One of the slides find. See more at The Huffington.

AP/The Huffington Post By Cassandra Vinograd | First Posted: 1/17/12 05:20

LONDON — British scientists have found scores of fossils the great evolutionary theorist Charles Darwin and his peers collected but that had been lost for more than 150 years.

Dr. Howard Falcon-Lang, a paleontologist at Royal Holloway, University of London, said Tuesday that he stumbled upon the glass slides containing the fossils in an old wooden cabinet that had been shoved in a “gloomy corner” of the massive, drafty British Geological Survey.

Using a flashlight to peer into the drawers and hold up a slide, Falcon-Lang saw one of the first specimens he had picked up was labeled ‘C. Darwin Esq.”

“It took me a while just to convince myself that it was Darwin’s signature on the slide,” the paleontologist said, adding he soon realized it was a “quite important and overlooked” specimen.

He described the feeling of seeing that famous signature as “a heart in your mouth situation,” saying he wondering “Goodness, what have I discovered!”

Falcon-Lang’s find was a collection of 314 slides of specimens collected by Darwin and other members of his inner circle, including John Hooker – a botanist and dear friend of Darwin – and the Rev. John Henslow, Darwin’s mentor at Cambridge, whose daughter later married Hooker.

One of the slides find. See more at The Huffington.

The first slide pulled out of the dusty corner at the British Geological Survey turned out to be one of the specimens collected by Darwin during his famous expedition on the HMS Beagle, which changed the young Cambridge graduate’s career and laid the foundation for his subsequent work on evolution.

Falcon-Lang said the unearthed fossils – lost for 165 years – show there is more to learn from a period of history scientists thought they knew well.

“To find a treasure trove of lost Darwin specimens from the Beagle voyage is just extraordinary,” Falcon-Lang added. “We can see there’s more to learn. There are a lot of very, very significant fossils in there that we didn’t know existed.”

He said one of the most “bizarre” slides came from Hooker’s collection – a specimen of prototaxites, a 400 million-year-old tree-sized fungi.

Hooker had assembled the collection of slides while briefly working for the British Geological Survey in 1846, according to Royal Holloway, University of London.

The slides – “stunning works of art,” according to Falcon-Lang – contain bits of fossil wood and plants ground into thin sheets and affixed to glass in order to be studied under microscopes. Some of the slides are half a foot long (15 centimeters), “great big chunks of glass,” Falcon-Lang said.

“How these things got overlooked for so long is a bit of a mystery itself,” he mused, speculating that perhaps it was because Darwin was not widely known in 1846 so the collection might not have been given “the proper curatorial care.”

One of the slides find. See more at The Huffington.

Royal Holloway, University of London said the fossils were ‘lost’ because Hooker failed to number them in the formal “specimen register” before setting out on an expe

dition to the Himalayas. In 1851, the “unregistered” fossils were moved to the Museum of Practical Geology in Piccadilly before being transferred to the South Kensington’s Geological Museum in 1935 and then to the British Geological Survey’s headquarters near Nottingham 50 years later, the university said.

The discovery was made in April, but it has taken “a long time” to figure out the provenance of the slides and photograph all of them, Falcon-Lang said. The slides have now been photographed and will be made available to the public through a new online museum exhibit opening Tuesday.

Falcon-Lang expects great scientific papers to emerge from the discovery.

“There are some real gems in this collection that are going to contribute to ongoing science.”

Dr. John Ludden, executive director of the Geological Survey, called the find a “remarkable” discovery.

“It really makes one wonder what else might be hiding in our collections,” he said.

January 22, 2012. Huff Post Science -Internet Newspaper. By Seth Borenstein.

WASHINGTON — They came from Mars, not in peace, but in pieces. Scientists are confirming that 15 pounds of rock collected recently in Morocco fell to Earth from Mars during a meteorite shower last July.

(Image Left – A view of the internal structure of the first Martian meteorite known to have struck Earth in 49 years. Recovered in December 2011 near Foumzgit, Morocco following a meteorite shower believed to have occurred in July 2011. Scientists are confirming a recent and rare invasion from Mars: meteorite chunks that fell from the red planet over Morocco last summer. Meteorites from Mars are more than 1 million times rarer than gold. (AP Photo/Darryl Pitt of the Macovich Collection)

This is only the fifth time in history scientists have chemically confirmed Martian meteorites that people witnessed falling. The fireball was spotted in the sky six months ago, but the rocks weren’t discovered on the ground in North Africa until the end of December.

