It is a regrettable actuality that there’s by no means time to cowl all of the attention-grabbing scientific tales we come throughout every month. Previously, we have featured year-end roundups of cool science stories we (nearly) missed. This 12 months, we’re experimenting with a month-to-month assortment. April’s record contains new analysis on tattooed tardigrades, the primary dwell picture of a colossal child squid, the digital unfolding of a just lately found Merlin manuscript, and an historic Roman gladiator whose skeleton exhibits indicators of being gnawed by a lion.

Gladiator vs lion?

Fashionable depictions of Roman gladiators in fight invariably embrace battling not simply human adversaries however wild animals. We all know from surviving texts, imagery, and artifacts that such battles seemingly occurred. However onerous bodily proof is far more restricted. Archaeologists have now discovered the primary direct osteological proof: the skeleton of a Roman gladiator who encountered a wild animal within the area, most certainly a lion, based mostly on chew marks evident on the pelvic bone, based on a paper revealed within the journal PLoS ONE.

The skeleton in query was that of a younger man, age 26 to 35, buried between 200–300 CE close to what’s now York, England, previously the Roman metropolis of Eboracum. It is considered one of a number of such skeletons, principally younger males whose stays confirmed indicators of trauma—therefore the suggestion that it may very well be a gladiator burial website. “We used a technique known as structured mild scanning [to study the skeleton],” co-author Tim Thompson of Maynooth College informed Ars. “It is a technique of making a 3D mannequin utilizing grids of sunshine. It is not like X-ray or CT, in that it solely data the floor (not inside) options, however because it makes use of mild and never X-rays and so forth, it’s a lot safer, cheaper, and extra moveable. We’ve got revealed a good bit on this and proven its use in each archaeological and forensic contexts.”

The staff in contrast the pelvic lesions discovered on the topic skeleton with chew marks from fashionable animal specimens and concluded that the younger man had been bitten by a “giant feline species,” most certainly a lion scavenging on the physique across the time of demise. The younger man was decapitated after demise for unknown causes, though this was a ritualistic observe for some individuals in the course of the Roman interval. Whereas the proof is technically circumstantial, “we’re assured with our conclusions,” stated Thompson. “We have adopted a multidisciplinary strategy to handle this concern and have drawn on strategies from completely different topics, too. Our use of latest comparability zoological materials is actually what offers us the boldness.”