An ancient Mexican site more than 1,000 years old has been declared the country's first archaeological zone in a decade, antiquities institute INAH announced on Tuesday, despite several years of steep budget cuts for archeological research. Cañada de la Virgen, the modern name of an ancient Otomi ceremonial center, is located near the picturesque mountain town and tourist destination of San Miguel de Allende. A view of the pre-Hispanic site of Canada de la Virgen, Guanajuato, Mexico, in this undated handout photo. Mauricio Marat/INAH/Handout via REUTERS The pre-Hispanic site features a large stone temple complex and other structures, many aligned with astronomical bodies, and is believed to have reached its peak around 600-900 AD, contemporaneous with dozens of major Maya cites. ...
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The Mexican government has invoked national security powers to forge ahead with a tourist train along the Caribbean coast that threatens extensive caves where some of the oldest human remains in North America have been discovered. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is racing to finish his Maya Train project in the remaining two years of his term over the objections of environmentalists, cave divers and archaeologists. The government had paused the project earlier this year after activists won a court injunction against the route, because it cut a swath through the jungle for tracks without previously filing an environmental impact statement. FILE PHOTO: Rogelio Jiménez Pons, director of Fonatur, points to photos of a planned train through the Yucatan Peninsula, during an inter...
Read MoreWhen Hurricane Agatha battered a Mexican beach hamlet popular with LGBTQ residents and visitors earlier this week, members of the community sprang into action to help the town rebound. Zipolite, located on the enchanting southern Pacific coast of Oaxaca state, found itself directly in the path of the storm on Monday. The storm touched down only about six miles (10 kilometers) west of the town as a Category 2 hurricane, damaging buildings and filling the beach with debris. Tourists walk at a beach covered in rubbish and debris in the aftermath of Hurricane Agatha, in Zipolite, Oaxaca state, Mexico, June 1, 2022. REUTERS/Jose de Jesus Cortes By Thursday afternoon a GoFundMe campaign had already raised over $21,000 to be used "for the reconstruction of this paradise," the GoFundMe p...
Read MoreThe critically endangered monarch butterfly grew its presence in Mexico last year, a study showed on Tuesday, giving a glimmer of hope to researchers who track the fluttering orange and black migrants despite a decades-long population collapse. In one of planet's most epic wildlife migrations, the slow-moving monarch butterflies travel south as many as 2,800 miles (4,500 km) from spots in Canada and the United States to hunker down for the winter in warmer Mexico, where millions cover entire trees that tourists flock to see. FILE PHOTO: Monarch butterflies cling to a plant at the Monarch Grove Sanctuary in Pacific Grove, California. REUTERS/Michael Fiala Last winter, the pockets of Mexican forest where the intrepid insects end up each year saw 35% more butterflies than in 2020, a...
Read MoreMcDonald Observatory, Community Partners come together to form 15,000 sq miles reserve The world’s largest International Dark Sky Reserve is coming to Texas and Mexico, thanks to a partnership between The University of Texas at Austin’s McDonald Observatory, The Nature Conservancy, the International Dark-Sky Association (IDA) and many others. The designation, granted by the IDA, recognizes the commitment of organizations, governments, businesses and residents in the region to maintaining dark skies. The move will benefit not only astronomical research, but also wildlife, ecology and tourism. The new Greater Big Bend International Dark Sky Reserve will encompass more than 15,000 square miles in portions of western Texas and northern Mexico. It is the only such reserve to cross an int...
Read MoreMexico on Tuesday allowed a cruise ship to dock and disembark tourists in spite of an outbreak of COVID-19 on board, as the government vowed to keep the country open to cruise vessels provided sanitary precautions are met. The ship, Ms Zuiderdam, with some 2,000 passengers and crew, docked in the port of Guaymas in the northern state of state of Sonora, state and federal authorities said. In a statement, the Mexican government said it would accept cruise ships that sought permission to dock as long as World Health Organization international regulations are followed. Holland America Line, which operates the Zuiderdam, said in a statement that a small number of fully vaccinated crew and passengers on Zuiderdam had tested positive for COVID-19. All showed mild or no symptoms ...
Read MoreA wooden canoe used by the ancient Maya and believed to be over 1,000 years old has turned up in southern Mexico, officials said on Friday, part of archeological work accompanying the construction of a major new tourist train. The extremely rare canoe was found almost completely intact, submerged in a fresh-water pool known as a cenote, thousands of which dot Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula, near the ruins of Chichen Itza, once a major Maya city featuring elaborately carved temples and towering pyramids. A wooden canoe used by the ancient Maya and believed to be over a thousand years old is pictured at a fresh-water pool known as a cenote and found during the archeological work accompanying the construction of a controversial new tourist train, in the state of Yucatan, in this handout re...
Read MoreResearchers investigate an ancient coastal ecosystem found more than 120 miles from the nearest ocean, revealing sea level impacts from the last interglacial period Deep in the heart of the Yucatan Peninsula, an ancient mangrove ecosystem flourishes more than 200 kilometers (124 miles) from the nearest ocean. This is unusual because mangroves—salt-tolerant trees, shrubs, and palms—are typically found along tropical and subtropical coastlines. A new study led by researchers across the University of California system in the United States and researchers in Mexico focuses on this luxuriant red mangrove forest. This “lost world” is located far from the coast along the banks of the San Pedro Martir River, which runs from the El Petén rainforests in Guatemala to the Balancán region in...
Read MoreScientists were baffled when a band of seaweed longer than the entire Brazilian coastline sprouted in 2011 in the tropical Atlantic - an area typically lacking nutrients that would feed such growth. A group of U.S. researchers has fingered a prime suspect: human sewage and agricultural runoff carried by rivers to the ocean. The science is not yet definitive. This nutrient-charged outflow is just one of several likely culprits fueling an explosion of seaweed in warm waters of the Americas. Six scientists told Reuters they suspect a complex mix of climate change, Amazon rainforest destruction and dust blowing west from Africa’s Sahara Desert may be fueling mega-blooms of the dark-brown seaweed known as sargassum. A beach covered with sargassum is pictured near a hotel in Cancun, Me...
Read MoreMore than a decade after Sergio Gomez began excavating a tunnel under a towering Mexican pyramid, the archeologist still spends most of his time studying the massive cache of sacred artifacts carefully placed there by priests some 2,000 years ago. The volume and variety of objects hidden in the sealed tunnel under Teotihuacan's ornate Feathered Serpent Pyramid has shattered records for discoveries at the ancient city, once the most populous metropolis of the Americas and now a top tourist draw just outside modern-day Mexico City. Sonia Disciplina examines a bouquet of "well-preserved old flowers" inside inside a 2,000-year-old tunnel built under the ornate Feathered Serpent Pyramid, which archaeologist Sergio Gomez believes recreated the underworld and was used to initiate new ruler...
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