeologists Find Huge, Well-Preserved Roman-Era Shoe first appeared on Men's Journal on Jun 21, 2025
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USA Today
2 days ago
- USA Today
Dire wolf meet-up: Watch Colossal's female wolf frolic with older brothers
Colossal Biosciences created three dire wolves using genetic engineering. Now that the wolves have gotten older – the two males are approaching one year old – they are being assimilated into a pack. Those cute dire wolves are forming a pack. If you remember, Colossal Biosciences, the company seeking to bring back the woolly mammoth, revealed in April 2025 it had successfully birthed a trio of dire wolf puppies. Using dire wolf DNA extracted from fossils – yes, dire wolves aren't just the stuff of "Game of Thrones" fiction, they existed tens of thousands of years ago – the Colossal researchers created dire wolf genomes. They used those as a guide to editing a gray wolf genome to express dire wolf traits. The resultant fertilized dire wolf eggs were implanted into and born by surrogate dog mothers, resulting in the successful resurrection of an Ice Age-era species. Two male dire wolves, Romulus and Remus, born in October 2024, are approaching their first birthday – each weighed more than 90 pounds at six months old, significantly larger than standard gray wolves, the Dallas, Texas-based biotech company says – while a female, Khaleesi (named after the "Game of Thrones" character), is about six months old. Home delivery: A meteorite crashes into a Georgia home. Turns out it's older than Earth. 'She's completely been accepted into the pack': All in the dire wolf family Recently, the Colossal team thought it was time to introduce the brothers to their sister. "We're working through the socialization and the introduction of Khaleesi into the pack," Colossal CEO and co-founder Ben Lamm told USA TODAY. "They're starting to behave more and more like wolves," he said. "We don't want them to be lap dogs." You can see Khaleesi come into a grassy, fenced six-acre section of Colossal's 2,000-acre ecological preserve where she first gets to meet Romulus, in a video posted Aug. 12 on Colossal's YouTube channel. "At first, she was a little like, 'Whoa, he's right there," said Paige McNickle, manager of animal husbandry at Colossal and manager of the team that takes care of the dire wolves. The older male wolf, Romulus, came up to Khaleesi, and they smelled each other and then she took off on a run and he followed her. "They were playing with each other. Their ears were up the entire time, which is a good, happy, calm, wolf behavior that we were hoping to see," McNickle said. After a bit, Romulus is ushered away and Remus is brought into the area. "They were both excited. Everybody was so good in play, but Remus is almost more gentle than Romulus," McNickle said. "Romulus is just a little bit bigger, and Remus did really good. We saw lots of play behaviors," she said. "They kept their ears up, they wagged their tails. They followed each other around. They all got to explore the pool together. When they got hot, they went right over and cooled themselves off, especially Khaleesi." The trio then got to play together, although in coming days, she will get extended time with one brother on one day and another on the next day, McNickle said. The play area has a collection of logs, which Khaleesi is small enough to fit under, where she occasionally played hide and seek from her larger brothers. "We want to make sure that … (when) they're playing, they can separate, they can socialize, they can smell each other, but then, you know, if Khaleesi wants to get away – or Romulus or Remus want to get away – we need to make sure that we give them that comfort so they don't feel overwhelmed or feel pressured," Lamm said. "But the great news about it is she's completely been accepted into the pack." Leader of the dire wolf pack That pack will likely be growing. Colossal is planning to engineer two to four more dire wolves over the next year, Lamm said. Rather than let these wolves breed, the researchers want future pups from "a couple different cell lines," he said. "We will actually get more genetic diversity." And wolves of different ages, as they are adopted in the pack, will grow up "in some kind of social hierarchy." As of now, Remus, the smaller of the male wolves, appears to be emerging as the leader, having exhibited Alpha male characteristics. When the dire wolves were first introduced to the world, Remus "kind of became the star," Lamm said. "Remus really has this take-charge attitude. … Romulus has always been bigger and I just thought, natural selection, the biggest and strongest." Recently, Romulus and Remus began receiving larger carcasses for feeding – from rabbits to deer legs and cattle portions, beyond their regular menu of ground meat, meat chunks, and other foods – so they would learn important social skills. Colossal is currently working with Grizzly Systems and Yellowstone National Park's Wolf Project, deploying audiovisual recording devices to understand pack behavior and wolf populations. Artificial intelligence software helps identify "specific wolves in that setting and then begin to understand how we can estimate population size