A "death pit" for amphibians containing the remains of 8,000 animals was discovered in an Iron Age settlement

How did the broken bodies of the dead wind up at that spot?

 

Archaeologists in England are baffled about how the shattered amphibian corpses ended up in a death pit containing the bones of at least 8,000 frogs and toads dating back at least 2,000 years. Theories ranging from death from the cold to a nasty fall to disease as the cause of death have been proposed.

 

"This is a puzzling and unexpected find, which we are still attempting to comprehend fully," said Vicki Ewens, senior archaeozoologist at the Museum of London Archaeology. This collection of frog remains could have been created by several distinct factors, some of which may have interacted with one another over a significant amount of time.

 

The researchers discovered the bones at an old settlement near Bar Hill, located in Cambridgeshire, England. The settlement was in use between around 400 B.C. and 70 A.D. According to the archaeologists' statement, the bones come from at least 350 different individuals of frogs and toads. The ditch where they were discovered is located next to a roundhouse, a type of residence with a circular floor plan. There is no evidence to suggest that humans or other animals consumed the frogs and toads.

 

The investigators are considering a few different hypotheses to explain how the skeleton remains came to be in the ditch. The archaeologists said in their statement that one of the possibilities is that during the breeding season in the springtime, a large number of frogs and toads were moving en masse in search of water to mate in, only to fall into a ditch that they couldn't escape from. This would have happened at a time of year when they were looking for water to mate in.

 

There is also the potential that an infectious virus was responsible for the deaths of these amphibians at approximately the same time. Archaeologists mentioned in the statement that a scenario quite similar to this one occurred in the 1980s in the United Kingdom when a Ranavirus infected a large number of frogs there.

 

There is also the possibility that the amphibians perished because of an especially harsh winter. Yet another option is that beetles and aphids (a group of sap-sucking insects) swarmed the grain from the roundhouse, and their presence attracted frogs and toads that consumed them; over some time, the frogs could have perished in the ditch since they were unable to climb out of it.

 

Academics have a response.

 

The discovery piqued the interest of many academics who were not directly involved in the study.

 

"What a fascinating discovery this is. The possibility that the frogs fell into the roundhouse's ditch during migration and could not climb out sounds reasonable as a "best guess." Still, there is no way to determine whether a disease or a virus was to blame. In an email to Live Science, Roland Knapp, a research biologist at the Marine Science Institute of the University of California, Santa Barbara, stated that Knapp has done substantial research and writing on the subject of amphibians.

 

Jamie Voyles, an associate professor of biology at the University of Nevada Reno, was quoted as saying to Live Science in an email, "I believe that this news is fascinating and intriguing." Even in our modern times, determining the cause(s) of incidents with high death rates can be challenging. In light of those mentioned earlier, I think it is possible to study infectious diseases as one of the possibilities.

 

Archaeologists conducted digs at Bar Hill in preparation for a future construction project that will entail the expansion of a nearby motorway. The excavations are finished, and continued examination of the objects is taking place. According to a representative for the Museum of London Archaeology, there are currently no plans to do a DNA analysis on the bones of the frogs and toads. At the time of publication, Ewens was not available to respond to Live Science.

Article source : https://www.livescience.com/amphibian-death-pit-iron-age-village

Image source  : https://pixabay.com/id/photos/kehidupan-kecantikan-pemandangan-864388/

# In an Iron Age village, 8,000 bones of amphibians were found in a "death pit."

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# Amphibian 'death pit' found in Iron Age hamlet with 8,000 bones

Published by Owen Jarus