This is an important and unique opportunity for scientists trying to learn about Mars’ potential for life. So far, no NASA or Russian spacecraft has returned bits of Mars, so the only samples scientists can examine are those that come here in a meteorite shower.

Scientists and collectors are ecstatic, and already the rocks are fetching big bucks because they are among the rarest things on Earth – rarer even than gold. The biggest rock weighs over 2 pounds.

“It’s Christmas in January,” said former NASA sciences chief Alan Stern, director of the Florida Space Institute at the University of Central Florida. “It’s nice to have Mars sending samples to Earth, particularly when our pockets are too empty to go get them ourselves.”

A special committee Tuesday of meteorite experts, including some NASA scientists, confirmed test results that showed the rocks came from Mars, based on their age and chemical signature.

Astronomers think millions of years ago something big smashed into Mars and sent rocks hurtling through the solar system. After a long journey through space, one of those rocks plunged through Earth’s atmosphere, breaking into smaller pieces.

Most other Martian meteorite samples sat around on Earth for millions of years – or at the very least, decades – before they were discovered, which makes them tainted with Earth materials and life. These new rocks, while still probably contaminated because they have been on Earth for months, are purer.

The last time a Martian meteorite fell and was found fresh was in 1962. All the known Martian rocks on Earth add up to less than 240 pounds.

The new samples were scooped up by dealers from those who found them. Even before the official certification, scientists at NASA, museums and universities scrambled to buy or trade these meteorites.

“It’s incredibly fresh. It’s highly valuable for that reason,” said Carl Agee, director of the Institute of Meteoritics and curator at the University of New Mexico. “This is a beauty. It’s gorgeous.”

Meteorite dealer Darryl Pitt said he is charging $11,000 to $22,500 an ounce and has sold most of his supply already. At that price, the Martian rock costs about 10 times as much as gold.

One of the key decisions the scientists made Tuesday was to officially connect these rocks to the fiery plunge witnessed by people and captured on video last summer. The announcement and the naming of these meteorites – called Tissint – came from the International Society for Meteoritics and Planetary Science, which is the official group of 950 scientists that confirms and names meteorites.

Tony Irving of the University of Washington did the scientific analysis on the rocks and said there is no doubt they are from the red planet. Several of the world’s top experts in meteorites told The Associated Press that they, too, are convinced.

Scientists can tell when meteorites are from Mars because they know what the Martian atmosphere is made of, thanks to numerous probes sent there. The chemical signature of the rocks and the Martian air match, Irving said.

Another clue is that because Mars is geologically active, its rocks tend to be much younger – millions of years old instead of hundreds of millions or more – than those from the moon or asteroids.

Most of the known Martian rocks on Earth have been around for centuries or longer and have been found in Antarctica or the desert. They look so similar to dark Earth rocks that if they fell in other places, such as Maryland, they would blend right in and never be discovered.

Because known Martian meteorite falls happen only once every 50 years or so – 1815 in France, 1865 in India, 1911 in Egypt and 1962 in Nigeria – this is a once-in-a-career or even a once-in-a-lifetime event.

Jeff Grossman, a NASA scientist who is the meteorite society’s database editor, said there is a higher probability of finding “something interesting” from Mars on these rocks because they fell so recently. However, six months is a long time for Earthly contamination to occur, he said.

University of Alberta meteorite expert Chris Herd, who heads the committee that certified the discovery, said the first thing he would do with the rocks would be to rinse them with solvents to try to get rid of earthly contamination and see what carbon-based compounds are left.

But Cornell University astronomer Steve Squyres, who is the principal investigator for NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Program and the space agency’s go-to guy on Mars, said unfortunately this type of rock isn’t the kind scientists are most hoping for. This find is igneous, or volcanic, rock.

A softer kind of rock that could hold water or life would be better, but that type is unlikely to survive a fiery re-entry through Earth’s atmosphere, he said.

Scientists are hoping NASA and the European Space Agency team up in 2018 to send robotic spaceships to Mars that can bring back samples of rock and dirt. Just this past weekend, a Russian probe that was going to try to bring samples back from a Martian moon came plummeting back to Earth in failure.

A Martian meteorite that was buried in Antarctica made news in 1996. NASA scientists theorized the rock showed traces of life from Mars. Even the White House declared it the first sign of life outside of Earth. Years of study since then have led much of the astronomy world to conclude there was insufficient evidence to support the claim.

The 'gold' bars found in the case did not have official stamps on them and have turned out to be fake

Twenty “gold” bars found in a case on a train near Paris last week have been found to be fake.