based on how many times we count the same wolf," said Matt James, Colossal's chief animal officer, in another video on the company's YouTube channel. Those devices will eventually be deployed in Colossal's reserve to monitor its growing dire wolf pack. Those tools will make it "so that we can just be observing them in a more passive manner," Lamm said. "This is just the next chapter in their story." Colossal continues other projects amid dire wolf controversy Critics have argued that the pups are not truly dire wolves, but genetically-modified gray wolves. Colossal has countered that their dire wolves share 99.5% of the same genetics as the original dire wolf. Some have also scolded Colossal for tinkering with genetics, but the tech firm insists its work will aid in the conservation and protection of endangered species. Recently, Colossal announced plans to resurrect the long-extinct New Zealand bird species, the moa, at the urging of filmmaker Peter Jackson, who is an investor in Colossal. Colossal first gained attention with its 2021 announced goal of bringing back the woolly mammoth. Earlier this year, the company unveiled its Colossal Woolly Mouse, which was genetically engineered to have characteristics that could eventually be used in creating a next-generation woolly mammoth embryo to be born by a female elephant. In August 2022, the company said it also planned to de-extinct the Australian thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger. Another project: the return of the dodo, which was killed off about 350 years ago. Mike Snider is a national trending news reporter for USA TODAY. You can follow him on Threads, Bluesky, X and email him at mikegsnider & @ & @mikesnider & msnider@ What's everyone talking about? Sign up for our trending newsletter to get the latest news of the day
Politico
3 days ago
- Politico
How the Energy secretary picked a fight with climate science
The Department of Energy isn't traditionally the federal government's vanguard for grand debates about climate research. But Energy Secretary Chris Wright is trying to change that — in a bid to shore up President Donald Trump's rollback of climate regulations. The most striking result to date is a DOE report issued last month that questions the traditional underpinnings of climate science. The report, inked by a tag team of climate contrarians handpicked by the secretary, came out on the same day that the Environmental Protection Agency announced it would overturn the Obama-era legal doctrine that undergirds most federal climate rules. Wright, a former fracking services executive who also serves as second-in-command of the White House's National Energy Dominance Council, personally gathered the researchers for his climate-questioning squad just weeks into the job, writes my colleague Benjamin Storrow. They included Roy Spencer, a former NASA scientist; Judith Curry, a climatologist and retired professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology; John Christy, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville; Steven Koonin, a former chief scientist for BP who also served as an undersecretary at the Energy Department during the Obama administration; and Canadian environmental economist Ross McKitrick. Each researcher has publicly questioned some of the broader findings accepted by the world's climate scientists, including numerous previously published federal reports. And several have worked to downplay the risks of fossil-fuel-driven climate change. Those proved strong credentials for Wright, who has long preached that fossil fuels can solve global energy poverty. He's accused mainstream scientists, and the media, of overhyping the risks of a planet rapidly heating up. Carbon dioxide is a 'life-giving plant food,' Wright said in a podcast earlier this month with Wall Street Journal columnist Kim Strassel. 'It does absorb infrared radiation so we can have a real dialogue about too much of it or too little of it … but calling it a pollutant is just nuts,' he said. (Note: Other kinds of 'plant food' — for example, nitrogen and phosphorus — are also pollutants when found in excessive quantities.) By May, Wright's team had compiled a 141-page report questioning the veracity of climate models, the threat of sea-level rise and the connection between burning fossil fuels and extreme weather, Ben writes. It withheld the report's release until last month to coincide with EPA's proposal to reverse the 'endangerment finding,' its 2009 legal conclusion that greenhouse gases are a harmful pollutant that the agency must regulate. The administration hasn't yet spelled out how widely it will deploy the DOE report in its coming legal and regulatory battles over Trump's efforts to smooth the path for fossil fuels — although the EPA proposal cited the report 16 times, Ben notes. But if the study was meant to disrupt mainstream science — or spawn what Strassel has hailed as a 'healthy, vigorous debate' over the research — it doesn't seem to have done that. Instead, other academics and scientists in the field have accused the team of cherry-picking or misrepresenting past research to support its favored conclusion. Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M University, panned the study on the social media site X as 'a law brief from attorneys defending their client, carbon dioxide.' It's Monday — thank you for tuning in to POLITICO's Power Switch. I'm your host, Heather Richards. Power Switch is brought to you by the journalists behind E&E News and POLITICO Energy. 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Trump 2.0's first FERC chair exitsMark Christie came in as chair of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in lockstep with Trump's vision of energy dominance, even if he was at odds with the White House on executive power in his tenure that ended Friday, Francisco 'A.J.' Camacho writes. He stepped in, for example, to write letters on behalf of FERC staff when the Trump administration asked federal workers to justify their jobs. 'He's no shrinking violet,' Albert Pollard, a former state lawmaker in Virginia, said of Christie. The exit of Republican Christie leaves FERC with a 2-1 Democratic majority. POLITICO on Friday reported that Trump plans to elevate Democratic Commissioner David Rosner to chair. If Rosner gets the nod, he could be temporary. The White House is waiting for Senate confirmation of two Republican commissioners. Either one could be named chair by Trump. The AI race gets politicalThe push by companies like OpenAI and Google to win the artificial intelligence race has led to a proliferation of energy-hungry data centers across the country. The rise of these server farms has sparked fierce battles from Virginia to Arizona and beyond. City and county governments are grappling with how to balance new jobs and new revenue streams against the strain data centers put on water and energy resources, Jordan Wolman and Lisa Kashinsky report. The surge is proving polarizing, particularly in northern Virginia — considered the tip of the spear on this issue with the world's largest and fastest-growing data center market. And across the U.S., the debate is inching up the ballot as state lawmakers race to regulate and governors rush to embrace a new economic boon. In Other News Cleaner power: A microgrid run on lithium-ion batteries and liquid hydrogen has replaced diesel backup generators in a California town that frequently lost power because of wildfires. Reuse: Aluminum recycling is a faster and less energy-intensive way for U.S. companies to get around a 50 percent tariff on imports, metals executives and analysts say. Subscriber Zone A showcase of some of our best subscriber content. Artificial intelligence could need electricity equal to half of the nation's nuclear power fleet by 2030, according to a new analysis. The majority owner of the coal-fired Four Corners power plant in New Mexico plans to extend its use rather than retire it in 2031 to help avert an electricity reliability crunch in the West. Republicans in Congress are again looking to place a federal fee on electric vehicles to boost the Highway Trust Fund. One person is dead, another is unaccounted for and at least 10 are injured following an explosion at a U.S. Steel plant near Pittsburgh. That's it for today, folks! Thanks for reading.
Boston Globe
3 days ago
- Boston Globe
After Boston's lab building boom, one-third of it sits empty. What do we do now?
Laboratory space inside 74M. Suzanne Kreiter/Globe Staff Advertisement After a COVID-era building boom, The glut of space is particularly striking Advertisement Yet now, converting those empty labs is both financially and physically difficult. And that leaves the real estate industry grappling with a vexing question: What the heck do we do with all this empty space? It's not as easy to swap out lab space for new tenants such as a traditional office or light manufacturing, or converting an Lab buildings are far more technically complicated than most others, with elaborate mechanical and air-treatment systems that take up much more room and are costlier to build. Rishi Nandi, a leader in design firm Sasaki's science and technology practice, said lab space can cost around $1,200 per square foot — at least 50 percent more than office space. That means a lab building commands higher rents to make sense to investors. When developers borrow money to fund construction, they model what the building is expected generate in rent, to show lenders the kind of return they can expect. Lab users typically pay higher rents than a standard office user; asking rent for a new lab in Greater Boston is about $85 per square foot, versus around $50 on average for office space, Newmark research shows. Investors who financed a lab building will want to see that higher number. A view of 109 Brookline Ave. in Boston's Fenway-Kenmore neighborhood. David L Ryan/ Globe Staff Most owners or operators considering different uses for their lab space have buildings in 'core and shell' status — meaning they are all but done but for the final fit out of the tenants's specific gear and fixtures. Still, even some 'core and shell' buildings have multiple millions of dollars' worth of HVAC systems, cooling towers, and other specialized equipment. Advertisement Then there are the physical challenges of converting lab space into office or housing. Typically, around 40 percent of a lab building is designed for office use. But the whole building needs