'A beautiful soul': Funeral held for baby boy killed in wrong-way crash on Highway 401
A funeral was held on Wednesday for a three-month-old boy who died after being involved in a wrong-way crash on Highway 401 in Whitby last week.
Researchers have discovered what they say is the earliest direct evidence of a shark attack on a human, with the sea creature inflicting some 790 injuries on a man 3,000 years ago.
Experts from the University of Oxford made the discovery while studying the remains of an adult male excavated from the Tsukumo site near Japan's Seto Inland Sea, which were covered in traumatic injuries to his arms, legs, front of chest and abdomen.
"We were initially flummoxed by what could have caused at least 790 deep, serrated injuries to this man," said researchers J. Alyssa White and Rick Schulting in a joint statement. "There were so many injuries and yet he was buried in the community burial ground, the Tsukumo Shell-mound cemetery site."
Some of the lesions were very sharp, deep, and V-shaped, and were similar to wounds caused by metal implements that weren't used by the Jōmon culture hunter-gatherers of this period, and terrestrial carnivores and scavenger tooth marks were also not consistent with the injuries.
"Through a process of elimination, we ruled out human conflict and more commonly-reported animal predators or scavengers," they added.
The shark species most likely responsible for the attack was either a tiger or white shark, researchers said.
Their findings were published Wednesday in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.
The team worked with George Burgess, director emeritus of the Florida Program for Shark Research, to study forensic shark attack cases and put together a reconstruction of the rare case.
"There are very few known examples of shark attacks in the archaeological record," Schulting told CNN, adding that the earliest concrete example the team could find came from a late pre-Columbian site in Puerto Rico, dated to just before 1000 AD.
"The main reason that so few cases are known is simply because they were so rare," Schulting said. "Even today, with so many more people in the world, only a handful of lethal shark attacks occur each year."
After radiocarbon analysis the team concluded that the man died between 1370 BC and 1010 BC -- more than 3,000 years ago.
The team mapped the lesions onto a 3D model of a skeleton to visualize and analyze the injuries.
Experts think that the prehistoric hunter gatherer victim was alive at the time of attack due to the distribution of wounds, with his left hand missing, indicating a defense wound.
"We suspect that the man was probably out fishing with some companions in the Inland Seto Sea in southern Japan. They could have been fishing from a boat, or diving for shellfish," Schulting told CNN. "Perhaps they were even hunting sharks, as shark teeth are sometimes found in Jōmon archaeological sites.
"One or more sharks -- we suspect one but can't be certain about that -- attacked the man either while he was already in the water, or perhaps he lost his balance and fell, or was pulled overboard if the shark was on a fishing line -- this would not have been a small shark," he added.
Schulting said there were "so many tooth marks all over the skeleton" that the attack must have lasted "for some time."
The man's body was retrieved soon after the attack, and he was buried at the ceremony. He was also missing his right leg, and his left leg was placed on top of his body, researchers added.
Co-author Mark Hudson, a researcher with the Max Planck Institute, added in a statement that the case is a rare example of archaeologists being able to reconstruct a dramatic episode in the life of a prehistoric community.
A funeral was held on Wednesday for a three-month-old boy who died after being involved in a wrong-way crash on Highway 401 in Whitby last week.
There has been a "sophisticated" cybersecurity breach detected on B.C. government networks, Premier David Eby confirmed Wednesday evening.
Toronto police say a man was taken into custody outside Drake's Bridle Path mansion Wednesday afternoon after he tried to gain access to the residence.
U.S. President Joe Biden said for the first time Wednesday he would halt shipments of American weapons to Israel, which he acknowledged have been used to kill civilians in Gaza, if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu orders a major invasion of the city of Rafah.
Dakota Joshua had a goal and two assists and the Vancouver Canucks scored three third-period goals to claw out a 5-4 comeback victory over the Edmonton Oilers in Game 1 of their second-round playoff series Wednesday.
One of the Indian nationals accused of murdering British Columbia Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar says in a social media video that he received a Canadian study permit with the help of an Indian immigration consultancy.
Pfizer has agreed to settle more than 10,000 lawsuits about cancer risks related to the now discontinued heartburn drug Zantac, Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the deal.
Quebec Premier Francois Legault is defending his comments about a new history museum after he was accused by a prominent First Nations group of trying to erase their history.
Independent U.S. presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had a parasite in his brain more than a decade ago, but has fully recovered, his campaign said, after the New York Times reported about the ailment.
The stakes have been set for a bet between Vancouver and Edmonton's mayors on who will win Round 2 of the Stanley Cup playoffs.
A grieving mother is hosting a helmet drive in the hopes of protecting children on Manitoba First Nations from a similar tragedy that killed her daughter.
A chicken farmer near Mattawa made an 'eggstraordinary' find Friday morning when she discovered one of her hens laid an egg close to three times the size of an average large chicken egg.
A P.E.I. lighthouse and a New Brunswick river are being honoured in a Canada Post series.
An Ontario man says he paid more than $7,700 for a luxury villa he found on a popular travel website -- but the listing was fake.
Whether passionate about Poirot or hungry for Holmes, Winnipeg mystery obsessives have had a local haunt for over 30 years in which to search out their latest page-turners.
Eighty-two-year-old Susan Neufeldt and 90-year-old Ulrich Richter are no spring chickens, but their love blossomed over the weekend with their wedding at Pine View Manor just outside of Rosthern.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A mother goose and her goslings caused a bit of a traffic jam on a busy stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway near Vancouver Saturday.