Otzi, Big Meg and the world's oldest member

Mosses and facial reconstruction

The University of Glasgow's academics and technology have been shedding new light on one of the greatest archaeological discoveries of all time. Jim Dickson, Professor of Archaeobotany and Plant Systematics along with colleagues from the University of Innsbruck has been studying the colon contents of the famous Tyrolean Iceman and the environmental and taphonomic significance of the mosses and liverworts extracted from the mineral sediments on which the Iceman was lying. Meanwhile, the University of Glasgow's Human Identification Centre has been using a 3D computer graphics system to help reconstruct the face of the Iceman.

Along with his Austrian colleagues, Professor Dickson believes that the Iceman who was discovered by two hikers high in the Alps near the border between Austria and Italy in September 1991 should be called Otzi, from the Otzal Alps where he was found. 'The Iceman makes him sound like a character from Science Fiction one of Dr Who's adversaries perhaps," says the Professor. The name Otzi emphasises his ordinariness and recognises our close affinity.

Just as the computer can help reconstruct his face, so analysis of fibre traces can tell us a lot about Otzi's habitat, diet and choice of materials for clothing and other accoutrements. Mosses and liverworts, for instance, have a more or less distinctive habitat, a definite altitudinal range and precise geographical spread. Remains of no less than 17 different types of trees and shrubs have been recognised so far amongst Otzi's gear. The botanical work continues and the hope is that not only will it help explain where he came from but also the circumstances of his death, around which to date there has been much controversy.

They don't build them like that any more

At over 15 metres long, no they don't build them like that any more and haven't done for a long time. We're talking about the Leedsichthys problematicus, the largest fish known to have inhabited Earth's oceans and last seen in the Middle Jurassic seas some 155 million years ago.

The fish was reconstructed for the BBC's Sea Monsters programme, but the programme makers paid a visit to the University of Glasgow's Hunterian Museum first as they have the most complete specimen of the fish, affectionately known as Big Meg. And the person they talked to was PhD researcher Jeff Liston as he is the only person to have seriously studied the fish since the 19th Century and was working with palaeoartist Bob Nicholls to reconstruct how the fish would have looked. Part of the 'problematicus' has been that they have been working with over nine hundred broken fragments. However, Jeff was able to provide essential information to the BBC.

Big Meg, who was excavated in 1913 and was sold to the Hunterian in 1915 by the Peterborough fossil collector Alfred Leeds was laid out in the museum's Kelvin Gallery for two days in September 2003.

From daddy long legs to daddy long legs

It's amazing what crops up in the fossil tracks of Scotland's ancient rocks. On 18th September 2003 ABC News Online ran the headline 'World's oldest genitals discovered in Scotland'. A mammoth's? No. A tyrannosaurus rex's? No. A harvestman insect's, the species commonly known as the daddy long legs.

The penis of the ancient daddy long legs 400 million years to be precise is two thirds the length of the insect's body and remarkably similar to the modern day harvestman. So, it would seem, things have remained pretty steady for that particular species.

Researchers from Humbolt University in Berlin, who discovered the fossils also uncovered a long egg-laying organ called an ovipositor and the oldest known arachnid respiratory system, suggesting the insects' ancestors had long since crawled out of the sea and learned to breathe.

To paraphrase Yeats: 'Tread softly, because we tread on our forbears.'