robust mechanical systems, redundant power — so as not lose research in the case of a power outage — and much more intense ventilation. In all, lab buildings typically have three times as much mechanical equipment as office buildings, said Larry Dubord, senior chief engineer with JLL. In the mechanical floor on the 17th floor of 74M, a 10-foot-by-20-foot air duct sprawls across much of the double-height floor, pushing air into workspaces below. HVAC systems in lab buildings don't recirculate air within the building as offices and apartment buildings do, but instead constantly bring in outside air that has to be heated, cooled, or dehumidified before it can go into workspaces. The ductwork for all that often requires higher ceilings, which eats into rentable space. A 300-foot apartment tower could feature at least 25 stories with hundreds of units; by contrast, the 294-foot 74M has just 15 rentable floors for tenants. The difference in ceiling heights, Nandi of Sasaki said, translates to potentially dozens fewer apartments paying rent each month. Massive air ducts, such as those in 74M, are needed for lab space. Suzanne Kreiter/Globe Staff 'When you look at it from a financial modeling perspective, it's just a lot less space,' he said. Advertisement And there are small but crucial differences in how different kinds of buildings are designed, said Troy Depeiza, a principal and co-founder of architecture firm DREAM Collaborative in Boston and an expert in designing life science labs. Warehouses, for instance, need floors that can hold a lot more weight, to safely load goods and drive forklifts. Residential building codes require lots of windows. Even elevators, staircases, and bathrooms are often placed differently in lab buildings than in residential or industrial. 'There's going to be a whole lot of rejiggering to make that work,' he said. It just 'wouldn't be efficient." So, for the most part, their owners have few options other than waiting for the market to recover. Some, though, are 'looking hard at marketing those spaces to other users,' be it office or medical office tenants closer to Boston or so-called 'tough tech' and advanced manufacturing out in the suburbs, said Liz Berthelette, the head of Northeast research with Newmark in Boston. Empty lab space overlooks housing in Somerville at 74M. Suzanne Kreiter/Globe Staff One developer leasing lab buildings to life-science companies — but not to use as laboratories — is Boston Properties, now known as BXP. The office giant broke ground in 2021 on a $290.5 million lab building next to the ThermoFisher Scientific's headquarters in Waltham's CityPoint; earlier this year it signed a lease with a unnamed life-science company that only wanted the office space. The firm is now negotiating two similar deals in the building, BXP president Doug Linde told Wall Street analysts last month. 'The economics of doing an office transaction on raw space, even though the building had been purpose-built for lab and has the infrastructure, are far superior to lab transactions today, given the elevated tenant improvements necessary to compete in the lab market,' he said. Advertisement For developers of lab projects that haven't yet started construction, switching uses may also be a tough financial loss to swallow. Many paid a premium for the land on the expectation of charging higher lab rents, and pivoting to another use such as housing means potentially years in permitting, with all the architect, attorney, and engineering bills that would entail. But some are deciding to make such a change: In June, Bulfinch president Robert A. Schlager That shift can also come at a cost to municipalities. Many cities and towns across Greater Boston leaned hard on the lab boom to diversify their tax bases and bring in more commercial tax revenue, which would help offset the burden on homeowners. Somerville, for example, has seen nearly 2 million square feet of new lab space since 2020, a crucial part of its especially after Some of the labs are bustling and full; others, like 74M, stand empty. 74M at Middlesex Avenue outside Assembly Square in Somerville is vacant. David L Ryan/ Globe Staff Tom Galligani, executive director of Somerville's office of strategic planning and community development, said the city is fortunate in that its lab space is new construction and not conversions of older offices, as was the case in many nearby suburbs. The new buildings incorporate rigorous energy efficiency standards that are attractive to future tenants, and Galligani is confident they will at some point be occupied. Advertisement 'All of our stuff is brand new," he said. 'I'd like to think we're not going to have the same challenges in the life-science space. But of course, time will tell.' Matt DeNoble, a senior director for Greystar, the developer behind the 74M building, said the firm is better off waiting for the right tenants than to try to force a use that doesn't make sense. With immediate 'We're starting to see groups say: 'It's time for us to make decisions,'' DeNoble said. 'We are not worried long term about filling this building up.' The main lobby of the new lab building at 74 Middlesex Avenue. Suzanne Kreiter/Globe Staff Catherine Carlock can be reached at
