After the discovery of the gladiator school in 2011, the researchers of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Archaeological Prospection and Virtual Archaeology (LBI ArchPro) and the ZAMG have now done a complete scan of the ancient town of Carnuntum (east of Vienna, Austria) by using ground penetrating radar. This project has been undertaken on behalf of the county of Lower Austria.
Overview of taverns, amphitheatre and gladiator school – visualization [Credit: (c) LBI ArchPro, 7reasons]
The scientists have revealed, without excavation, an entire city area next to the amphitheater, containing bakeries, taverns and shops – an essential infrastructure for Roman spectacles.
Gladiatorial games at Carnuntum – footage [Credit: (c) LBI ArchPro, 7reasons]
Hidden under the later city wall, the radar system detected the remains of a wooden amphitheater located at an intersection of a road that followed the Roman frontier (Danube Limes) and the main road leading back to Rome; a temple for the Quadriviae (Roman goddesses of the cross-roads) was located right next to the building. With this information, we can add yet another chapter to the early history of Roman Carnuntum, one which underlines the significance of Bread and Games on the frontier of the Roman Empire.
Cellar at the taverns – visualization [Credit: (c) LBI ArchPro, 7reasons]
Since 2012, the LBI ArchPro and ZAMG (Austrian Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics), on behalf of the county of Lower Austria together with international partners, have explored the ancient town of Carnuntum with custom made, high-resolution magnetometers and ground-penetrating radar systems. The newly completed map reveals, for the first time, the subterranean Roman remains that have been hidden for thousands of years.
Newly discovered wooden amphitheater – visualization based on geophysical data interpretation [Credit: (c) LBI ArchPro, 7reasons]
After the discovery of the universally unique gladiator school, measurements were taken around the excavated amphitheater of the civil town and the subsequent results revealed an entire city area complete with the necessary infrastructure for the gladiatorial games. The route to the spectacles led the people through the city gates past taverns (tabernae), souvenir shops and food vendors (thermopolia), where street merchants offered their goods for sale and invited the public to linger. Behind one of the taverns, the LBI ArchPro specialists discovered a storage building (horreum) and a large oven, where bread was baked for up to 13,000 spectators. The wine and other foodstuffs were stored in underground cellars.
Taverns, amphitheater and gladiator school, view from the city wall of Carnuntum – visualization [Credit: (c) LBI ArchPro, 7reasons]
Just 400 meters from the excavated amphitheater and hidden under the later city wall of the civilian city, the archaeologists found the ground plan of an older and as yet unknown wooden amphitheater. It was strategically placed at the crossroads of the road along the Danube frontier (Danube Limes) and the main connecting route back to Rome, but it was also adjacent to a temple dedicated to the Quadriviae (Roman goddesses of the cross-roads).
Without excavating in the ground, this analysis of the geophysical data has added more exciting chapters to the story of Carnuntum. Not only in Rome were so-called ‘bread and games’ of great importance for the entertainment of the masses, but also in Carnuntum – a frontier-town along the Danube River, at the edge of the Roman Empire and on the border with barbarians to the north.
An unusual fossil find is giving scientists new ideas about how some of the earliest animals on Earth came to dominate the world's oceans.
A dark patch of rock on the left marks the Rauchkofel Boden trench, dug in the Cardiola Formation of the Austrian Alps during World War I. Many fossils have been found at the site [Credit: Annalisa Ferretti, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia]
An international research team found 425-million-year-old fossilized remnants of juvenile crinoids, a distant ancestor of today's sea lilies, encased in iron oxide and limestone in the Austrian Alps.
Researchers collected the rock from a formation on the border between Italy and Austria known as the Cardiola Formation, which was exposed in trenches dug during World War I.
Crinoids were abundant long ago, when they carpeted the sea floor. Most stalked crinoid fossils depict spindly, plantlike animals anchored to sea floor rocks, explained William Ausich, professor of earth sciences at The Ohio State University and co-author of the study in the open-access journal Geologica Acta.
Fossils of juvenile crinoids are rare, he said.
Rarer still is that these newly uncovered crinoids weren't attached to rocks when they died. Whatever they were attached to during their young lives didn't survive fossilization.
Microscope image of one fossilized holdfast from a juvenile crinoid discovered in the Alps [Credit: The Ohio State University]
"The fossils indicate that they were either attached to objects floating in the water at the time, or attached to another bottom dweller that lacked preservable hard parts," said Ausich said.
They might have clung to free-floating algae beds or swimming cephalopods, either of which could have carried them far away from where they formed as larvae.
Modern sea lilies reproduce by ejecting sperm and eggs into the water. Larvae grow into free-floating juvenile animals and eventually attach to the ocean bottom, where they grow to adulthood within 18 months.
At least, that's what sea lilies do today. This fossil find suggests that their distant ancestors sometimes settled on objects that carried them far from home before they reached reproductive age.
"We now have important information about the behavior of these ancient organisms, and a clue as to why they had such a wide geographic distribution," Ausich said.
Holdfasts from very young crinoids that lived 450 million years ago, fossilized in iron oxide. An international team of researchers discovered the tiny fossils, measuring one to four millimeters across, in rock exposed by World War I trenches dug in the Alps [Credit: The Ohio State University]
With long, stem-like bodies topped with feathery fronds, crinoids resembled flowers, though the center of the "flower" was a mouth, and the "petals" were arms that captured plankton for food. At the other end of the creature was star-shaped organ called a holdfast, which gripped the seafloor.
While some of today's sea lilies are able to detach their holdfasts from the seafloor and walk short distances on their arms, they don't do it often. If their crinoid ancestors spent their entire adult lives similarly anchored to one spot, they couldn't have spread worldwide without help.
Fossilized holdfasts are all that remain of the young crinoids uncovered in the Alps, and that's not unusual, Ausich said.
"The hard part about studying the fossils that I study is that they need to be buried alive in order to be completely preserved," he explained. "Crinoids and other echinoderms have a skeleton comprised of innumerable individual calcite plates held together by various connective soft tissues. These tissues begin to decompose within a day of an organism's death. So, having only parts [of crinoids] rather than whole organisms is actually the norm -- as frustrating as that may be."
The sediment that eventually covered these young crinoids must have been rich in iron, because the holdfasts were preserved as minerals of iron oxide -- and that detail is unusual, he added.
Today, the fossil holdfasts look like rusty star-shaped rings. The stars measure only 1 to 4 millimeters across, meaning they came from very young, post-larval juveniles.
The tiny fossils might have been hard to isolate from the surrounding rock, but researchers were able to take advantage of the presence of iron oxide to dissolve the limestone and pull the fossils from the resulting slurry with a magnet.
Researchers had actually collected rock samples from the Cardiola Formation long ago, Ausich said. The area contains abundant fossils, including ancient corals and trilobites. But only recently did anyone discover that these particular rock samples also contained the crinoid holdfasts.
Researchers are interested in crinoids not just because they're part of Earth's history, but because the various crinoid species were able to survive millions of years of climate changes to become the sea lilies we know today.