A suspect package on board an RER train at Massy-Palaiseau station was examined by the bomb squad and found to contain what seemed to be 20kg (44lb) of gold.

French police have now established that the bars are made of a base metal – with a thin coating of gold.

The ingots would have been worth around 800,000 euros ($1m; £670,000) if they had been genuine.

Police in Palaiseau, south-west of Paris, told Reuters news agency that they were not ruling out the possibility that the fake bars were part of a scam – in light of the worldwide demand for gold.

The find had prompted speculation that if classed as “treasure,” the bars could be shared between the Paris transport operator and the conductor who found it.

The case was found on an RER B train at Massy-Palaiseau station, southwest of Paris

A seahorse pendant is among gold ornaments found in a chief's grave at El Caño, Panama.

By James Owen for National Geographic News | Published December 21, 2011.

Spectacular find” includes gold, jewels, and a small army of likely sacrifices. (Photograph by David Coventry, National Geographic).

New found tombs in Central America are yielding thousand-year-old gold, gems, and even hints of murder by pufferfish. But the real treasure is the excavation’s clues to the unnamed civilization of the so-called golden chiefs of Panama, archaeologists say.

“It’s really a very spectacular find. … probably the most significant” for this culture since the 1930s, when the nearby Sitio Conte site, also in central Panama, yielded a wealth of gold artifacts, anthropologist John Hoopes said.

Until now, Sitio Conte provided the only major evidence of the golden-chiefs culture, which can be traced from about A.D. 250 to the 16th century, when Spanish conquerors arrived on the scene.

Dating to between A.D. 700 and 1000, the new artifacts were excavated about two miles (three kilometers) from Sitio Conte, at a site called El Caño.

Golden Chief

Striking Gold, Second Time Around

El Caño’s field of stone monoliths and sculptures had drawn treasure seekers in the early 20th century, but as luck would have it, they dug up only artifact-poor graves of common people.

A few years ago, after having worked at Sitio Conte—also marked by ancient monoliths—archaeologist Julia Mayo of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute decided to reinvestigate El Caño.

Mayo’s ground surveys, beginning in 2005, traced the circular outline of a series of burials, about 260 feet (80 meters) wide.

Not long after digging had begun, in 2008, the team uncovered the skeleton of a high-ranking chief, clad in circular breastplates embossed with ghoulish faces, patterned arm cuffs, and a belt of large golden beads—a taste of the bounty to come.

Stones, Bones, and Gold

The most recent dig, in early 2011, uncovered a similarly adorned chief in a multilevel burial pit once sheltered by a wooden roof. Surrounding this golden chief are at least 25 carefully arranged bodies, making the assemblage the largest of the six El Caño burials revealed to date, according to Mayo, who received funding from the Panamanian government as well as the National Geographic Society’s Committee for Research and Exploration and Expeditions Council. (The Society owns National Geographic News.)

Among the corpses golden attire for a child, possibly the chief’s son: tiny gold plates, bracelets, earrings, and a necklace of semiprecious stones.

At the bottom of the pit, the chief himself was supported by a sort of platform created from the tight arrangement of 15 bodies.

Mayo believes those individuals could be war captives or slaves who were sacrificed or committed suicide—a potential link to Sitio Conte, where similar burial arrangements have been found.

Murder by Pufferfish?

The team also uncovered a grisly clue as to how the apparent sacrifices might have met their fates, though forensic analysis is still underway.

“A vessel full of bones of a blowfish [pufferfish], Guentheridia formosa, was found near the bodies—it is a very poisonous fish,” added Mayo, who also serves as president of the El Caño Foundation.

In another curious detail, the bodies surrounding the chiefs were covered in pieces of ceramic plates. Though the plates’ significance is not yet clear, Mayo said they appear to have been made specifically to cover the corpses. The plates, she noted, are decorated only on what would normally be there undersides and were placed facedown on the bodies.

Hoopes, of the University of Kansas, noted similar ceramic finds at Sitio Conte.

“They would take the [plates] that were used during the feasts, which had been specially prepared, and they would place those in the graves,” said Hoopes, who wasn’t part of the El Caño excavations.

“What’s not clear is whether [the ceramics were] intentionally smashed or whether they were placed in the graves intact and broke over time due to shifting of the earth.”

Vampires, Werewolves, and Mascots

Among other El Caño mysteries are the half-human beings and mythological creatures in the designs of the gold jewelry and other burial finery.

“We are still working on the iconographic analysis,” project leader Mayo said. “According to some experts, these designs could represent the ancestors of clans or kinship groups.”

