This would increase the odds of finding another prehistoric human body in melting ice:
In 1991, a group of hikers found the mummified remains of Ötzi the Iceman emerging from a melting glacier. The popular interpretation—given the extraordinary preservation of the body—is that Ötzi fled from the valley after being attacked and froze to death in the gully where his mummified remains were found. His body and the tools he brought with him were quickly buried beneath the ice and remained frozen under a moving glacier for the next 5,300 years. The gully served as a kind of time capsule, protecting the remains from damage by the glacier.
But a new paper published in the journal The Holocene challenges that interpretation, suggesting that the Ötzi died elsewhere on the mountain and that normal environmental changes gradually moved his remains down into the gully. Further, for the first 1,500 years after his death, Ötzi's remains likely thawed and refroze at least once and quite possibly several times. That means it's much more likely that another ice mummy will be discovered, since no extraordinary circumstances are required to explain Ötzi's preservation.
[...] According to Lars Pilø, a glacial archaeologist with Norway's Department of Cultural Heritage, and his co-authors, even in 1992, there were some who questioned whether the mummy's remarkable preservation was due to extraordinary circumstances, most notably archaeologist Werner Meyer. The ensuing decades have seen the rise of so-called glacial archaeology, bringing its own methodology and a deeper understanding of just how complex archaeological ice sites can be. "The [original] story is so at odds with how glacial archaeological sites work," Pilø told Gizmodo. "We conclude that the find circumstances surrounding Ötzi are not a string of miracles, but can be better explained by normal processes on glacial archaeological sites."
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https://newatlas.com/science/otzi-iceman-genome-appearance-genetics/
Ötzi the Iceman is one of the most well-studied individuals in human history, but there always seems to be more to learn about him. A new genomic study has now found that he didn't look the way previous studies had imagined him – instead he was bald, his skin was darker, and he had an ancestry that was far more exotic and isolated than previously thought.
In September 1991, two hikers discovered a human body in the Alps near the Austria and Italy border. At first they assumed they'd stumbled on an unlucky modern mountaineer, but on closer, scientific investigation, it was determined that the chap had died about 5,300 years ago. In the three decades since his discovery, Ötzi has been studied extensively, with scientists able to figure out what he ate, how he dressed, how he lived and how he died.
His full genome was published in 2012, allowing scientists to reconstruct an image of what he might have looked like. From that data, Ötzi was imagined as a fairly light-skinned man with a bushy beard, a thick head of unkempt hair, deep-set eyes and wrinkled skin beyond his 45 years of life. But a new study, using more comprehensive genomic analysis techniques, upends much of that picture.
Previously:
Ötzi the Iceman's Last Meal
Study: Ötzi the Iceman Probably Thawed and Refroze Several Times
Ötzi the Iceman May Have Scaled Ice-Free Alps
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Friday November 18 2022, @02:23PM (1 child)
probably not safe to eat.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 18 2022, @11:45PM
My God, this is an outrage! I was going to eat that mummy!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 18 2022, @04:59PM
1. Borrow VC hyperbole.
2. Slip in some Biblical language.
3. Grab all the funding.
4. Profit!!!
5. ???