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| One visitor to Pompeii, a Finnish PhD student who happened to be passing by the site when the discovery was made, described what he saw to the BBC as "spectacular." Experts believe the tortoise had been looking for a comfortable place to lay her egg when volcanic disaster struck in 79 AD. (File photo by=PARCO ARCHEOLOGICO POMPEI) |
[Asia News = Reporter Reakkana] When Mount Vesuvius erupted nearly 2,000 years ago Pompeii's ancient residents were frozen in place by ash. So too it turns out we're the city's flora and fauna - including a pregnant tortoise with her egg, BBC reported.
Archaeologists found the reptile's remains buried under ash and rock where it had laid undiscovered since 79AD. The tortoise was sheltering beneath an already-destroyed building when volcanic disaster struck. Archaeologists found the remains while excavating an area of the city that its ancient inhabitants had been rebuilding after an earlier earthquake devastated Pompeii in 62AD. Around 2,000 years ago the 14cm (5.5in) tortoise had burrowed into a tiny underground lair beneath a shop destroyed in that earlier quake.
Experts say the fact it was found with an egg suggests it was killed while trying to find somewhere peaceful to lay its offspring. Oxford University archaeologist Mark Robinson, who discovered the remains of another tortoise at a nearby Pompeii site in 2002, told the BBC there were two explanations for how the reptile had gotten there. "One is that it is a pet tortoise that possibly escaped and made its way onto what were the ruins of the great earthquake," he said. A likelier possibility is that it was a tortoise from the nearby countryside that had wandered into the ancient city, he said.
