JOIN TODAY
JOIN TODAY

New Dates for the Lion Man

News February 1, 2013

SHARE:

(JDuckeck)
ULM, GERMANY—New radiocarbon dates for bones found in the same strata as the "lion man" indicate that the Ice Age figurative sculpture is 40,000 years old, or 8,000 years older than previously thought. Carved from mammoth ivory, the first fragments of the lion man were discovered in 1939 in Germany’s Stadel Cave, just a few days before the outbreak of World War II. Archaeologists hastily filled in their trenches to protect the site and stored the sculpture in the City Museum of Ulm, where it was first reassembled in the 1970s. Recent excavations by Claus-Joachim Kind have recovered another 1,000 bits of mammoth bone that are now being added to the sculpture using computer-imaging techniques. The Ulm Museum plans to unveil the refurbished lion man in November.  See ARCHAEOLOGY’s “New Life for the Lion Man” for an in-depth look at the process of reconstructing the Ice Age masterpiece.

 

Recommended Articles

Features July/August 2026

Egypt's First Queen

How a trailblazing ruler pulled her realm back from the brink

Read Article
Beaded bracelets
© Araldo De Luca

Features July/August 2026

Secrets of the Serpent

Is a Native American origin story embedded in Ohio’s colossal earthwork?

Read Article
Serpent Mound
Timothy E. Black

Features July/August 2026

Slinging Insults

Greek and Roman soldiers fired pointed barbs at their enemies

Read Article
Lead sling bullet inscribed with the Greek inscription MATHOU
Courtesy Michael Eisenberg

Features July/August 2026

Inside Africa’s Houses of Stone

Archaeologists are rethinking how kings shared power beyond the great capitals of medieval Zimbabwe

Read Article
Ad/AdobeStock

More to Discover

Features January/February 2013

Top 10 Discoveries of 2012

ARCHAEOLOGY's editors reveal the year's most compelling stories

Read Article

  • Features January/February 2013

    Neolithic Europe's Remote Heart

    One thousand years of spirituality, innovation, and social development emerge from a ceremonial center on the Scottish archipelago of Orkney

    Read Article
    Adam Stanford/Aerial Cam

  • Features January/February 2013

    The Water Temple of Inca-Caranqui

    Hydraulic engineering was the key to winning the hearts and minds of a conquered people

    Read Article
    Caranqui-opener
    (Courtesy Tamara L. Bray)

  • Letter from France January/February 2013

    Structural Integrity

    Nearly 20 years of investigation at two rock shelters in southwestern France reveal the well-organized domestic spaces of Europe's earliest modern humans

    Read Article

  • Artifacts January/February 2013

    Pacific Islands Trident

    A mid-nineteenth-century trident illustrates a changing marine ecosystem in the South Pacific

    Read Article
    (Catalog Number 99071 © The Field Museum, [CL000_99071_Overall], Photographer Christopher J. Philipp)