Unprecedented Maya Mural Found, Contradicts 2012 "Doomsday" Myth

Under the Guatemalan jungle, 1,200-year-old paintings like no others.

At Home With the Maya

Archaeologist William Saturno scrapes ancient debris from a scribe's painting-filled, roughly 1,200-year-old home in Guatemala. Calculations on the walls refer to dates after December 21, 2012—which has been erroneouslycalled the Maya doomsday—as well as the first known Maya house art, according to a new study.

The long-overgrown house is part of a ruined Maya city named Xultún, rediscovered nearly a century ago but still largely unexcavated. Saturno's team began excavating the home—one of thousands of buried structures at the 12-square-mile (31-square-kilometer) site—in 2010

Green Roof

Lighted by a photographer's lamps, a painting of the likely scribe glows within the newfound chamber, found after one of Saturno's undergraduate students had investigated a looters' tunnel. Three walls inside the overgrown building are covered in large murals and calculations, including a portrait of a seated king.

Beyond 2012

Four numbers, written in columns on the house's north wall, are Maya "Long Count" dates—one of which was nearly 7,000 years in the future. Saturno's research suggests that these dates likely recorded astronomical cycles, such as lunar eclipses or the movements of planets.

"The ancient Maya predicted the world would continue, that 7,000 years from now, things would be exactly like this," Saturno said in a statement—a view that contradicts theories of a Maya-predicted apocalypse in December 2012. 

Another wall of the house is covered with tiny marks that seem to show calculations for important calendar cycles, such as the 260-day Maya ceremonial calendar, the 365-day solar calendar, and the cycles of Mars and Venus.

The Lineup

Three figures sit in a composite photograph of the interior. The black portrait (left) is one of three nearly identical seated men (two are not shown). At center is what's thought to be the scribe, holding a paintbrush.  At right is a Maya king, bedecked in blue feathers.

"Such writings and artwork on walls don't preserve well in the Maya lowlands," Saturno said in a statement. "It's weird that the Xultún finds exist at all."

Royal Plumage

A new painting re-creates the faded portrait of a Maya king discovered in a special niche in the newfound room. A curtain, held to the wall with a bone rod, was originally used to hide and reveal the portrait, the researchers say.

Three Wide Men

Shown in a modern re-creation of the 1,200-year-old Maya mural, three men wear headdresses of a sort never before seen in Maya art, according to Saturno. "It's clearly a costume of some kind," he said in a statement.

A Scribe Unto the Lord of Xultún

Next to the king's portrait is this bright orange man, pictured in a modern re-creation of the newfound Maya mural.

The man's name, "Younger Brother Obsidian," is written in glyphs near his face. Saturno theorizes that this unusual title and the man's proximity to the painting of the king may indicate that the orange figure was a relative of the king—perhaps the scribe or artist who lived in the house.

Prehistoric "Panda" Found in Spain—Giant Panda Has European Roots?

Small tree-climber is oldest known panda relative.

With only teeth to go on, scientists have reportedly identified a giant panda ancestor: A. beatrix.

A prehistoric relative of the giant panda has been discovered in Spain, a new study says—which suggests that the charismatic Chinese bears might have originated in Europe.

The 11-million-year-old species, dubbed Agriarctos beatrix, lived in humid forests in what's now Spain, according to scientists who recently found the animal's fossil teeth near the city of Zaragoza (map).

The teeth give paleontologists a lot of information about a species, according to study leader Juan Abella, a paleobiologist at the Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales in Madrid, Spain.

"For example, all bear [teeth] have a series of characters that tell us that they are bears. And the same thing happens with dogs, cats, deer, or other vertebrate groups," Abella said via email.

After analyzing the fossil teeth, he added, the researchers "concluded that they belong to the bear family, and more precisely to the giant panda's subfamily."

And the subfamily resemblance may have been striking—Abella and colleagues speculate that the bear had panda-like patterns, because most existing species in the family also have the characteristic dark and white patches.

New Bear Points to European Panda Origins?

But A. beatrix was not your average bear.

For one thing, the 130-pound (60-kilogram) animal was even smaller the smallest modern-day bear species, the sun bear—so it probably wasn't exactly the top hunter of prehistoric Europe.

Like current pandas and small bears, the newfound species may have scrambled up trees to escape big predators of the day, such as bear dogs—extinct, doglike carnivores—and saber-toothed, feline-like creatures calledBarbourofelidae, the team speculated.

For another thing, A. beatrix is the oldest known species in the subfamily Ailuropodinae, which includes the giant panda.

"Therefore, the origin of this group is not located in China, where the [giant panda] species lives, but in the warm and humid regions of [southwestern] Europe," Abella said.

But Blaine Schubert, a paleontologist at East Tennessee State University who has studied prehistoric bears, said such a claim "seems fairly speculative."

The new study "doesn't say that this is evidence that panda bears may have originated in Europe," said Schubert, who was not involved in the study.

"Further, even if this new fossil is a relative of modern pandas, it doesn't mean that pandas originated there. I would not suggest this based on the evidence and I wouldn't want to make a claim like that without a lot more evidence."

Giant Panda Ancestors Trekked to China?

If giant panda ancestors did come from Spain, how did they get to China?

Previous research suggests bears generally are "able to disperse quite easily if the environmental conditions were favorable for them," Abella said. At the time, southwestern Europe was warm and humid—good conditions for starting out, he said.

The bears also likely migrated mostly on land—one potential barrier, an ancient European sea called Parathetys, was already shrinking by A. beatrix's time, he said.

As for whether A. beatrix itself made it to China, "we don't really know. But no fossil remains of this species have been found outside Spain."

Abella next hopes to unearth an A. beatrix skeleton, which would reveal more about the how the bear lived and moved. 

It's unknown whether such a skeleton exists, but the team working with theInstitut Català de Paleontologia in Barcelona to excavate "very rich and interesting" fossil beds, Abella said. These fossil beds could conceivably contain A. beatrix remains, since the beds are about as old as those A. beatrixteeth.