Plunging through gentle swell in the northern oceans in search of food, harbour seals are guided by a cryptic superpower that few fish can evade. ‘Fish produce lots of water flow that remains in the water, even after the fish has gone’, says Wolf Hanke, from the University of Rostock, Germany, and it is these swirling wakes that betray the presence of fish dinners. A hungry seal can sense the t...

if we go through the evolution of human society, we will come to know that plants have always played important role in human life. human settlement, quite often, shifted from one place to another in search of natural vegetation. whether man was hunter, or concentrated on animal husbandry, or even became cultivators, they needed green surrounding for their day-to-day life. the present paper tri...

The majority of archaeological plant material is preserved in a charred state. Obtaining reliable ancient DNA data from these remains has presented challenges due to high rates of nucleotide damage, short DNA fragment lengths, low endogenous DNA content and the potential for modern contamination. It has been suggested that high-throughput sequencing (HTS) technologies coupled with DNA enrichmen...

Dentists play an essential part in complex forensic scenarios, such as the identification of putrefied and charred bodies as well as skeletal remains, in which fingerprint analysis becomes unfeasible [1]. Specifically in charred bodies, the anterior teeth are often found fragile or destroyed after exposed to a high temperature. However, the posterior teeth are mostly preserved by the adjacent s...

This paper presents an integrated methodology for the analysis of archaeological remains of cereal meals, based on scanning electronic microscopic analyses of microstructures of charred food fragments from Neolithic Çatalhöyük (Turkey). The remains of cereal foods as 'bread-like' or 'porridge-like' small charred lumps of various amalgamated plant materials are frequently recovered from Neolithi...

The identification of archaeological charred grape seeds is a difficult task due to the alteration of the morphological seeds shape. In archaeobotanical studies, for the correct discrimination between Vitis vinifera subsp. sylvestris and Vitis vinifera subsp. vinifera grape seeds it is very important to understand the history and origin of the domesticated grapevine. In this work, different car...

Charcoal fragments from five historic campsite locations in the Galápagos Islands were identified and radiocarbon dated to investigate postulated early human presence in the archipelago, historic fuel wood collection patterns and the resultant impact on native vegetation. A variety of taxa and fuel types were revealed to be present in the charcoal assemblages, indicating geographically driven r...