Worldwide Droughts Uncover Ancient Relics, Ruins and Remains

Dinosaur tracks are nothing new to Texas' Dinosaur Valley State Park. In fact, they're very, very old. But severe drought conditions on the Paluxy River uncovered quite a set of massive tracks in mid-August that are usually covered by water and mud. The tracks date back about 113 million years ago and prints likely belonged to Acrocanthosaurus, which was a huge theropod and probably stood 15 feet (4.5 meters) tall and weighed about 7 tons (6.3 metric tons). The tracks are in a limestone sediment that hardened.

In August 2022, the drought in China caused water levels to drop across the southwestern part of the country. In the Yangtze River Basin, in fact, rainfall was 45 percent lower than it was in July, making conditions even worse. The plunging water levels exposed a formerly submerged island known as Foyeliang, which revealed three Buddhist statues estimated to about 600 years old. The statues are on the highest part of the island reef, thought to have been built during the Ming and Qing dynasties. At the time the discovery in mid-August, as many as 66 rivers in the region had dried up, but no other artifacts had made headlines.

In July 2022, water levels in the Tiber River in Rome, Italy, dropped low enough to reveal the remains of an ancient stone bridge. The bridge isn't exactly a new discovery; in fact, it's been visible during previous droughts and was already known as the Pons Neronianus, or the Bridge of Nero. Some historians believe the bridge was built by Nero when he was emperor of Rome between 54 C.E. until his death in 68 C.E. However, other experts believe that the bridge may have been built even before then, and that Nero rebuilt it at a later point.

Another river in Italy, the River Po, also dried up during the summer of 2022. And what it was hiding just beneath its waters was a 1,000-pound (450 kilogram) bomb dropped during World War II. If that's not scary enough that bomb, mercifully, failed to detonate. Fishermen found the bomb on the riverbank near the village of Borgo Virgilio. The discovery prompted officials to shut down nearby air and river traffic until the scene was safely contained. In August, the unexploded bomb — which Italian military officials said had 530 pounds (240 kilograms) of explosives— was safely detonated after about 3,000 nearby residents were evacuated.

German and Kurdish archaeologists found what they believe is a lost city estimated to be about 3,400 years old. The discovery was made in Iraq when water levels at the Mosul reservoir in the Kurdistan Region dropped because of extreme drought. The site — described as "an extensive city with several large buildings" — is believed to have been Zakhikuan, an ancient center in the Mittani Empire (ca. 1550-1350 B.C.E.).

Water in the Valdecanas reservoir in Spain's province of Caceres dropped dramatically during one of the country's worst droughts in decades. And that delighted archaeologists because the receding waters exposed what's officially known as the Dolmen of Guadalperal, aka Spanish Stonehenge. The circle made of dozens of megalithic stones was first discovered by German archaeologist Hugo Obermaier in 1926, but the area where the monument is located was flooded in 1963. Since then, it's been visible due to drought just four times. Scholars believe the circle was erected sometime around 5000 B.C.E., though little is known about who built it or why.