Hoopes said, “I think they’re analogous to werewolves and vampires in Western culture, in that you have fangs and transform into animals or part-animals.”

The idea of being represented by an animal spirit was widespread among pre-Columbian cultures of the Americas, he added.

A person might have had “a corresponding animal spirit that can inhabit them and change their personality and make them more effective in warfare”—not unlike the use of fierce mascots to inspire football teams, Hoopes said.

Who Were They?

Project leader Mayo hopes the treasure trove of material emerging from El Caño—including axes, packets of stingray spines, and a belt made of whale and jaguar teeth—can shed new light on the golden chiefs and their people.

The civilization, after all, left precious little historical record, at least that we know of.

“Part of the issue,” Kansas’s Hoopes said, “is that the devastation of the area by the Spanish happened so early and so completely that we still don’t know what language they spoke.”

He believes the Sitio Conte/El Caño people are “best regarded as a separate and distinct culture that flourished in central Panama.” But, he added, apparent trade items—including likely Colombian emeralds found at El Caño—suggest the culture had some connections to other groups.

Little remains of the golden chiefs’ built world either, hewn as it was from thatch and bamboo—in contrast to, say, the stony pyramids of the Maya.

Luckily the gold has proved more persistent, and more may await in up to 20 unexplored tombs at El Caño, according to Mayo—which gives Hoopes pause.

Despite the scope of Mayo’s discoveries, he said, “this is just a tiny part of an enormous complex. … It’s absolutely essential that sites like this are protected from looters.”

Read more at news.nationalgeographic.com.

CNG, Nomos AG auction offers rare 409 to 406 B.C. commemorative.

By Jeff Starck-Coin World Staff | Dec. 16, 2011 9:59 a.m. Article first published in 2011-12-26, World Coins section of Coin World.

(Image left: A rare silver decadrachm of Akragas, one of 12 known examples, has an estimate of $2.5 million, which if met or exceeded would establish a record price for a coin of ancient Greet. All images courtesy of www.chgcoins.com)

A silver decadrachm from Akragas, Sicily, one of 12 known examples, will appear at auction Jan. 4 in a sale conducted jointly by Classical Numismatic Group and Nomos AG.

The coin has an opening bid of $2.5 million.

Silver decadrachms of ancient Greece are among the most coveted and rare of ancient coins, with the example coming up at auction in January considered especially notable. The circa 409 to 406 B.C. silver decadrachm from Akragas is “one of the most artistically exciting of all ancient Greek coins,” according to CNG.

“A masterpiece of late 5th century engraving,” the coin is also expected to be the most expensive coin of ancient Greece ever sold, according to CNG.

The auction, of “Masterpieces of Ancient Greek Coinage: Selections from Cabinet W,” will be held during the New York International Numismatic Convention.

The coin weighs 43.31 grams and measures 35.5 millimeters in diameter (slightly smaller than a Morgan silver dollar but heavier). It is among a class of commemorative issues struck in the late fifth century B.C. by several of the wealthy cities of Sicily.

A left-galloping chariot appears on the obverse, soaring upward in the sky and driven by a youthful male recorded as Helios in the chariot of the sun, while the reverse shows “the classic badge of the city,” two eagles perched on a dead hare in triumph.

Decadrachms are unusually large in size and face value compared to all the other coins minted in Sicily, and the best artists were employed to engrave the dies used to strike these coins. The designs for this Akragas issue are attributed to the engravers Myron (the side with the chariot) and Polykrates (the side with the eagles).

The examples from Akragas were reportedly struck to celebrate a single event: the victory of Exainetos, a citizen from Akragas who won the chariot race at Olympia in 412 B.C.

While some decadrachms circulated, most, including the issues of Akragas, were commemorative in nature. The first silver decadrachm emerged in Syracuse in the 460s; the coins apparently circulated in Syracuse for a long period of time, according to the catalog.

In Good Extremely Fine condition, the coin in the Jan. 4 auction is only the third example offered at auction in some 31 years.

A “dreadful example” was offered by CNG in a 1998 Triton auction. A piece in better condition was part of the famous Nelson Bunker Hunt Collection sold in 1990. The Hunt example realized what was then a record price for a Greek coin, $572,000, and the Hunt example “is no match for the quality of the present piece,” according to CNG.

Of the 12 examples known, six are in museums. The other six include the offered piece, the Hunt and Triton coins, two other examples privately held in the United States, and one “apparently in Switzerland.”

The example being offered has been in unnamed collections in the United States and Switzerland after being part of an English collection in London in the 1960s.

