14 lesser-known ancient sites and 7 more of our most-read stories this month

Deepwater Horizon's abyssal wasteland, Big Boy's engineer, and more. Email not displaying correctly? View in your browser. September 30, 2019 14 Lesser-Known Ancient Sites Unknown ancient sites can let you walk in the footsteps of ancient people without the crowds. The ruins of the Roman city Volubilis in Morocco and the Valley of the Temples in Agrigento, Italy, are just two examples of the many overlooked archaeological sites our readers shared. Read More → Found: Kurt Cobain’s Royalty Check This month at Seattle’s Easy Street Records, a flimsy, folded-up piece of paper wedged in a used record collection revealed itself as an uncashed royalty check issued to Kurt Cobain. Read more → Spain’s ‘Stonehenge’ The Dolmen of Guadalperal, the remains of a 7,000-year-old megalithic monument consisting of around 100 standing stones, has reemerged from the Valdecañas Reservoir for the first time in decades. Read more → Abyssal Wasteland When researchers first returned to the site of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, they found pretty much what one might expect: a devastated seafloor where carcasses seemed to outnumber anything living. A decade later, the site is still an abyssal wasteland, but is now full of a surprising amount of sickly, oil-spattered crabs. Read more → Meet Big Boy's Engineer Ed Dickens maintains the Union Pacific Railroad’s historic fleet, including the world’s largest steam locomotive, known as “Big Boy.” Enormous crowds greet the locomotive wherever it goes and give Dickens a hero’s welcome when he climbs down from the cab. Read more → Town Pounds The remains of dozens of stone enclosures are scattered across New England. A nearly forgotten aspect of colonial American life, the enclosures were known as town pounds–spaces where lost livestock were brought until their owners could retrieve it for a fee. Read more → Why Fossils Are Mostly Male A new study shows the abundance of fossilized male specimens has less to do with misogyny and more to do with prehistoric herd distributions, sex-specific causes of death, and a slew of other factors that influenced where and how large mammals tended to die. Read more → For Sale: Giant Sequoias The environmental threats of drought and fire vex most of the Sierra Nevada’s forests, including groves of giant sequoias. Now, a California conservation group is seeking $15 million from the public to step up and fund the purchase of a huge grove of the towering trees. Read more → Visit AtlasObscura.com · View in Browser · Unsubscribe · See All Newsletters 61 Greenpoint Ave #622, Brooklyn, NY 11222