archaeology

AN ANCIENT Roman ship downed by a storm has been found centuries later at a holiday hotspot – and there’s even treasure on board.

The 2,000-year-old discovery was made mere metres from a popular beachfront – and baffled researchers claim the ship is still in great condition.

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The archaeological sensation was unearthed along the Dalmatian Coast in Croatia this month, almost two millennia after it sunk.

Its timbers even “look like they were just carved”, according to the gobsmacked research team.

Divers suspected there might be a wreck at the Roman port of Barbir after discovering an antique plank with a metal nail in 2020.

Five years later, the entire 42-foot vessel has now been revealed, along with a haul of ancient coins.

One of them even included the ancient Roman emperor, Trajan.

The incredible shipwreck lies in the village of Sukošan just a few miles south of Zadar, one of Croatia’s biggest tourist destinations.

The International Centre for Underwater Archaeology, which led the excavation, said the ship was likely lost in a storm.

Director Mladen Pešić said: “As the evidence shows us, the ship was docked in the harbour.

“It was found just in front of the pier, so we suppose that due to the bad weather the ropes could be broken and the ship might have hit the shore.”

He added: “Broken stern elements give us evidence of this, since this beam that belongs to the keel was split like it hit a hard surface.

“The ship was probably in such bad condition that the owners decided to leave it on the bottom of the harbour.”

Radiocarbon analysis dates the ship to the first or second century AD – roughly the period of Trajan’s reign.

And though the ship was damaged enough to sink, it is in surprisingly good condition for its age.

Dr Pešić said: “The preserved ship was almost 13 meters in length and 3.5m in width.

“Many different elements were preserved – keel, planks, frames, ceilings, and many elements of the ship’s upper construction.”

He continued: “It is quite well preserved; some of the planks and frames look like they were just carved.”

The construction of the vessel suggests it was built to carry heavy loads over medium-to-long distances.

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And the artefacts found on board point to the same conclusion.

Dr Pešić said there were many shards of “pottery, glass, and other archaeological material” that could be connected with ship and the port.

“Most interesting are two complete jugs that were part of the ship’s equipment,” he explained.

“As we found many olive pits on it, we suppose that at the moment of sinking, the ship was transporting olives for further processing or for sale.”

The ship will now be preserved in-situ, being covered with a protective geotextile membrane and reburied in the sand.

But a recreation of the ship is planned for public display.

Dr Pešić said: “The plan is to make a 1:10 scale reconstruction of the existing ship construction in order to make a predictive model of ship how it looked in Roman times.”

Excavation of the ship was the work of a multinational team, including experts from Croatia, France, Poland, Germany, and the UK.

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A MASS grave of more than 50 skeletons has cast light on tribal warfare in Iron Age Britain, where gangs engaged in bloody turf wars.

Historians previously believed mass slaughter events involving hill fort tribes in the west country were caused by invading Romans.

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But radiocarbon dating of human remains unearthed in 1936 have revealed the victims were actually killed a century before the Romans arrived.

Researchers believe “localised gangland infighting” was actually behind the killings, which happened to be at one of Europe’s biggest hill forts, the Daily Mail reported.

“We can now say quite categorically that these individuals died a long time before the Romans arrived and over a long period of time, not in single battle for a hill fort,” Dr Miles Russell, principal academic in prehistoric and Roman archaeology at Bournemouth University, said in a statement.

The Romans didn’t arrive in Dorset until 43AD.

Cut marks on the victims suggest they were killed by “lethal weapon injuries” – and in very public displays.

Experts say their deaths could have acted as a warning to others not to fall out of line.

Dr Russell, who has spent several years researching the burial site at Maiden Castle near Dorchester, added: “The deaths were a series of gangland-style executions.

“People were dragged up there and put to death as a way of one group exerting control over another.”

The executions took place between the late first century BC to the early first century AD – suggesting the violence was lethal across multiple generations.

“These were Mafia-like families. Game of Thrones-like barons with one dynasty wiping out another to control trade links and protection rackets for power,” Dr Russell continued.

“What we are seeing is the people who lost out being executed.

“Most of them had cranial trauma with no sign of defensive wounds. They were repeatedly struck with a sword to the head with the skulls smashed to oblivion.

“You are talking overkill, not a single death blow. These were gangland executions carried out in a very prominent and obvious way as a warning to others.”

The Maiden Castle grave site is one of the most famous archaeological discoveries in Britain.

When it was unearthed in 1936, dig director Sir Mortimer Wheeler suggested the injuries were “the marks of battle” with the Romans.

The misinterpretation of the Maiden Castle site, dubbed the “war cemetery”, brings into question how other archaeological cemeteries across the south west have been understood.

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A NEW dog-sized dinosaur species that roamed the Earth 220 million years ago has been discovered.

The Maleriraptor kuttyi is thought to be one of the earliest killer dinosaurs in history.

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The now-extinct dinosaur is believed to have lived some 220 million years ago – during the Triassic period.

The small but mighty beast could grow to a height of 3.2 feet and a length of 6.5 feet – about the size of a large-breed dog such as a Great Dane.

And the creature was one of the earliest known carnivorous dinosaurs, along with the rest of the Herrerasauria family.

Dr. Martín Ezcurra from the Argentina’s Natural Science museum said: “Herrerasaurs represent the oldest radiation of predatory dinosaurs.”

The fossilised dinosaur bones were discovered more than in Telangana, India forty years ago.

But only now have scientists identified exactly what species these bones belonged to.

Herrerasauria fossils were previously found in South and North America.

But the new bombshell discovery has proved that the creatures roamed far more of the Earth than previously thought.

And the dinosaurs in India are believed to have outlived those elsewhere.

Scientists believe this might be because India had a similar climate to South America during the Triassic period.

This comes after a giant horned dinosaur species was unearthed in Egypt.

The predatory dinosaur species, named Tameryraptor markgrafi, was originally discovered in 1914 by Ernst Stromer von Reichenbach who died in 1952.

The 95million-year-old skeleton was excavated in the Bahariya Oasis in Egypt before it was stored in the Bavarian State Collection for Paleontology and Geology in Munich, Germany.

But the remains were destroyed along with other Egyptian discoveries when Munich was bombed in World War Two.

Tragically the only remnants of the dinosaur discovery were Dr Stromer’s notes, illustrations of the bones and black and white photographs of the skeletons.

But Dr Stromer’s records have now been reanalysed in a new study.

Maximilian Kellermann, the study’s first author said: “What we saw in the historical images surprised us all.

“The Egyptian dinosaur fossil depicted there differs significantly from more recent Carcharodontosaurus found in Morocco.”