The coins are rare today because their issue was likely limited, based on die evidence that points to the coins being struck using only two obverse and three reverse dies. The coins would have been issued for only a short period of time before the Carthaginians captured and destroyed Akragas in 406.

The record-holder for any ancient Greek coin is the $902,766 realized in a 2008 auction for a circa 407/6 B.C. gold stater of Athens, one of only four known staters of the emergency issue at the end of the Peloponnesian War.

An x-ray scan of a solitary hydroid, similar to a sea anemone

By Carl Yapp BBC Wales News website.  (19 December 2011.)

Scientists believe they have made a remarkable discovery of fossils said to be more than 450 million years old in a disused Powys quarry.

They think they are of a kind never before discovered.

The well-preserved organisms from the Ordovician period, which began about 495m years ago, lived in what is now the town of Llandrindod Wells, which was partially under water.

Scientists believe they shed new light on how ocean communities have evolved.

The fossils include a variety of creatures from sponges and worms to nautiloids, which are similar to a squid with a shell.

They were found by palaeontologists Dr Joe Botting, Dr Lucy Muir and Talfan Barnie in 2004 and were revealed using X-ray scanning.

However, details of the significance of the find have only recently been published.

Dr Muir, a researcher at the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology in China, said the discovery provided a picture of a fossil community that was entirely new and surprising. They were found in Llanfawr quarry, an area well-known for its fossils, “but somehow the important fossils had been missed”, she said.

The creatures’ images are said to be 460m years old and from the part of geological time known as the Ordovician Period.

“There was an ocean between Scotland and England/Wales, and Wales was much further south than it is now,” said Dr Muir.

“The area around Llandrindod was part of a chain of volcanic islands during the Ordovician Period, a little bit like Indonesia today.

“As the island grew and was eroded, a lot of sediment [sand, silt and mud] was washed into the sea. This sediment buried animal remains quickly, and in some cases buried them alive, so they didn’t fall apart or get eaten.”

Dr Muir said a variety of animal fossils were found, including sponges, worms, solitary hydroids which are related to sea anemones and are also known as the flowers of the sea, and nautiloids.

This is a picture of a nautiloid, which is similar to a squid with a shell

Joe had been studying sponges from a particular quarry, and we went there to find some more,” she said.

“We looked at part of the exposed rock that we hadn’t found much in before. Talfan hammered part of the quarry wall, and said, ‘Is this interesting?’

“It was one of the most astonishing fossils ever found in Wales. We took some slabs of rock back to the Natural History Museum, and one of my colleagues suggested X-raying them.

“On the very first slab we found a spectacular hydroid that we hadn’t even suspected was there because it is entirely enclosed within the rock.”

Later Dr Mark Sutton of Imperial College, London, who has helped to write the paper about the find, used a CT scanner to see the fossils in three dimensions.

Dr Muir called the discovery unique.

“Although there are a handful of sites around the world that preserve extremely delicate and soft animals in a similar way, none of them have preserved this type of ecosystem,” she said.

“In particular, solitary hydroids are almost unknown in the fossil record, because they are so delicate.

“The new fauna gives us a picture of a fossil community that not only is entirely new, but is also surprising. It resembles to some extent some of the modern communities found in the very deep sea.”

‘Diverse and complicated’

The fossils have been given to the Natural History Museum in London, where they will remain.

“It’s not a discovery that you can point to and say: ‘This proves such-and-such,’” said Dr Muir.

“Rather, it’s a question of adding a large new chunk of knowledge, and in turn suggesting that there are many more chunks left to find.

“This type of ecological community type was simply unknown from rocks this old, and for it to suddenly appear makes palaeontologists wonder what else they’ve been missing.

“It shows us that Ordovician ecosystems were even more diverse and complicated than we imagined.”

The 2011 James A. Garfield Presidential dollar was the last Presidential dollar struck for circulation at the Denver and Philadelphia Mints before Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner suspended dollar coin production Dec. 13. All future circulation-quality dollars struck will be reserved for numismatic sales only. Image courtesy of United State Mint.

By Paul Gilkes-Coin World Staff – Dec. 19, 2011 7:00 a.m. | Article first published in 2012-01-02, U.S. Collectibles section of Coin World

Future issues for collector sales only; none for circulation

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner Dec. 13 suspended production of Presidential dollars for circulation, but the U.S. Mint retains authority to strike circulation-quality Presidential and Native American dollars for numismatic sales.

“Consistent with the Presidential $1 Coin Act, those who would like to obtain future Presidential $1 Coins can purchase them directly from the U.S. Mint during specified periods,” according to a statement released Dec. 14 from the U.S. Mint by Mint spokesman Michael White. “Prices and shipping costs for future $1 Coins will be announced in the near future and will be set at a level that ensures that they do not result in a cost to taxpayers.”

Presidential dollars have been available in roll and box options directly from the Mint for those customers unable to obtain them from banks at face value.

Dollar coins needed to satisfy circulation demand will come from the vaults of the Federal Reserve Banks and their contracted armored carriers where 1.4 billion Presidential dollars currently reside. Federal Reserve and Treasury officials state that the existing inventory of dollar coins is sufficient to satisfy circulation demand for the next 10 to 12 years without additional production of the coins.

Government studies forecast that Presidential dollar coin surpluses would climb to 2 billion coins by 2016, the last year of the program, if production continued unabated.

Since the Presidential dollar coin program was introduced in February 2007 with the George Washington dollar, nearly 2.4 billion Presidential dollars representing the first 20 presidential administrations have been struck in circulation quality for circulation and for numismatic product sales. The Mint has also produced the dollar coins in numismatic versions for Proof sets, Uncirculated Mint sets and special packaging options. Production of those numismatic products will continue.

Geithner’s action to suspend Presidential dollar coin production for circulation was announced Dec. 13 by Deputy Treasury Secretary Neal S. Wolin at a news conference to report on Treasury Department efforts under the Obama Administration’s Campaign to Cut Government Waste.

Wolin said it is estimated that suspending dollar coin production will save $50 million to $70 million annually.

Difficult to obtain

Although the Federal Reserve’s inventory of Presidential dollars is well above what is needed for circulation purposes, some collectors across the country have found it difficult to obtain the coins at face value, especially if their local banks did not order them directly from the Federal Reserve. Native American dollars have been made available only through the Mint, either as a numismatic product or as part of the Direct Ship Program.

Both dollar series have been available for acquisition directly from the Mint.

Individual $25 face value rolls of 25 Presidential and Native American dollars were being offered as of Dec. 15 at $39.95 per roll, plus shipping, as part of the Mint’s regular product offerings.

Coins from both programs have also been available in larger quantities from the Mint through its Direct Ship Program, though the Mint recently raised the cost of the coins to consumers. Starting Nov. 15, the U.S. Mint imposed a $12.95 shipping and handling fee on $250 face value boxes of rolled Presidential dollars and Native American dollars. Prior to Nov. 15, the boxes were offered at face value, with the U.S. Mint absorbing the shipping costs, in order to get more dollar coins into circulation.

From the 2007 George Washington dollar through the 2011 James Garfield coin, Federal Reserve member banks have been able to order the latest Presidential dollar during a time period starting at three weeks before the coin’s release until two weeks after its release. Until these provisions, banks had to order the coins in $1,000 face value boxes of rolled coins.

Ceremonies and savings

Treasury Department spokesman Matthew Anderson said no decision has been made as to whether the official launch ceremonies associated with the release of each Presidential dollar into circulation will continue.

Anderson said the $50 million to $70 million in savings represents strictly production costs associated with the Presidential dollars. While the Mint profits on the production of each coin through seigniorage — the difference between the face value of the coin (the price at which the Mint sells the coins to the Federal Reserve) and the cost to produce it — those totals are negated by shipping and storage costs for the coins, according to Anderson.

The U.S. Mint’s latest cost to produce a manganese-brass clad Presidential dollar is 32 cents, according to White.

Native American dollars

The Presidential Dollar Coin Act of 2005 mandates the production of Presidential dollars from 2007 to 2016. The Native American $1 Coin Act of 2008 requires that 20 percent of all dollar coin production be Native American dollars. Those mandates will be met at the new production levels, Anderson said.

Anderson said suspending Presidential dollar coin production at the Denver and Philadelphia Mints affects 26 full-time or equivalent positions total. Anderson said no layoffs will result from the suspension of production, but the number of full-time positions or equivalents will be absorbed through attrition over time.

Anderson said Treasury officials are also looking at potential cost savings associated with the production of Lincoln copper-plated zinc cents and Jefferson copper-nickel 5-cent coins, both of which cost at or more than face value to produce.

By Jeffrey Nichols | Nov. 30, 2011 10:00 a.m. 
Article first published in 2011-12-12, Market Updates section of Coin World

In recent weeks, in the face of Europe’s seemingly intractable economic troubles — the continent’s worst crisis since World War II, according to German Chancellor Angela Merkel — gold has been, at best, treading water.

Many American investors are wondering why the metal is not responding more positively to Europe’s never-ending sovereign debt crisis and other worrisome economic and political developments around the world.

A matter of perspective

The explanation for gold’s failure to move higher in recent weeks, following its spectacular rise earlier in the year, has much to do with which currency we choose as the numeraire or yardstick with which to measure gold’s price.

In U.S. dollar terms, gold may be off its all-time high, but when measured in many other currencies — the euro, the British pound and the Swiss franc, for example — or in the currencies of the two biggest gold-consuming countries, the Chinese yuan and the Indian rupee — gold is today trading at or near its historic all-time highs, and perceptions of the gold price among residents of these countries is somewhat more positive than among those of us who think of gold only in U.S. dollars.

Behind the scenes

What’s happening behind the scenes, so to speak, is that safe-haven and short-term speculative demand for U.S. dollar-denominated U.S. Treasury securities has been disproportionately large compared to safe-haven and short-term speculative demand for gold.

It’s not that demand for gold in world markets has actually diminished in the weeks since the early September all-time high. In fact, demand — physical demand for real gold in all of the major markets around the world — has remained firm. It’s just that demand for the U.S. dollar has been relatively stronger.

And the result has been a rise in the dollar’s exchange rate with other currencies — and, if you will, the dollar’s exchange rate with gold.

But, the greenback’s relative strength is not an indicator of the dollar’s value or purchasing power. American consumers — when they go to the grocery store, heat their homes, fill up at the gas station, go out to dinner and the movies, or attend a professional baseball or football game — will tell you the value of their dollar is shrinking.

This is one reason a growing number of American investors are keen on gold.

Driven by fundamentals

While institutional traders and speculators may be of short-term importance to the gold price, producing a great deal of volatility with big price swings up and down, they have absolutely no affect on the long-term trend and average prevailing price over a span of years.

What governs the price of gold over the long term are the market’s real-world supply and demand fundamentals — and these continue to be bullish, in fact, increasingly so. Hence, my strong belief that the price of gold — in U.S. dollars and virtually all other currencies — is heading higher, much higher, over the next several years.

I have no doubt that the recent downward pressure on the gold price arising from the U.S. dollar’s “apparent” strength will prove to be temporary — and, before long, gold will resume its long-term upward trend.

Jeffrey Nichols is a recognized expert on the economics of precious metals markets. He is managing director of American Precious Metals Advisors (www.NicholsOnGold.com).

]]> http://www.londoncoin.com/2011/12/gold-not-what-it-seems/feed/ 0 http://www.londoncoin.com/2011/12/russian-scientists-to-attempt-clone-of-woolly-mammoth/ http://www.londoncoin.com/2011/12/russian-scientists-to-attempt-clone-of-woolly-mammoth/#comments Sat, 10 Dec 2011 01:35:57 +0000 admin http://www.londoncoin.com/?p=5918 BBC Mobile – NEWS Technology: 7 December 2011

A clone could be attemped using bone marrow cells

Scientists from Russia and Japan are undertaking a Jurassic Park-style experiment in an effort to bring the woolly mammoth out of extinction.

The scientists claim that a thigh bone found in August contains remarkably well-preserved marrow cells, which could form the starting point of the experiment.

The team claim that the cloning could be complete within the next five years.

But others have cast doubt on whether such a thing is possible.

Mother cow?

The team, from the Siberian mammoth museum and Japan’s Kinki University, said that they planned to extract a nucleus from the animal’s bone marrow and insert it into the egg of an African elephant.

Similar procedures have been done before with mixed results.

In 2009 it was reported that the recently extinct Pyrenean ibex was brought back to life briefly using 10-year-old DNA from the animal’s skin. The cloned ibex died within minutes of being born, due to breathing difficulties.

The Roslin Institute, famous for cloning Dolly the sheep, no longer conducts cloning work but has published some thoughts on the possibilities of bringing extinct species back to life.

It said it was extremely unlikely such an experiment would be successful, especially using an elephant surrogate.

“First, a suitable surrogate mother animal is required. For the mammoth this would need to be a cow (as best biological fit) but even here the size difference may preclude gestation to term,” it said.

The success rate for such an experiment would be in the range of 1-5%, it said.

The second issue would be the need for viable whole cells.

“If there are intact cells in this tissue they have been ’stored’ frozen. However, if we think back to what actually happened to the animal – it died, even if from the cold, the cells in the body would have taken some time to freeze. This time lag would allow for breakdown of the cells, which normally happens when any animal dies. Then the carcass would freeze. So it is unlikely that the cells would be viable,” it said.

Assuming that viable cells are found it becomes a numbers game, it went on.

“Let’s say that one in a thousand cells were nevertheless viable, practical issues come into play. Given that we have an efficiency of 1% cloning for livestock species and if only one in a thousand cells are viable then around 100,000 cells would need to be transferred,” it said.

Hybrid

Charles Foster, a fellow at Green Templeton College, Oxford, seemed more optimistic.

“The idea of mammoth cloning isn’t completely ridiculous. How the resultant embryos would fare beyond the stage of a few cells is more or less unknown,” he said.

While most of the genetic coding of the embryo would come from the mammoth, some would come from the elephant ovum.

“We really don’t know what the contribution of that cytoplasmic material is, or how it would interact with ‘alien’ DNA,” he said.

It would however mean that, even if successful, the clone would be a hybrid rather than a pure mammoth.

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(Photo By Sebastian Scheiner)

By Matti Friedman | AP Associated Press - Wed, Nov 23, 2011

JERUSALEM (AP) — Newly found coins underneath Jerusalem’s Western Wall could change the accepted belief about the construction of one of the world’s most sacred sites two millennia ago, Israeli archaeologists said Wednesday.

The man usually credited with building the compound known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary is Herod, a Jewish ruler who died in 4 B.C. Herod’s monumental compound replaced and expanded a much older Jewish temple complex on the same site.

But archaeologists with the Israel Antiquities Authority now say diggers have found coins underneath the massive foundation stones of the compound’s Western Wall that were stamped by a Roman proconsul 20 years after Herod’s death. That indicates that Herod did not build the wall — part of which is venerated as Judaism’s holiest prayer site — and that construction was not close to being complete when he died.

The find changes the way we see the construction, and shows it lasted for longer than we originally thought,” said the dig’s co-director, Eli Shukron.

The four bronze coins were stamped around 17 A.D. by the Roman official Valerius Gratus. He preceded Pontius Pilate of the New Testament story as Rome’s representative in Jerusalem, according to Ronny Reich of Haifa University, one of the two archaeologists in charge of the dig.

The coins were found inside a ritual bath that predated construction of the renovated Temple Mount complex and which was filled in to support the new walls, Reich said.

They show that construction of the Western Wall had not even begun at the time of Herod’s death. Instead, it was likely completed only generations later by one of his descendants.

(Photo Right - By Lior Mizrahi/Getty Images)

The coins confirm a contemporary account by Josephus Flavius, a Jewish general who became a Roman historian. Writing after a Jewish revolt against Rome and the destruction of the Temple by legionnaires in 70 A.D., he recounted that work on the Temple Mount had been completed only by King Agrippa II, Herod’s great-grandson, two decades before the entire compound was destroyed.

Scholars have long been familiar with Josephus’ account, but the find is nonetheless important because it offers the “first clear-cut archaeological evidence that part of the enclosure wall was not built by Herod,” said archaeologist Aren Maeir of Bar-Ilan University, who was not involved in the dig.

Josephus also wrote that the end of construction left 18,000 workmen unemployed in Jerusalem. Some historians have linked this to discontent that eventually erupted in the Jewish revolt.

The compound, controlled since 1967 by Israel, now houses the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the golden-capped Muslim shrine known as the Dome of the Rock. The fact that the compound is holy both to Jews and Muslims makes it one of the world’s most sensitive religious sites.

The dig in which the coins were discovered cleared a Roman-era drainage tunnel that begins at the biblical Pool of Siloam, one of the city’s original water sources, and terminates with a climb up a ladder out onto a 2,000-year-old street inside Jerusalem’s Old City. The tunnel runs by the foundation stones of the compound’s western wall, where the coins were found.

The drainage tunnel was excavated as part of the dig at the City of David, which is perhaps Israel’s richest archaeological excavation and its most contentious.

The dig is being carried out inside the Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan, and is funded by a group associated with the Israeli settlement movement that opposes any division of the city as part of a future peace deal.

The excavation of the tunnel has also yielded a Roman sword, oil lamps, pots and coins that scholars believe are likely debris from an attempt by Jewish rebels to hide in the underground passage as they fled from the Roman soldiers.

(Photograph left Photo By Sebastian Scheiner).

Israel’s Antiquities Authority archeologist Eli Shukron stands in the Mikve area at the base of the Western Wall where an archaeological dig has uncovered ancient coins which may date the Western Wall, the holiest site where Jews can pray, in Jerusalem’s Old City, Wednesday, Nov. 23, 2011.